I can think of no better word to describe Welcome to Your Dreamtime, a novel by the prolific New Wave era sci fi writer Norman Spinrad, than the one our friends at Anti-Oedipus Press branded on its spine: SCHIZFLOW. It’s made abundantly clear that there is no steady footing to be found within these pages. Instead, Spinrad sweeps us away with a surge of avant-garde imagery and ideas untethered from the constrictions of mainstream speculative fiction.
The story doesn’t drape a traditional narrative over its novel concepts. The book IS the fantastic technology you would normally find in a science fiction novel of this type and YOU are experiencing it as you explore its pages. This is where the writing in Welcome to Your Dreamtime excels and proves that Spinrad can still put out masterful prose after all these years.
Welcome to Your Dreamtime greets you with a cheerful advertisement for the DREAMMASTER 301, a device that allows the user to take control of their own dreams through innovative, new technologies. It’s so simple a child can use it, according to the sales pitch. An operators manual follows with a beautiful cornucopia of vintage sci-fi terminology and fantastic technical configurations. We’re introduced to the DREAMWEB and explore a demonstration of what the DREAMMASTER 301 system and its variety of dreamchips can do.
Scenes change, mutate, and evolve quickly. Spinrad doesn’t limit himself to any particular genre in this exploration of dream logic, meditating upon power fantasies, swashbuckling adventures, erotica, and even pulp detective yarns in the variety of vignettes he presents. They go on unexpected tangents like a surreal subconscious TikTok feed that cycles mercilessly through vivid dreams and visceral nightmares. It’s hard to know where you’re standing when the ride is over.
Welcome to Your Dreamtime is a short book but I think that’s to its benefit. Spinrad keeps the text lean and vicious while still allowing it to project the gauzy surreality of the dreams it explores. I could easily see the format of the book overstaying its welcome if we had lingered any longer.
While this book doesn’t quite reach the heights of Spinrad’s earlier work, I still highly recommend it. I’ve never read a bad book by Norman Spinrad, and Welcome to Your Dreamtime did not disappoint, but I would direct people to titles like Bug Jack Barron or Carcinoma Angels from Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions anthology as a better introduction to his work if you’ve never read any of his work before.
Welcome to Your Dreamtime is currently available in both paperback and ebook formats from Anti-Oedipus Press.
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