The Dream Archipelago

by Christopher Priest

The Dream Archipelago is a neutral zone in a world at war. The hundreds of islands, languishing in tropical seas, are a constant lure to young men on both sides of the conflict. In these interlinked stories, Christopher Priest explores war, relationships and forms of reality.

A soldier comes to doubt that the right is on his side; a woman remembers more peaceful times in the archipelago; a man discovers the evil that women can do to each other. The tale becomes a tapestry in a manner reminiscent of Keith Robert's great novel Pavane, weaving reality together in ways which are never obvious. Over all looms the time vortex which makes this world so different from our own.

Newly revised and added to by the author, and collected together in book form for the first time, The Dream Archipelago shows a writer at the height of his power.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, War, Speculative Fiction, Audiobook

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.

He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.

He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue For a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.

He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.

As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher Priest is among the most inventive authors I’ve encountered in fifty years of voracious reading. Whenever I feel inspired to launch into new vistas of imagination, all I need do is read (or listen via audible) to yet again another one of his books.

Thanks, Christopher, you have yet to let me down, most especially when your tales are set on an Earth-like planet comprised of thousands of unique islands. Included in this island series: The Affirmation, The Islanders, The Gradual and the book that's the subject of this review, The Dream Archipelago, containing some of the darkest yarns the author has written. Case in point with two from this collection: The Miraculous Cairn and The Cremation are drenched in sexually charged Gothic horror.

In any event, here are a number of memorable highlights from my travels in The Dream Archipelago:

YOU ARE ENTERING THE TWILIGHT ZONE
The first short tale, The Equatorial Moment, is written in intimate second person. The narrator addresses you as a pilot who has had a foretaste of the timeless: “So here in the sky you believed that you had glimpsed the insight: the mystery of the vortex appeared to be laid bare before you. It made time cease, you reasoned. All flying aircraft that entered it were held by it so long as they maintained a steady course, only to be released when they made their crucial change of direction.”

Sounds to me as if Christopher Priest is inviting us to make an artful shift from Earth-bound clock time to the ethereal realm of the Dream Archipelago. Ars longa, vita brevis. Having taken the trip myself, I can assure you it is well worth the ticket.

NOVELIST AND HER NOVEL
There’s Moylita Kaine, seasoned author of The Affirmation (not Christopher Priest’s; her own novel well over 1,000 pages). Readers of The Islanders will remember Moylita back when she was a young, aspiring writer sending off fan letters to her hero, the famous islands author Chaster Kammerson. In this book's story entitled The Negation, Moylita's novel has made an indelible impression on Dik, an eighteen-year old soldier who has read the work repeatedly since age fifteen. This novel not only proved the most profound experience of his young life but Dik harbors a secret ambition to become an author himself and write a novel very much like The Affirmation.

Dik has an opportunity to speak with Moylita Kaine one on one. Following his conversation (among the more intriguing sections of this tale) Dik has an added incentive to evaluate The Afirmation in light of ideas he came across in a book of literary theory: reading a novel is as much a creative act as writing one; the significance a reader ascribes to a novel holds greater weight than the author’s intension; and, above all, the novel is great if a reader deems it great. We are left to consider how unfolding events in The Negation will impact young Dik’s assessment of The Affirmation.

HEAD TRIPS
In Whores, an unnamed narrator, a soldier on extended sick leave, plans to visit islands within the Dream Archipelago but he must contend with an ongoing medical issue: as a consequence of being gassed by the enemy, he suffers from intense bouts of synesthesia.

We follow him as he wanders about on his first island, Lucie, where houses becomes monstrosities and give off cynical laughter. He’s assailed by a host of smells, enticing and captivating, while sounds and textures bend in weird, bizarre and sometimes frightening ways. However, he claims he's no longer disturbed when music becomes strands of colored light or he's subjected to other varieties of hallucination.

By and by he meets one of the island whores, Elva, a slightly built brunette, and follows her to her room. He feels he is about to suffer an extreme attack of synesthesia but doesn’t leave; he judges the strange dance of his senses will enhance rather than diminish his sexual pleasure. Little does he know he is about to undergo the most harrowing nightmare of his life.

SCIENCE FICTION ART
What I find particularly fascinating about a Christopher Priest tale is what I term “The Jolt of the Weird.” In other words, events move apace in a somewhat, recognizable, realistic way then suddenly the protagonist is hurled into a fourth dimension - for example, the bending of time in The Gradual or the phenomenon of invisibility in The Glamour. Undoubtedly, this is the very reason his books are categorized as science fiction.

The most obvious example of such a weird jolt in this collection occurs in The Discharge, a tale where the twenty-something narrator is caught between the regimentation of his everyday cookie-cutter life as a foot soldier and his aspiration to live in the world of art and aesthetics and vivid imagination.

Several pages in the narrator describes a technique developed by painter Rascar Acizzone wherein a kind of pigment is applied to canvas using unique ultrasound microcircuitry. To a casual observer Acozzone's large canvases appeared to be little more than arrangements of color. But (please sit up and take particular note) if a viewer actually makes physical contact with the canvas's ultrasound pigments then hidden images are brought to life and supercharged with shocking eroticism. "Detailed and astonishingly explicit scenes were mysteriously evoked in the mind of the viewer, inducing an intense charge of sexual excitement." Whoa, baby! Now that's creativity in action!

The narrator goes on: "I discovered a set of long-forgotten Acizzone abstracts in the vaults of the museum in Jethra and by the laying on of the palms of my hands I entered the world of vicarious carnal passion. The women depicted by Acizzone were the most beautiful and sensual I had ever seen, or known, or imagined. Each painting created its own vision in the mind of the viewer."

The tale continues. The narrator ultimately makes the choice to flee the military and become an artist. He goes on to employ Acizzone's technique of ultrasound microcircuitry into his own paintings. After a number of years the military police catch up with him. However, they also have to deal with his highly unique paintings, which turn out to be just the thing that saves his life. You will have to read for yourself to discover the specifics. Thanks again, Christopher!



"He became still, four of his fingers resting on the pigment. For a moment he stayed in position, looking almost reflective as he squatted there with his hand extended. Then he tipped slowly forward. He tried to balance himself with his other hand, but that too landed on the pigments. As he fell across the painting, his body started jerking in spasms. Both his hands were bonded to the board." - Christopher Priest, The Dream Archipelago


Christopher Priest, British author extraordinaire, born 1943

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This superb collection of short stories by Christopher Priest lives up to its title, being both subtle and subtly off.

Off not as in bad... but off as in we're being carried away by deep waters that are subtly carrying away our sense of the universe.

You see, these stories feel awfully familiar and normal, or if they're evidently and obviously on an alternate Earth, at least everything seems ultimately recognizable... until it isn't. And this, let me tell you, is damn awesome. There's practically no way we can't fall into his trap. He lulls us along and then stops the stories at places that confound and make us ask really deep questions.

At first blush, we keep seeing big themes of incompletion, usually surrounding unsatisfying sexual encounters, synesthesia, all kinds of off-art, and the sense that the war is just WRONG.

But expect no resolutions. These aren't those kinds of stories. They're deeply personal, intimate, and often disturbing, focused almost entirely on the inner or nearby worlds of the main characters, usually involved in what might be characterized as a travelogue of the Dream Archipelagos.

And like the other Dream Islands, the islands are a character in themselves, they're both disturbing and fascinating, and they're set right in-between two warring nations that have been going at it for up to a few thousand years. They're not going to defeat each other. They have too much invested in just keeping the conflict going.

There's undercurrents under the undercurrents, references back to real and fictional novels, themes that are both profound and familiar, and it's always heavily sexual.

These are almost impossible to truly describe. They're just that good. Expertly crafted, confounding, intimate, and interrupted. A few of them are truly wonderful, especially the last novella, but after reading them, it really is as if I've been living a dream... Not wild. Just carried away with the currents.

If you can't tell, I'm kinda at a loss for words. I feel like I'm one of the characters in these stories, all fish out of water and simultaneously horrified and caught in the beauty. :)

Anyway. They're absolutely worth the read. Really amazing, actually. :)

[Claudia]

Looks like I’m going against the flow again. I gave up after the 2nd story; too much symbolism for my taste. And I don’t like the writing either; seems too linear, no matter what happens. Maybe I should have read further, but I lack the patience...

I might try The Prestige at some point, because I enjoyed the movie a lot.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a series of short stories set in the world of the Dream Archipelago. Although I did not quite understand what some of the stories were trying to convey, each story was interesting enough to hold my interest and want to keep reading. I think they just need a bit more mulling over, similar to The Affirmation (I see a pattern emerging in this series of books...). My favorite story by far was The Cremation, followed by The Miraculous Cairn.

The most puzzling story was the last one, The Watched. While searching for possible online maps of the Dream Archipelago (didn't find one), I happened to read that this particular story was highly influenced by John Fowles' novel The Magus. Having read The Magus this time last year, I can see easily see the similarities. While I was frustrated with The Magus by the time I reached the end of its long 656 pages, luckily The Watched is much much shorter. Here is a blog post by Christopher Priest discussing his thoughts about The Magus.

After having read both The Affirmation and now The Dream Archipelago, I'm eager to read the next book set in this world - The Islanders. I may still be puzzling over the first two books, but Christopher Priest makes me want to keep coming back for more.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Antología de relatos ambientados en El Archipiélago de Sueño, un lugar ficticio creado por el británico Christopher Priest. Existen varias ediciones, una publicada en Francia en 1981, y otra publicada en inglés en 1999, donde se añadió un cuento más a modo de introducción. La presente edición contiene además un par de relatos publicados posteriormente.

The Equatorial Moment (1999). Relato protagonizado por un aviador que sobrevuela las islas, donde existe una ruptura temporal, especie de agujero de gusano para viajar de manera más rápida. Breve, pero buen relato que consigue crear la atmósfera adecuada para enfrentarse al resto de la antología.

The Negation (1978). Un joven soldado que vigila la frontera entre dos países en lucha, está obsesionado con ‘La Afirmación’, de Moylita Kaine. Resulta que esta escritora va a venir de visita a la isla donde está destinado, y tiene planeado ir a conocerla. Otro gran relato. A todo esto, Priest hace metaliteratura, ya que también tiene una novela titulada ‘La Afirmación’, para su mejor trabajo junto a ‘El prestigio’.

Whores (1978). El protagonista es un soldado de permiso que decide viajar a una de estas islas para reencontrarse con una prostituta con la que estuvo hace un tiempo. Tal vez el cuento más flojo de la antología, que no malo, ya que la ambientación es excelente, así como un giro un tanto perturbador.

The Trace of Him (2008). Relato protagonizado por una mujer obsesionada por el recuerdo de un antiguo amante que ha fallecido, y ahora acude a su funeral.

The Miraculous Cairn (1980). El protagonista viaja con un permiso especial a Seevl, para deshacerse de las pertenencias de un familiar recientemente fallecido. Además, es escoltado obligatoriamente por una soldado. Buen relato, con un giro totalmente inesperado.

The Cremation (1978). De nuevo un funeral, al que asiste el protagonista en lugar de un familiar ocupado. Gran relato, donde predomina lo fantástico de las costumbres de los habitantes de la isla en cuestión, y un final esperado, pero no por ello menos perturbador.

The Watched (1978). Ordier, que amasó una fortuna fabricando escintilas, especie de insecto nanotecnológico para espiar al enemigo, vive retirado en Tumo, una de las islas. Tiene una relación con una antropóloga que estudia a los qataari, que viven refugiados en la isla, y cuya sociedad permanece casi totalmente hermética para el resto del mundo. Sin embargo, Ordier ha encontrado un modo de espiar a estos qataari, y en concreto a una joven de la que está obsesionado. Hay fragmentos geniales, y otros un tanto confusos. Aun así, deja huella.

The Discharge (2000). Historia de un joven soldado liberado junto a otros, con el que viajamos y visitamos algunas de las islas. Nos damos cuenta de la riqueza del lugar, que Priest, en su sabiduría, no nos muestra en su totalidad.

[Fatman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories in this collection are well-written, for the most part, and evoke a dreamlike landscape similar to our world, but subtly different. To me, they do not read like stand-alone stories as much as fragments of a larger narrative. Maybe chapters from an unfinished novel? The lack of plot and coherent structure diminished the reading experience for me. But this collection has inspired me to seek out more of Christopher Priest's work, especially his novels.

[Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a tricky review to write. A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with the older of my two sons (he’s over 30, reads a lot and has recommended good books to me before) something along these lines:

Him: Have you read anything by Christopher Priest
Me: I have never even heard of Christopher Priest
Him: Well, you sort of have because he wrote The Prestige
Me: Ah - that’s a good film, but I don’t know anything about the book
Him: I think you might like Priest. I’ll lend you one of his books.

This, then, is how I came to be reading The Dream Archipelago.

With apologies to my son, I don’t believe I will be reading any more of Priest’s books.

The Dream Archipelago is a collection of short stories written over a 30 year period starting in 1978. Priest would go on to tell you that the period lasted until 2008, but I believe that you can work that out for yourself. They are united by being set in or around the Dream Archipelago which is a collection of islands running round the middle of a world that has been at war for many, many years. The Dream Archipelago is a neutral zone and, as such, attracts the attention of young men destined to fight in a war that has no apparent end and consists mainly of each side moving troops around but never actually fighting one another.

After an initial, very short, introductory story, we get what could be an interesting short story about a soldier patrolling a wall on the frontier who has the chance to meet the author of his favourite book. When the author writes a poem for the soldier, he begins to question whether he is on the side of right in the war. At this stage, I was finding the writing a bit simplistic (the idea of telling you the period ends in 2008 was to hint at the way Priest shows a lot but can’t resist the urge to finish off by telling you everything in case you didn’t quite get the showing) but was interested in the stories.

Unfortunately, it rather went downhill from that point. Most of the rest of the stories seem to be aimed at heterosexual teenage boys and their sexual fantasies (my son left his teenage years behind a long time ago, though). Each story gives the impression that if you attend an event (normally a funeral, it seems) in the Dream Archipelago, at least one woman will throw herself at you and not take no for an answer. This is independent of your own gender. And it normally ends badly with some kind of nightmarish episode. If you find a way to sneakily watch a group of people who don’t like to be observed, you will see them doing something sexually arousing, although the reason for that might not be quite what you thought it was.

In what might be a slight spoiler, the final story tells of a soldier on the run after discharging himself from the army who begins to paint using a technique and materials that mean physical contact with the paintings induces an emotional response in the person. It raises the possibility that the whole book is stories of one or more people hallucinating as they touch one of these paintings, which, in that context, would make all the different stories the experiences of a single person captured in their paintings. But I may be searching too hard for a unifying idea and something to redeem the book.

In the end, after a promising start, I have to acknowledge this just wasn’t for me. I’ll still listen to ideas my son has for me about books to read because he has give me a few good ones over the year (notably, I only read Infinite Jest because he suggested I might like it). But I’ll steer clear of Christopher Priest, I think. Reading The Prestige is tempting, but knowing the twist from the movie probably spoils any reading of the book.

Sorry, Matthew. Let’s try again with another idea!

[Simona B · Rating 2 out of 5]

For the benefit of future readers, be warned that the new Gollancz edition (paperback ISBN 9780575091061) features two stories that aren't included in the original 1999 edition of this collection. These are "The Trace of Him" and "The Discharge." You might want to keep that in mind when you purchase/borrow your copy.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous collection of richly imagined interlocking stories

Christopher Priest, Dream Archipelago (orig. publ. In French)

“Whores” (1978) — bizarre (5)
“The Miraculous Cairn” (1980) [novella] (5)
“The Watched” (1978) [novella] — compelling (5)
“The Cremation” (1978) — weird, but effective (5)
“The Negation” (1978) — ambiguous ending (4)
“The Discharge” (1999) — a late addition (4)
“The Trace of Him” (1978) — very brief (3)
“The Equatorial Moment” (1999) [prologue] (0)

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb collection, with ingeniously designed and cleverly, subtly interlocking stories about mind and sanity, culture and war, sexuality and madness. "The Watched" is for me, one of the top 10 novellas of all time.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Priest's world of the Dream Archipelago is a place I've visited before, in his mind bendingly M.C. Escher-like novel, the Affirmation, and in the faux travel guide, The Islanders, which he wrote some thirty years later. It's a hazy, enigmatic alternate reality, a modernized world not unlike our own, but with vastly different geography (a good chunk of humanity lives in an enormous archipelago that girdles the world's midsection) and a few mysterious features (e.g. a time vortex that travels around the equator and has strange effects on air travel). This universe could be compared to fantasy or sci-fi, but the focus is less on world-building and more on playing games with the reader's mind.

The Islanders was a cryptic work whose vignettes, tied to particular islands, gave us fragments of larger stories, and left us to connect the dots. The same characters, locations, and situations are referenced between the pieces, sometimes in contradictory or paradoxical ways, and Priest seems to insinuate that they *ARE* all related, but doesn't hand the reader a full set of keys to understanding. At the time, I wasn't able to put all the pieces together, but I liked the puzzle.

This book is a more conventional collection of short stories and novellas, most of which date back to the late 1970s in their creation. It's a time of war and several advanced, European-seeming countries are fighting on the world's two continents, while the Dream Archipelago tries to hang onto its neutrality. Some of the protagonists are directly involved in the war, as conscripts or volunteers, while others are outside the actual conflict, but still affected by it. Most of the stories seem to deal, in one way or another, with matters of identity and the self we keep hidden from the world versus the self we share.

Highlights:
* The Negation: a young conscript meets his favorite author, who was sent to his frontier post in order to write morale-boosting propaganda for the government. However, she harbors strong reservations about the war, which both open his mind and put him in jeopardy.
* The Miraculous Cairn: I thought I understood the protagonist of this piece, but halfway through, I realized my assumptions had been made in haste (I'm sure Priest intended this). When the protagonist returns to a spot last visited 20 years earlier, where a life-defining event had taken place, Priest unveils a disturbing misalignment between memory and current reality (what actually happened to the tower is explained in The Islanders).
* The Cremation: a young expatriate from the mainland, who's left a few sins behind him, fails to fully apprehend the customs of an island where he attends the funeral of a distant relative. Features a horrifying insect that also appears in The Islanders.
* The Watchers: a wealthy defense contractor, who's retreated to the islands to escape public attention, becomes enthralled with a community of war refugees, who live in a valley that can be seen from his home. Members of this culture normally resist all attempts by outsiders to observe them (by literally stopping whatever they're doing), but he is somehow able to penetrate the veil. Or is he?

The pieces here all have an unsettling vibe and ambiguous conclusions that require readers to fill in a few blanks themselves. Each stands on its own, and Priest only loosely sketches the world that's the shared backdrop. Some online reviews have complained about the amount of sexuality -- I didn't think it was pornographic or gratuitous, but it definitely features strongly in several of the stories.

There's a lot of intertextual stuff to this world, links between The Affirmation, The Dream Archipelago, and The Islanders that will be clearer if you read all three books in quick succession, while character and place names are still fresh in your memory. I'd recommend starting with the Affirmation, then reading this book, then the Islanders. The latter book (which I found less bleak) stands well enough on its own, but some of its sequences precede or follow events in the stories here.

[Gregor Xane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A connected collection of really good stories with sightly less than satisfying conclusions.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Nothing was clear,” the narrator of the final story in this collection declares at one point, and that may be the judgement of many readers. What does become clear though is that the Dream Archipelago of the title can actually be a nightmarish place for individuals living on the islands, especially those coming from the mainland hoping to establish new lives for themselves in a new environment.

The world to which this short story collection gives us entry is one which is both like and yet unlike ours. There’s a northern continent with two opposing polities who have been, or will be, conducting a war for three millennia on the mostly uninhabited southern continent; there’s a Midway Sea with an archipelago of several thousand Islands girdling the equator and extending into the tropics.

But there’s also a pervasive disturbing quality about the whole world where perceptions are likely to be distorted at a moment’s notice, whether by natural or artificial means, meaning everything feels destabilised and nothing is certain.

First of all I should mention that this edition of <>The Dream Archipelago<> is the third to be issued, each subsequent occasion having items added to the original five stories (which appeared together in French as L’archipel du rêve in 1981). Two pieces, ‘The Miraculous Cairn’ and ‘The Watched’, are long enough to virtually qualify as novellas, while the remaining five are shorter, of varying length. How the order of the present sequence was arrived at is unclear – one loses little in reading them as the mood dictates – but I’ll discuss them as presented here, bearing in mind that each item appears to have been regularly revised or updated, perhaps to keep them consistent with each other or keep up with technological developments over the last four or so decades.

‘The Equatorial Moment’ throws us straight into the paradoxical world Christopher Priest has created with the notion of a time vortex over the world’s equator with seemingly static aircraft stacked above each other, their spiralling condensation trails being referenced in several other stories. The archipelago’s curious temporal relativity and the illusory nature of reality permeate the whole collection in which our attentions are focused on war, relationships, deaths, ambiguities and sexual fantasies.

‘The Negation’ is set on the border of Faiandland and its continental enemy, the Federation; it concerns a young soldier and an older writer in residence he admires. It provides the first inkling of the long war waged between the two combatting nations and, as represented by an officious apparatchik, of a repressive internal security. It also introduces the notion of distorted perceptions through the use of sense gases which overwhelm the hypothalamus by overloading it with synaesthetic associations and sensations.

‘Whores’ brings us face to face with an idée fixe that characterises many of the early stories in this collection: sexual fantasies, principally those of young males. Another conscript, this one suffering from intense attacks of induced synaesthesia, gets involved while on leave with prostitutes on the female-only island of Luice, but has problems with what is distressingly real and what isn’t. After this unsettling piece it’s a relief to read the more lyrical but melancholy ‘The Trace of Him’: a woman attends the funeral of a writer, a former lover, on the island of Piqay where she’s given the cold shoulder.

Most if not all of Priest’s protagonists are introverted loners, and this is true of the narrator of ‘The Miraculous Cairn’ which is set on Seevl, an island lying offshore from a Faiandland port. Lenden Cros travels to the island to deal with a deceased uncle’s effects, but the place holds disturbing memories of pubescent experiences. Unsettled by a female police escort and anxieties about what lurked in an isolated tower, it seems Lenden has personal demons to come to terms with. Then in ‘The Cremation’ Graian Sheeld, an emigré from the Federated States, has also to attend a funeral; this is on Trellin, but the island in the Greater Aubracs holds an unimaginable terror for him – the thryme, an insect that proves fatal for humans who come in contact with it. Distracted by sexual intrigue and unfamiliar island customs, will he avoid the physical dangers?

On Tumo an immigrant called Yvann Ordier has built a retreat after making his fortune from miniature spying devices called scintillas. In ‘The Watched’ we learn that he himself spends time spying on Qataari refugees from a ruined folly but meanwhile is concerned that he keeps finding unlicensed scintillas on his property. Who’s watching who? Why is he obsessed with a particular Qataari woman who’s the focus of a ritual? Why does he keep finding rose petals with a powerful narcotic scent in the folly? In the final analysis does he have free will or are his actions predetermined?

The final story, ‘The Discharge’ (‘Retour au foyer’ in the French original), is as wandering, mysterious and disorientating a narrative as most of the other pieces. It begins with the narrator – yet another young male conscript – who has difficulty reconstructing details of his first twenty years. Knowing only that he’s a fan of an artist whose canvases are classed as ‘tactilist’, he deserts the army after four years’ military service on the southern continent to wander the islands of the Midway Sea and pursue his dream of creating arcane, sexually explicit tactilist art like his idol. But he fears the military police will eventually catch up with him.

A world where temporal vortices, thrymes, neural dissociation gases, scintillas, aphrodisiac rose petals and tactilist artworks exist but where maps are hard to obtain is never going to be easy to navigate, any more for the reader than for its inhabitants; but if you don’t mind narratives that judder between realism and hallucination, or reverie and nightmare, where the doors of perception are ambiguously ajar, then a visit to the Dream Archipelago may be for you.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of stories is characterised by non-completion. By ellipses, gaps, loss of memory, tantalising hints of more, general incompleteness. In the stories themselves, in the people, in the world.

This turned out not to be the book I thought I was reading. Having adored The Islanders, I thought I was getting an earlier novel set in the same place. Uh, no. This is a set of short stories (including a couple of novellas): some set in the Dream Archipelago, some just referencing it. So I was quite discontent when I read the first 'chapter' - The Equatorial Moment - and accepted it as setting the premise for the book... and then realised that The Negation was quite separate, although with strong links. Don't worry; I got over my disappointment.

"The Equatorial Moment" is not a story. It's a vignette, explaining the very odd thing about this world: that there is a time vortex, which means it's the same time everywhere on the world at the same time. It also means that flying somewhere is a rather difficult business. It also sets up that this world is experiencing a war, which - far more than issues to do with time - informs the entirety of this collection. "The Trace of Him" is also a vignette, of a lover and a funeral, that doesn't really seem to fit the rest of the collection. It's set in the Dream Archipelago, but that's all.

Some of these stories are directly about the war, and its impact on soldiers and civilians. "The Negation" is framed around a draftee and his experiences, but also around an author whose art might be subverted by the war. (Its connection to the Dream Archipelago is tenuous - the novel that the soldier loves is set there.) This story was the first taste of incompleteness that flavours the rest, as Priest suggests and hints but does not fulfil. It's marvellous. "Whores," too, examines soldiers and civilians, through a different lens. This time the soldier has been granted leave due to sickness which manifests as synaesthesia; the civilians are women who have become whores because of the exigencies of war. This aspect, that the women are not simply whores but that they became such for real, usually economic reasons, and that they might also have other concerns, was a delight. Too often whores (and slaves) just exist in the same way that horses or dogs do, with no reference to what came before. So that worked. And there's a tantalising question over whether the soldier in these two stories is the same man or not. The last story in the collection, "The Discharge," also brings together art and war and ellipses. It's the fullest exploration of the war that's been affecting this world for a ridiculous amount of time, and makes it clear that ridiculous is exactly what it is. But then the narrator ends up in the Dream Archipelago, and starts exploring art... a type of art that has a genuinely visceral impact on its viewer by messing with the hypothalamus. And the story takes on a whole other layer and attacks a whole other idea. It's maddening and glorious and a bit creepy.

You know that thing where you're reading along, and you've been assuming something about the race, gender, location or attitude of a character and then something happens and you have to go back and read everything again to see whether you were stupid and made a mistake, or whether the author has been deliberately messing with you? That was "The Miraculous Cairn" for me. And I'm pretty sure the answer is the latter. It's set half on the mainland and half on an island; half in the present and half in the past; and it's a horror story. One of those slow, creeping horror stories that might not be a horror story but probably is. Gave me the shivers, anyway, and is the exemplar of non-completion. It has nothing to do with the war. Neither does "The Cremation," which is set more fully in the Archipelago and whose horror aspects stem directly from that fear of not knowing the local traditions and attitudes and behaviours. It works all too well. Also largely separate from the war is "The Watched," whose horrific nature really only comes through in the last few pages. Before that, it definitely has its creepy elements but they're not the focus (although on reflection perhaps that ought to have made it more creepy...). The tantalising gaps in this story are the sort of thing that in another author's hands would just indicate a lack of imagination, or pages where they've simply deleted "MUST ADD MORE INFO HERE". Instead, the reader is left just as much in the dark as Ordier about the society of the Qataari, his object of frustrated fascination. What makes the novella really work is that this fascination, while at the heart of the story, is not its sole preoccupation. Ordier - living in the Dream Archipelago but not a native, having left the mainland and his war-related work - lives a relatively ordinary life with a girlfriend whose job is demanding and disappointing, and we get many pages of relatively ordinary life along with Ordier's growing obsession. This adds to the creepiness but it's not just there as filler; actually I would have been happy reading about Ordier and Jenessa and their experiences, they're so intriguing. Which is why it works as a novella.

Are they SF? Is this fantasy? No. The collection is set on a different world, yes; but there's no exceptional technology - it would be easy to read much of it as set in a generic olde worlde rural setting until you get references to planes, grenade launchers and microwaves. There's also no magic; the time vortex just exists, and except for stuffing around with air travel doesn't actually impact on life. The people are human, with nothing special about them. This is just... a world. But I would still argue that it counts as speculative fiction, because I am contrary like that.

This is not the sort of collection I can imagine reading again. The stories are demanding, they're frustrating, and I think they may only work once. But that once was pretty glorious.

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not about dreams
Archipelago of Dreams is not Priest's most famous work, the most famous is Prestige, thanks to Nolan's film adaptation. "Archipelago" in the register of the writer's books passes only as a collection of short stories, not even awarded a separate article in the English Wiki. And at the same time, it is a common name for an array of four things that are heterogeneous in structure, but united by a place of action - the Prest-modeled Universe of the archipelago of dreams. "Lottery", "Archipelago of Dreams", "Islanders", "IRVB", with a total volume of about one thousand three hundred pages, which occasionally overlap through characters. And this already allows us to talk about "AG" as the author's opus magnum. In Russian literature, such a large-scale project, unfortunately, which remained tragically underestimated, was carried out by Andrei Lazarchuk's "Late for Summer".

But here and now I will tell you about the collection, which has the same name as the cycle, and is chronologically located in second place. As far as I understand, there is no clear story in Russian about this yet. There are eight short stories about each of them. The equatorial moment is a kind of introduction, an introduction to the reality of the Archipelago, explaining the features of space-time distortion that occur in this geographical area. In particular, a temporal shift that cancels time zones and creates for an observer on earth the illusion of jet planes simultaneously hovering above him in the sky, motionless and at different levels. Kill me, I don't understand what this means and what deep philosophical meaning is contained in the story, but I'm honestly retelling it.

"Denial" is my favorite story about a boy. who wrote poetry, dreamed of becoming a writer, entered the literary institute, but then military operations were activated in the sluggish war of the last three thousand years (!) and the white-collar workers were raked in on general grounds. Here he is sitting in his unit in this asshole of the world, not dreaming of anything good, and suddenly he finds out about the program of bringing culture to the troops, according to which writers come. to communicate with soldiers, raise morale, create patriotic works and all that. Among the names of possible visitors, he sees Moileta Kane, a writer whose novel "The Statement" has been read since the age of fifteen, and no one else besides him, even at the institute. I don't think I've ever read a book. And he writes her name in desirable characters, and then three more times, changing the pen rods and changing the handwriting. Moileta arrives, she is pushed into the local collective farmer's house, where the heating does not work, forced to write a patriotic play for the mayor, but when the corporal boy writes out a pass and comes to a meeting on his leave, it becomes a great meeting for both. And the next time she prepares a gift for him, the story "Statement", in which she talks about the senselessness of war and dares to say that both sides drive their soldiers crazy by using sensory gases. It ends badly, the burghers are vigilant. But it's not hopeless, we'll meet both heroes again in The Islanders.

"Whores" is about young girls from a small island who are forced to make a living selling their bodies and what the invaders did to them (teeth filed in the manner of a saw blade and leg tendons are cut). And about a young soldier who was discharged, poisoned by sensory gases, experiencing severe painful bouts of synesthesia. "His Trail" is about a woman who loved a writer all her life, she herself became a famous writer, but they met only once and spent two days together. and now she goes to see him for the last time, having learned about his terminal illness, and only gets to the funeral. Later, this story will flow into the "Islanders".

"Pile of stones" - a young woman inherits his house on a rocky island after the death of her uncle. She is a lesbian and experienced her first experience of same-sex love on this island as a teenager in a dilapidated tower. No one knows by whom or when they were built, scattered on different islands of the archipelago. but everyone agrees that these places are not good, later in the Islanders the story "Glass" will be a reference to the same tower. "Cremation" is the most creepy and disgusting story in the book about the nightmarish insects of the trimes and the ways they interact with the world, br-r-R. "Under the Hood" is about the inventor of fiber-optic surveillance cameras, fabulously cheap to produce, which allows him to become a billionaire selling both "glass" and detectors. revealing their presence. And then the man leaves with his beloved woman to the bosom of pristine
nature and what comes of it for him.

"The Deserter" is the final story, my top 2 in the collection. A young soldier, who strangely forgot himself and remembers only the articles of the charter regulating army everyday life, begins to remember how in his former life he was interested in painting, wanted to become an artist, spent hours in a collection of paintings by the famous, although his fame is somewhat scandalous shade, a master who worked with the use of ultrasonic paints: you look at the picture and see a square. smeared with crimson paint, but you touch your fingers and the most powerful erotic experiences will come crashing down on you. And so this boy decides to desert at all costs, which he manages with the help of a network of brothels that have covered all the islands and help deserters - the most despised and disenfranchised save the most disenfranchised and despised. However, he succeeds in everything, even becoming an artist and painting in the technique of dactylism. only his canvases do not look crimson from the outside, but khaki and touched will not cover with an erotic experience. but with all the horror of the senseless slaughter into which the boys are being driven. In general, when our hero is found by the military police, there will be someone / something to stand up for him. There will be a short afterword to this story later in The Islanders.

Now it remains only to tell about the "Islanders", and I will not read "IRVB". Three books are enough for one time.

Не о грезах
"Архипелаг грез" не самое известное произведение Приста, самое известное "Престиж", благодаря экранизации Нолана. "Архипелаг" же в реестре книг писателя проходит всего лишь как сборник рассказов, даже не удостоенный отдельной статьи в английской Вике. И в то же время, это общее название для массива из четырех вещей разнородных по структуре, но объединенных местом действия - смоделированной Пристом Вселенной архипелага грез. "Лотерея", "Архипелаг грез", "Островитяне", "ИРВБ", общим объемом порядка тысячи трехсот страниц, которые изредко перекликаются сквозными персонажами. А это уже позволяет говорить об "АГ", как об opus magnum автора. в российской литературе такого рода масштабный проект, к сожалению, оставшийся трагически недооцененным, осуществили "Опоздавшие к лету" Андрея Лазарчука.

Но здесь и сейчас я расскажу о сборнике, совпадающим названием с циклом, а хронологически расположенном на втором месте. Сколько понимаю, внятного рассказа на русском об этом еще нет. Восемь рассказов, о каждом из них очень коротко. Экваториальный момент своего рода введение, вступление в реальность Архипелага, объясняющее особенности искажения пространства-времени, которые имеют быть в этой географической зоне. В частности темпоральный сдвиг, который аннулирует временные зоны и создает у наблюдателя на земле иллюзию одновременно зависших над ним в небе неподвижно и на разных уровнях реактивных самолетов. Убей, не пойму, что сие значит и какой глубокий философский смысл заключен в рассказе, но честно пересказываю.

"Отрицание" мой любимый рассказ о мальчишке. который сочинял стихи, мечтал стать писателем, поступил в литинститут, но тут активировались военные действия в вялотекущей последние три тысячи лет (!) войне и белобилетников загребли на общих основаниях. Вот он сидит у себя в части в этой жопе мира, ни о чем хорошем не мечтая, и вдруг узнает о программе привнесения культуры в войска, согласно которой писатели приезжают. чтобы общаться с солдатами, поднимать боевой дух, создавать патриотические произведения и всякое такое. Среди имен возможных визитеров он видит Мойлету Кейн, писательницу, романом которой "Утверждение" зачитывался с пятнадцати лет, а кроме него никто, даже в институте. кажется и не читал книги. И он пишет ее имя в желательных персонах, а потом еще трижды, поменяв стержни ручки и изменив почерк. Мойлета приезжает, ее заталкивают в местный дом колхозника, где не работает отопление, заставляют писать для бургомистра ура-патриотическую пьесу, но когда мальчик-капрал выписывает пропуск и приходит на встречу в свой увольнительный, это становится прекрасной для обоих встречей. И на следующий раз она готовит для него подарок, рассказ "Утверждение", в котором говорит о бессмысленности войны и осмеливается сказать о том, что обе стороны сводят своих солдат с ума, применяя сенсорные газы. Заканчивается скверно, бюргеры бдят. Но не безнадежно, с обоими героями мы еще встретимся в "Островитянах".

"Шлюхи" о молодых девушках с маленького островка, вынужденных зарабатывать на жизнь продажей тела и о том, что с ними сделали оккупанты (зубы подпилены на манер лезвия пилы и подсечены сухожилия на ногах). И о молодом дембельнувшемся солдатике, отравленным сенсорными газами, переживающем тяжелые мучительные приступы синестезии. "Его след" о женщине, всю жизнь любившей писателя, она и сама стала известной писательницей, но виделись они лишь однажды и провели вместе два дня. и вот теперь она едет повидаться с ним в последний раз, узнав о его смертельной болезни, а попадает только на похороны. Позже эта история перетечет в "Островитян".

"Груда камней" - молодая женщина наследует после смерти дяди его дом на каменистом острове. Она лесбиянка и первый опыт однополой любви пережила на этом острове подростком в полуразрушенной башне. Никто не знает, кем и когда они построены, разбросанные по разным островам архипелага. но все сходятся во мнении, что места это нехорошие, позже в "Островитянах" рассказ "Стекло" будет отсылкой к такой же башне. "Кремация" - самый жуткий и омерзительный рассказ в книге о кошмарных насекомых траймах и способах их взаимодействия с миром, бр-р-р. "Под колпаком" об изобретателе оптоволоконных камер слежения, сказочно дешевых в производстве, что позволяет ему стать миллиардером на продаже как "стекляшек", так и детекторов. выявляющих их присутствие. А потом мужик удаляется с любимой женщиной на лоно первозданной
природы и что из этого для него выходит.

"Дезертир" завершающий рассказ, мой топ-2 в сборнике. Молодой солдат, странным образом позабывший себя и помнящий только статьи устава, регламентирующие армейские будни, начинает вспоминать, как в прежней жизни интересовался живописью, хотел стать художником, проводил часы в собрании картин знаменитого, хотя известность его несколько скандального оттенка, мастера, работавшего с применением ультразвуковых красок: смотришь на картину и видишь квадрат. замалеванный багряной краской, но притронешься пальцами и мощнейшие эротические переживания обрушатся на тебя. И вот этот мальчик решает дезертировать во что бы то ни стало, что ему и удается при помощи сети борделей, охватившей все острова и помогающих дезертирам - самые презираемые и бесправные спасают самых бесправных и презираемых. Однако все у него получается, даже стать художником и писать картины в технике дактилизма. только выглядят его полотна со стороны не багряными, а цвета хаки и коснувшегося накроет не эротическим переживанием. но всем ужасом бессмысленной бойни, в которую загоняют мальчишек. В общем, когда нашего героя найдет таки военная полисия, за него будет, кому/чему заступиться. Позже в "Островитянах" будет небольшое послесловие и к этой истории.

Теперь только об "Островитянах" осталось рассказать, а "ИРВБ" читать не буду. Трех книг для одного раза довольно.

[Dalibor Dado Ivanovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Posebne su ovo price...

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

See the comments on The Islanders page; will add full review soon

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

[Robert Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

3*** - The Equatorial Moment
4**** - The Negation
3*** - Whores
3*** - The Trace Of Him
5***** - The Miraculous Cairn
3*** - The Cremation
4**** - The Watched
4**** - The Discharge

[MichaelK · Rating 4 out of 5]

The two northern countries of Glaund and Faiandland are at war. After so long of bombing each other across their shared continent, the belligerents decide to move the fighting to the mostly uninhabited southern continent of Sudmaieure. To reach the southern continent, troopships and aircraft must pass through the Midway Sea and the Dream Archipelago, the largest geographical feature on the planet. Its islands are found around the whole planet, north and south of the equator, across tropical, subtropical, and temperate latitudes.

In The Islanders, we see the Archipelago from a native's perspective. In The Gradual, we see it from a Glaundian tourist's view. In this collection we see the world through the eyes of Faiandlanders: expats and soldiers. This trilogy of viewpoints makes the Dream Archipelago sequence feel complete; Priest has said he has, for the time being, finished visiting the archipelago.

(I know both The Affirmation and The Adjacent feature the Dream Archipelago, but since they also feature other realities I consider them separate to the Archipelago-only sequence.)

The stories collected here are very weird, and most were written 30 years ago, by a much younger, much more sexual Christopher Priest: of the eight stories here, five are on some level about sex, three have very explicit sex scenes. The weirdness seeps from the pages, giving all the stories an uncomfortable, uneasy atmosphere. We learn more about the archipelago, and the war, and the north, visiting islands and characters that will be seen again in the later books, sometimes providing answers and background details, sometimes creating more mystery.

I only disliked the opening story, 'The Equatorial Moment', which is written in awkward second-person. The rest are all rather elegant and creepy, with some masterfully done reveals and conclusions. 'The Trace of Him', the 4th story, is entirely re-used as a chapter in 'The Islanders', with some names and details changed, which was a slight disappointment, but it is an excellent piece of writing.

Obviously I recommend this collection, but I think 'The Islanders' is overall a superior Dream Archipelago experience. Consider this collection supplementary material to that masterpiece.

[scafandr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Этот сборник рассказов напрямую связан с циклом "Архипелаг грез", поэтому начинать с него не рекомендуется. За моими плечами прочитан роман "Лотерея", из которого мы узнаем о существовании альтернативного мира Архипелаг грез, за границами которого проходит война. И только на островах, поддерживающих нейтралитет, жизнь течет своим чередом. Рассказы нам дают представление об этом мире - о чем люди думают, чем живут, чего боятся, о чем мечтают.
Большая часть рассказов связана с военн��ми. Кто-то не хочет воевать, кто-то вернулся с войны, у кого-то из семьи забрали на передовую, кто-то уже на передовой. Красная линия сборника - зачем вообще нужна война? Учитывая, когда были написаны рассказы, становится понятно, что Прист переживает о бессмысленности военных операций, которые могут привести к полной разрухе, вместо того, чтобы жить на островах и получать удовольствие от жизни.
Местами Приста уносит в легкий хоррор, триллер, любовные перипетии и достаточно обильное количество секса.
В целом все рассказы умеренные по развитию сюжета. Все как обычно - какие-то рассказы более удачные, какие-то менее. Будет интересно почитать тем, кого зацепила "Лотерея" или "Островитяне". Для нейтрального читателя сборник проходной. Единственное, хочу отметить один замечательный рассказ "Груда камней", который удивил меня неожиданным сюжетным поворотом (если вы не страдаете гомофобией только).

[Geraud · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cette collection de récits est un pendant aux"Insulaires", ont y retrouve certains des personnages et, en fait, certains des événements décrits se retrouvent également dans les récits des "Insulaires". Ce qui va bien avec le thème des histoires entrecroisées cher à l'auteur. Si "Les Insulaires" nous faisait découvrir l'Archipel du Rêve, "L'Archipel du Rêve", nous le montre du point de vue de ceux qui n'y sont pas nés, des habitants du continent, des migrants, des exilés etc.... qui s'y rendent ou s'y perdent.
J'ai toutefois trouvés ces récits moins bons que le premier recueil. Il n'y a pas ce côté magique des découverte de cet univers si semblable au notre et pourtant différent. Ce côté succession de cartes postales et toutes ces petites histoires qui s’agençaient entre elles si bien dans les insulaires. On reste un peu sur sa fin. Même si le dernier récit nous fait tout de m^me refermer le livre avec une impression plaisante.

[Stuart Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A unique experience. Priest writes erotic novellas, barely science fiction, barely fantasy, about a chain of equatorial islands caught in the middle of a war that may or may not exist, on a world where time at the equator stands still. His descriptions are evocative, his characterizations minute. None of his tales are particularly happy; most in this collection end in some form of terror.

I guarantee you that you've never read anything like this in modern literature. Time is well spent in Priest's world.

[Boostamonte Halvorsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such an odd book, not one of my favorites by Priest -- might be the disjointed short story aspect, but it was also stories I had a hard time really caring about. Not sure how to feel about this one at the end of the day

[Sophie Wang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dreamy yet vivid can be

[Alex Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sustained piece of imagination but was less keen on the constant focus on sex.

[Hobbitlass · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories were really disturbing, so I don't think this was my fave in the Dream Archipelago series or sequence.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given Priest’s sui generis way of storytelling I feel as though the short story format doesn’t fully translate. The novella in here however is perfect.

[Michael Whiteman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is a collection of short stories and novellas set in Priest's fantastic Dream Archipelago world. The Affirmation and The Islanders are two of my favourite books I've read in recent years, so I was looking forward to this one a lot and it didn't disappoint.

The collection starts off with a couple of shorter stories and two brief vignettes that give some detail of the world we are in and show some of the effects of the constant war which surrounds and crosses the archipelago. The interaction of art and war is explored throughout the book and begins in "The Negation", although later stories take up the theme in more detail. "Whores" is short, but the images and implications of a soldier suffering from synaesthetic poisoning will stick with me.

The last four stories make up over two thirds of the book and contain some of the most memorable passages. I wanted to read "The Miraculous Cairn" again immediately after finishing it. It's about returning to a place from your childhood and how familiar memories can have changed, but also a lot more. "The Cremation" captures the bewilderment of being among a group whose customs you do not entirely understand and ends on a moment of brilliant horror (the thryme have been popping into my mind since I read The Islanders and will be coming back for some time now, I'm sure).

"The Watched" is enigmatic and builds an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion superbly, bringing out everyday anxieties into its drama. "The Discharge" is a fine finish to the collection, giving us art, war, memory and sex in a journey that crosses and re-crosses the Archipelago to discover lost memories and build a new life.

There are very few concrete answers in The Dream Archipelago but the mystery here is part of the appeal. It's impact on me was less than The Islanders and The Affirmation but that may be because I came in knowing what to expect this time. Nevertheless, I loved it.

[Apocryphal Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a companion book to Priest's The Islanders which is absolutely one of my favourite books from the last few years and which won a BSFA for best novel.

Where The Islanders is a literary guidebook to the wonderfully imagined Dream Archipelago (which also makes an appearance in a few of this other novels, such as The Affirmation, The Gradual, and The Evidence) with some short stories interlaced and interspersed among the descriptions of islands, The Dream Archipelago is a more straight forward book of short stories.

It's a little odd to use a term like 'straight forward' to describe this book, though. Most of the stories are anything but straight forward. Their links to one another are not straight forward. Their links to the short stories in the Islanders are not straight forward. And they will all, at times, challenge you, arouse you, confuse you, and enthrall you. And Priest is a wonderful writer, so if you are into writing you'll find that pleasure here, too.

Though this book has similarities with The Islanders, I did not enjoy it quite as much. I really liked the guidebook aspect of the Islanders - the little geographic and cultural descriptions really appealed to the explorer in me (not so much my wife or my book club, by contrast). You can get a tiny sense of this from the introduction to The Dream Archipelago. I also preferred the stories in The Islanders to those in this book, though some of the one here are quite excellent. Many are creepy. Many feature creepy or awkward sex.

And sex does feature much more prominently in this book than The Islanders, with sometimes quite florid descriptions of foreplay. In fact, my seven word summary might be: Anais Nin, with sharp teeth and thrymes.

Recommended to fans of weird and beautifully written fiction, especially if read together with The Islanders.

I have both read the book and listened to the audio version, in which the narration by Michael Maloney is superb.

[David Nield · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Dream Archipelago" is a collection of short stories set in the eponymous title. Some of them extend over what we might think of a short story but still the book is fairly short at around
270 or so pages. This is quite an old book, dating back to about 1999 but the stories actually
date even earlier although it seems some of them have been re-written for the present edition.
I was fortunate to acquire a second hand copy of the book in quite good condition.
So is the "Dream Archipelago" a tropical paradise in which all our dreams come true or do our
dreams turn into nightmares where illusion and deception prevail and nothing is what it seems?
Given that the author is a master of illusion and misdirection the answer is definitely the
latter. In this book you will encounter illusion upon illusion, deception upon deception, in
which vampire like creatures prey on the unwary and terrifying insects masquerade as delicious
looking fruit, both tempting you to try them and thereby meet a horrifying fate. In fact, several
of the stories could be firmly placed in the "horror" genre, especially "Whores" and "The Cremation".
If you are only familiar with Mr Priest's most recent work you will recognise the references to "The Dream Archipelago" in such novels as "The Islanders" and "The Adjacent". What might surprise is the very strong erotic element to the stories in "The Dream Archipelago", far more explicit than in his
later novels. The final story in this collection is called "The Watched" and is the most enigmatic of all because it just seems to end in mid air, like a final chapter is missing. I have no idea what he was trying to achieve here but what we have of the story is still very haunting.