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The Dimensioneers
The orphan had always known she wasn't what people described as 'normal.' Whether merely precocious or a mutant freak, she had always been able to link minds with an equally weird mutated lion and skip into the worlds of the fourth dimension.
What the heck, it sure beat staying in school on Earth---that is until she realized that some of her fellow dimension-hoppers from other planets had more in mind than just a romp in the swamp.
They were launching an inter-dimensional war of imperialism, and she alone held the secret which could save her home world---if she could only escape the truant officer long enough to pull it off!
What the heck, it sure beat staying in school on Earth---that is until she realized that some of her fellow dimension-hoppers from other planets had more in mind than just a romp in the swamp.
They were launching an inter-dimensional war of imperialism, and she alone held the secret which could save her home world---if she could only escape the truant officer long enough to pull it off!
- GenresScience FictionFantasy
176 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1982
60 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 19, 2023
The Dimensioneers is a first-person narrative that features a young female protagonist who can fly between dimensions by linking her mutant mind with a mutant lion. Known only as The Orphan, she's a plucky young woman who manages to stave off an interdimensional war and save the world in this variant of Beauty and the Beast. There's a lot going on in the story, and her voice is particularly strong, but the book itself feels kind of hurried and confused in spots, and it reads like it really needed another draft for polish. It's a fun, fast read, but not among Piserchia's best. I especially like the Frank Kelly Freas cover painting; flying 'gators are cool!
August 1, 2022
The blurb calls our protagonist "the orphan," so The Orphan it is. The blurb also describes that by mind linking with her mutated lion, (named Wyala), The Orphan can jump across worlds through a fourth dimension.
We meet our new friends The Orphan and Wyala while they are being hunted by some Kriff who chase the pair through a dimension jump (referred to as a "skip") and the action is immediately cranked up to ten. The story is consistently fast paced and action packed, although the stakes vary from trouble at school to saving Earth.
"In spite of my good intentions I didn’t remain a good little orphan for long. Perhaps if the weather had been decent; I don’t know"
The Orphan is a feisty type. She's short, smart and has a biting attitude. We find out that she lives in an orphanage/boarding school arrangement and that skipping through the dimension pipes has been causing attendance issues among other things.
"It also dawned on me that Battersby intended to keep me locked up forever. Or until I was eighteen. Same thing."
We meet one of her teachers who is your classic image of an angry nun, with an active grudge against The Orphan. Her roommate, Twilly, doesn't like her very much either and asks, "why can't you be more feminine?" Sheesh, our Orphan has it tough for sure.
"I remained frightened until I grew angry. Then I felt more normal."
We learn that the Kriff, natives of one of the 100 worlds, are herbivores with serious anger issues. It turns out the Kriff also have other issues, they desperately need more space and are terrorising other worlds to obtain it. The Orphan gets involved to help defeat the Kriff so that they'll leave Earth alone in the future. Unfortunately the problem reaches home and The Orphan must save the day.
"All I knew was that I had made a mistake. I was in a universe that didn’t appear to have any exits."
I shall try to explain the fourth dimension in this story as best I understood it. There are 100 planets arranged in a ring so that they are nearly touching. The worlds are connected by a web of tributaries (tribs), and a massive pipe that runs a circumference of the ring through the centre of each planet.
The inhabitants on the different planets don't see or affect each other except through use of the dimensional barriers which can only be seen and accessed by gifted individuals. The Orphan can visit these planets and their inhabitants via the tribs. So yeah, it's pretty major world building in such a quick story. The way the worlds were connected-but-isolated reminded me of the spaceship from 'The Starlost' (an old TV show by Harlan Ellison) which featured a plethora of isolated environments connected by the corridors of the spaceship.
For a super slim book this is an impressive tale and for a Young Adult novel it deals with many themes traditionally labelled mature. As well as the Kriff we meet many other strange new aliens. As well as saving Earth, The Orphan must navigate the some new challenges in her personal life.
I've one more quote to share and I'll finish by recommending this high fun adventure to all classic scifi fans.
"For all I knew we would end up as a most unattractive foursome all stuck together in a wailing mass of flesh and abominable suffering."
We meet our new friends The Orphan and Wyala while they are being hunted by some Kriff who chase the pair through a dimension jump (referred to as a "skip") and the action is immediately cranked up to ten. The story is consistently fast paced and action packed, although the stakes vary from trouble at school to saving Earth.
"In spite of my good intentions I didn’t remain a good little orphan for long. Perhaps if the weather had been decent; I don’t know"
The Orphan is a feisty type. She's short, smart and has a biting attitude. We find out that she lives in an orphanage/boarding school arrangement and that skipping through the dimension pipes has been causing attendance issues among other things.
"It also dawned on me that Battersby intended to keep me locked up forever. Or until I was eighteen. Same thing."
We meet one of her teachers who is your classic image of an angry nun, with an active grudge against The Orphan. Her roommate, Twilly, doesn't like her very much either and asks, "why can't you be more feminine?" Sheesh, our Orphan has it tough for sure.
"I remained frightened until I grew angry. Then I felt more normal."
We learn that the Kriff, natives of one of the 100 worlds, are herbivores with serious anger issues. It turns out the Kriff also have other issues, they desperately need more space and are terrorising other worlds to obtain it. The Orphan gets involved to help defeat the Kriff so that they'll leave Earth alone in the future. Unfortunately the problem reaches home and The Orphan must save the day.
"All I knew was that I had made a mistake. I was in a universe that didn’t appear to have any exits."
I shall try to explain the fourth dimension in this story as best I understood it. There are 100 planets arranged in a ring so that they are nearly touching. The worlds are connected by a web of tributaries (tribs), and a massive pipe that runs a circumference of the ring through the centre of each planet.
The inhabitants on the different planets don't see or affect each other except through use of the dimensional barriers which can only be seen and accessed by gifted individuals. The Orphan can visit these planets and their inhabitants via the tribs. So yeah, it's pretty major world building in such a quick story. The way the worlds were connected-but-isolated reminded me of the spaceship from 'The Starlost' (an old TV show by Harlan Ellison) which featured a plethora of isolated environments connected by the corridors of the spaceship.
For a super slim book this is an impressive tale and for a Young Adult novel it deals with many themes traditionally labelled mature. As well as the Kriff we meet many other strange new aliens. As well as saving Earth, The Orphan must navigate the some new challenges in her personal life.
I've one more quote to share and I'll finish by recommending this high fun adventure to all classic scifi fans.
"For all I knew we would end up as a most unattractive foursome all stuck together in a wailing mass of flesh and abominable suffering."
February 19, 2024
The Dimensioneers is a fairy tale retold. In this case, it's Beauty and the Beast, but Piserchia has spiced up the fable with a plucky sixteen year old orphan who can ride a magical lion between dimensions.
The eponymous orphan is an unusually well drawn character for a Piserchia novel. Unfortunately, the subplot involving her birth mother is rushed and seems a trifle contrived.
Not as weird as Piserchia's Doomtime or Earth in Twilight, but much more readable.
The eponymous orphan is an unusually well drawn character for a Piserchia novel. Unfortunately, the subplot involving her birth mother is rushed and seems a trifle contrived.
Not as weird as Piserchia's Doomtime or Earth in Twilight, but much more readable.
October 9, 2021
haven't had this kind of fun since, I don't know, a while ... published in 1982 and apparently never reprinted since ... considering the number of bloated mediocre YA novels that are dumped on the world every month these days, and the number of tediously dull and plain mysogynistic novels from "golden age" male sf writers that are in their upteenth whatever anniversary printings, more proof that life ain't fair ... to my mind this book is about 60% YA fantasy and 40% plain old fantasy, not just short and quick but fleet - the teen narrator moves the plot along so fast feet barely touch the ground ... at its best it put me in mind of a mash-up of Zelazny's Doorways in the Sand, Panshin's Rite of Passage, various Diana Wynne Jones, certain fairy tales, and a handful of those 80s movies where the smart (aleck) teenager successfully stops the military generals from destroying civilization ...
June 16, 2019
[I read old fantasy and sci-fi novels written by women authors in search of forgotten gems. See more at forfemfan.com]
When I started ForFemFan, I had certain preconceived notions about pulp novels. Mainly that they were straight trash. Okay, maybe not all of them, but still. I expected trash.
Then I read the Trees of Zharka , Killer Pine , Star Gate … you get the point. A lot of pulp that crossed my desk was actually really good, and even the vast majority of books that missed their mark didn’t fail in the way I’d expect. They didn’t read like a bad first draft. They just … missed the mark.
The Dimensioneers is what I expected from pulp fiction.
The story takes off like a shot. Before I have any idea where I am or what I’m seeing, a teenaged girl hops dimensions on the back of a wild lion-mutant that she’s befriended / maybe psychically coerced. They literally fly between these worlds with abandon until they run into a somewhat primitive life-form on a random planet.
That was the best line of the fourteen pages I read.
Anyway, these aliens are piiiiiiissed and unnamed-teenaged girl and lion-mutant then world-hop with purpose: to escape the aliens.
Eventually they do.
And that’s where I decided to quit reading the book.
I admit it didn’t help that my husband had already tried to read this book and gave up within a stone’s throw of the ending because he just couldn’t muster the interest. Even without his opinion in the back of my mind, though, I’d have called it quits.
Everything I read felt like a first-draft of a poorly fleshed-out novel. Two sentences in a row clumsily say the same thing. Action is ambushed on us without any reason to care. I’m still not sure how primitive aliens use sticks to fly and hop dimensions … though at the same time I’m unsure how our protagonist does the same with a lion-creature.
But more than anything, it’s simply bad writing that alienated me:
I don’t need poetic, provocative prose. I’m actually rather fond of utilitarian approaches to story-telling. But shit like “growling at them in a threatening manner” is not utilitarian. It’s just … bad writing. Perfect for a first draft where you’re getting your thoughts on page and sketching out the flow of the scene. Terrible for a finished book.
And if those sort of glaringly obvious problems went unchallenged at the beginning of a book where things are normally at their most polished … well, I’m not holding out hope that the plot or characterization is particularly well honed.
I’ll give another of Doris Piserchia’s books a shot at a later date, as a quick glance seems to show this as one of her lowest rated books, but I’m going to need time to move on. The Dimensioneers is tied with Dreamrider and Dragon’s Pawn as the worst thing I’ve read for ForFemFan.
At least the unknown teenaged girl isn’t attracted to her lion? You know what, for that, I’ll give it to The Dimensioneers. It’s better than Dragon’s Pawn .
When I started ForFemFan, I had certain preconceived notions about pulp novels. Mainly that they were straight trash. Okay, maybe not all of them, but still. I expected trash.
Then I read the Trees of Zharka , Killer Pine , Star Gate … you get the point. A lot of pulp that crossed my desk was actually really good, and even the vast majority of books that missed their mark didn’t fail in the way I’d expect. They didn’t read like a bad first draft. They just … missed the mark.
The Dimensioneers is what I expected from pulp fiction.
The story takes off like a shot. Before I have any idea where I am or what I’m seeing, a teenaged girl hops dimensions on the back of a wild lion-mutant that she’s befriended / maybe psychically coerced. They literally fly between these worlds with abandon until they run into a somewhat primitive life-form on a random planet.
“I could see with my own eyes that they possessed a virulent antipathy toward any life form that was their own.”
That was the best line of the fourteen pages I read.
Anyway, these aliens are piiiiiiissed and unnamed-teenaged girl and lion-mutant then world-hop with purpose: to escape the aliens.
Eventually they do.
And that’s where I decided to quit reading the book.
I admit it didn’t help that my husband had already tried to read this book and gave up within a stone’s throw of the ending because he just couldn’t muster the interest. Even without his opinion in the back of my mind, though, I’d have called it quits.
Everything I read felt like a first-draft of a poorly fleshed-out novel. Two sentences in a row clumsily say the same thing. Action is ambushed on us without any reason to care. I’m still not sure how primitive aliens use sticks to fly and hop dimensions … though at the same time I’m unsure how our protagonist does the same with a lion-creature.
But more than anything, it’s simply bad writing that alienated me:
“Nudging me at the same time that I nudged her, [my lion] kept her eyes on the aliens and growled at them in a threatening manner. She could have snapped one in half with a single bite, but either the uglies didn’t realize this or didn’t care. Up the hill they labored as rapidly as they could.”
I don’t need poetic, provocative prose. I’m actually rather fond of utilitarian approaches to story-telling. But shit like “growling at them in a threatening manner” is not utilitarian. It’s just … bad writing. Perfect for a first draft where you’re getting your thoughts on page and sketching out the flow of the scene. Terrible for a finished book.
And if those sort of glaringly obvious problems went unchallenged at the beginning of a book where things are normally at their most polished … well, I’m not holding out hope that the plot or characterization is particularly well honed.
I’ll give another of Doris Piserchia’s books a shot at a later date, as a quick glance seems to show this as one of her lowest rated books, but I’m going to need time to move on. The Dimensioneers is tied with Dreamrider and Dragon’s Pawn as the worst thing I’ve read for ForFemFan.
At least the unknown teenaged girl isn’t attracted to her lion? You know what, for that, I’ll give it to The Dimensioneers. It’s better than Dragon’s Pawn .
May 19, 2010
From my blog pulpaweek.blogspot.com:
Once again, look at that cover! I had to pick this bad boy up when I stumbled upon it in Kansas City, there are flying crocodiles ridden by knights with guns! But can the book itself match that cover? Half of it can, at least.
Dimensioneers started off poorly, but by the time it reached its conclusion it had mostly redeemed itself. The nameless protagonist is a teenage girl who has a telepathic link with a 'gamber', which is a mutated breed of lion whom she can ride into the fourth dimension (also known as D). The book starts out light- the tween hero and Wyala the psychic lion aimlessly explore random worlds whenever the orphan can cut school, 'skipping' through the fourth dimension to get from place to place. They unwittingly stumble upon the Kriff- a malevolent race of 'skippers' that conquer world after world, enslaving its races and forcing them to produce foodstuffs for their insatiable appetites. The Kriff are the dudes on the crocodiles, by the way.
It took me about ten chapters to get invested in this book, as the story doesn't pick up until you are halfway through, which luckily isn't much as the Dimensioneers tops out at 176 pages. The writing itself didn't help the pacing as I found myself rereading quite a few chapters in order to make any sense of them. Here is an example of one of the many grammatical pitfalls encountered in the Dimensioneers- (p61) 'As long as we didn't come out into 3 the Kriff needn't know we were anywhere about, so we stayed in D like a pair of ghosts and allowed only a molecule or two of our aura to seep through the rank atmosphere.' that is one ugly sentence, even to a guy who is pretty grammatically challenged.
The second half of the Dimensioneers is where everything (somewhat) comes together. Our nameless protagonist meets up with some 'patriots' who are fighting the Kriff on a small scale. They steal a bunch of guns from the U.S. Army surplus in Kansas. Lots of Kriff and some main characters die unexpectedly bloody deaths. It turns out that our protagonist doesn't have much of an issue with shooting Kriff, or stabbing them, or leading thousands of the guys to a messy end. There is a lot of gunplay, some graphic torture and a little bit of wholesale slaughter thrown into a book I was slandering as 'young adult garbage' for the first 90 pages. I liked the bloody parts, can you tell?
Dimensioneers is not my favorite Pulp-A-Week to date, but it is brief and has an action packed second half, so it was worth the read for a fan of the genre. If you pick this up somewhere I would recommend skimming through the first sixty or so pages though, as they are pretty fucking terrible.
Once again, look at that cover! I had to pick this bad boy up when I stumbled upon it in Kansas City, there are flying crocodiles ridden by knights with guns! But can the book itself match that cover? Half of it can, at least.
Dimensioneers started off poorly, but by the time it reached its conclusion it had mostly redeemed itself. The nameless protagonist is a teenage girl who has a telepathic link with a 'gamber', which is a mutated breed of lion whom she can ride into the fourth dimension (also known as D). The book starts out light- the tween hero and Wyala the psychic lion aimlessly explore random worlds whenever the orphan can cut school, 'skipping' through the fourth dimension to get from place to place. They unwittingly stumble upon the Kriff- a malevolent race of 'skippers' that conquer world after world, enslaving its races and forcing them to produce foodstuffs for their insatiable appetites. The Kriff are the dudes on the crocodiles, by the way.
It took me about ten chapters to get invested in this book, as the story doesn't pick up until you are halfway through, which luckily isn't much as the Dimensioneers tops out at 176 pages. The writing itself didn't help the pacing as I found myself rereading quite a few chapters in order to make any sense of them. Here is an example of one of the many grammatical pitfalls encountered in the Dimensioneers- (p61) 'As long as we didn't come out into 3 the Kriff needn't know we were anywhere about, so we stayed in D like a pair of ghosts and allowed only a molecule or two of our aura to seep through the rank atmosphere.' that is one ugly sentence, even to a guy who is pretty grammatically challenged.
The second half of the Dimensioneers is where everything (somewhat) comes together. Our nameless protagonist meets up with some 'patriots' who are fighting the Kriff on a small scale. They steal a bunch of guns from the U.S. Army surplus in Kansas. Lots of Kriff and some main characters die unexpectedly bloody deaths. It turns out that our protagonist doesn't have much of an issue with shooting Kriff, or stabbing them, or leading thousands of the guys to a messy end. There is a lot of gunplay, some graphic torture and a little bit of wholesale slaughter thrown into a book I was slandering as 'young adult garbage' for the first 90 pages. I liked the bloody parts, can you tell?
Dimensioneers is not my favorite Pulp-A-Week to date, but it is brief and has an action packed second half, so it was worth the read for a fan of the genre. If you pick this up somewhere I would recommend skimming through the first sixty or so pages though, as they are pretty fucking terrible.
February 8, 2015
lot of fun...I really enjoyed it even with an unlikeable tweener girl protagonist
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