Finally, with this edition from Tor, American readers have the opportunity to read Graham Joyce's 1991 debut novel, DREAMSIDE. It's a shame we had to wait so long. Imaginative and chilling, the novel explores the subject of lucid dreaming -- the capacity to be conscious of and to control one's dreams -- and questions what we perceive as reality. It's also a cautionary tale: those who, like Prometheus, steal fire from the gods will, inevitably, pay a price for their impudence. Four mid-70s undergraduates -- more attracted to one another than to science -- participate in an experiment in lucid dreaming under the aegis of an elderly professor. Meeting with more success than expected, they even learn to meet in what they come to call the "Dreamside." The time comes to stop the journeys to Dreamside, but the students push on until tragedy forces them apart. More than twelve years later, the dreams again invade reality and begin to tear them away from their daily lives and sanity. It becomes clear they must, somehow, reunite and return to Dreamside. Well-paced and smoothly written, DREAMSIDE, lacks a bit of the poetry of Joyce's later writing, but in no way betrays itself as a virgin effort. Better late than never, don't miss your chance to read DREAMSIDE this time around.
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