Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment

by Claude Lalumière

Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment is a mosaic novel, a surreal history of a fictional and fantastical European city-state, inspired in part by Venice, The Arabian Nights, and the architecture of Antoni Gaudí.

from the back cover:
Somewhere in the Mediterranean lies the mysterious archipelago of Venera, a city-state drenched in erotic romanticism, fuelled by atavistic ritual, and suffused with surreal adventure and intrigue. Outside forces repeatedly attempt to steal its most closely guarded treasure: the secret of the sacred spice vermilion, and its power to alter consciousness and perhaps even reality. Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment chronicles the city-state's mythic history through antiquity, Roman times, the Renaissance, the Victorian era, the twentieth century, the present, and the far future.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction

252 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2017

About the author

Montreal writer Claude Lalumière is the author of the story collections Objects of Worship , Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes , and Altre persone / Other Persons and of the mosaic works The Door to Lost Pages and Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment . He has edited fourteen anthologies, including two Aurora Award—nominated volumes in the Tesseracts series. His first fiction – “Bestial Acts” – appeared in Interzone in 2002, and he has since published more than 100 stories; his work has been translated into French, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Serbian, Hungarian, Romanian, Turkish, and Russian and adapted for stage, screen, audio, and comics.

Reviews

[Clayton Hackett · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cerebral, intoxicated walkabout through historical episodes in a richly-imagined fictional island city state, replete with allusions to Ballard, Wm. Burroughs, the Surrealists, dime-store pulps, and much more. Ambitious to say the least, but fun as hell, too.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

VENERA DREAMS is not an easy read. And, frankly, I was tempted to give up after a few pages in. But somehow this genuinely "weird entertainment" drew me in and kept me hooked, page after page, chapter after chapter. For the adventurous reader, there is much to admire and appreciate here—more than you might find in some novels of two or three times the length. The world building and scene setting. The structure and execution. The brilliance of the conceit. And, yes, the occasional titillation. All the while I remember thinking, this isn’t writing, this is painting. Have I ever reading anything quite so evocative or atmospheric? How sly the author is, how creepy, how delightfully warped. If not quite a master class in the preceding, VD (duh!) comes remarkably close. I won't summarize the plot or characters. To be honest, I wouldn't know where to begin. But if you're looking for a stunning work of fiction that delivers a one-of-a-kind literary experience, you won't do better than VENERA DREAMS. Just be prepared, it will sit in your mind and your gut long after you've returned the book to its shelf. Meanwhile, pass the vermilion.

[Marc Ruvolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A "mosaic" meta-novel and homage to J.G. Ballard. Thought it was excellent, wonderful dark humor, and the writing is, as usual, top-notch.

[Silvia Kay]

Sadly, I couldn't finish this book as it was just too weird for my taste. There were lots of examples of pretty outlandish sexual behavior and that's not my cup of tea at all.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

More strange stories by a master of the form. Lalumière’s linked narratives—all based around the magical city-state of Venera—are full of gorgeous imagery, lush dialogue, and deeply sexual scenarios. It is a dazzling read.

Read more at the Redeblog.

[Gabrielle Mathieu]

Venera Dreams

Pungently sensual, this novel it’s a carnal carnival ride, circling around the central conceit. There’s a city-state by the name of Venera, a place where an opium-like drug called vermillion grows. Claude Lalumière’s work is reminiscent of the French poet, Rimbaud, who write in his poem Larmé, “What did I draw from the gourd of the wine? Some golden liquor, pale, which causes sweating.”
The novel consists of a collection of stories, linked by people’s experiences of Venera and its inhabitants. The stories are visceral, intense, and tinged with melancholy. Though almost uniformly erotic, the sexual configurations rarely seem based on romance or love, although love is alluded to. Instead there is an almost reflexive instinct in the various protagonists to give themselves over their appetites. The regular values of a bourgeois society--the accumulation of property, the maintenance of family, the adherence to tradition—are so absent as motivation for any of the drifting travelers, that it’s noticeable. This is indeed a strange tribe, united only by their occult, amorous, and sometimes terrible experiences in Venera or at the hands of Venerans.
An interval piece, describing a fantasy writers’ conventions, recalls Hunter S. Thompson, now swallowed into the looking glass all together. Lalumière can be sardonic about the world of fantasy writers, and their work.
Does writing describe reality, or is it an ephemeral collection of impressions? Through reading about a series of bewildering and erotically charged encounters, we ourselves are challenged to find out the truth about Venera.

Gabrielle Mathieu is the author of the historical fantasy Falcon series (The Falcon Flies Alone, and the upcoming The Falcon Strikes.)
She blogs about travel and her books at http://gabriellemathieu.com/. You can also follow her on Twitter to get updates about new podcasts and more: @GabrielleAuthor.