Perchance to Dream

August 24, 2015
The legacy of prolific author Beaumont (1929–1967) might be better preserved with a less exhaustive collection. The repeated use of unlikable protagonists getting their comeuppance as a core story concept, and the preponderance of nagging, unpleasant women, bury much of the better, more thoughtful work in the collection. The most interesting and touching stories include “The Magic Man,” in which a traveling magician who makes his living selling patent medicine survives on the adoration and love of his audience, and “In His Image,” a story about what a man will do for love when he comes to understand his own true nature. Readers are advised to flip past “The Jungle,” which uncomfortably exoticizes tribal Africans and punishes an unpleasant protagonist by killing his wife, and “Father, Dear Father,” the concluding joke of which has not aged well. Better curation would have saved readers the trouble of skipping around to find the gems. Agent: Susan Ramer, Don Congdon Associates.

August 15, 2015
Creepy, melancholy short stories from the mid-20th-century master who wrote an estimated 22 episodes of The Twilight Zone. These stories recall a more innocent America, when honeymooners sailed to Europe on grand old ocean liners, and when Dr. Silk, the Magic Man, could drive across the prairie in his wagon mesmerizing small towns with his card tricks and selling out of his harmless patent medicine. It was also a less innocent America, when the Magic Man could convince his rapt audience that his African-American assistant was really the enslaved prince of a cannibal island, or when a young man could use a potion to get into the pants of all 563 women on Earth with his ideal qualifications (such as the right bust-waist-hip measurements) and run up against no thornier ethical problem than the occasional jealous husband. In a typical Beaumont story, a madman's delusion turns out to be true, waking a dreamer makes the whole world vanish, or the madman howling in a monastery's darkest cell really is the devil. Beaumont celebrates the American landscape in prose that's often lyrical, if not quite as magically rich as that of his friend and contemporary Ray Bradbury, whose 1981 introduction is included in this collection. The actor William Shatner, who wrote the book's Afterword, describes Beaumont's early death from a form of dementia as "like a science fiction story he would have written. Charlie Beaumont, wonderful, active, virile, creative writer, dies of old age in his thirties." Each with its satisfying twist, often surprisingly surprising, these stories charm and entertain while mapping out the landscape of (white, male) American anxieties in the middle of the last century.

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October 15, 2015

Beaumont, who died in 1967, was a prolific writer of short stories in both sf and horror. He also penned many episodes of the classic TV show The Twilight Zone, often based on his own short fiction. Fans of that program will recognize its signature style in the stories here: terrifically creepy pieces that almost always end with a twist. Stories adapted into Twilight Zone teleplays include "The Beautiful People," about a girl not willing to conform to her society's idea of perfection, and "In His Image," wherein a man discovers that memories of his hometown might not be reliable. VERDICT Some of the stories are dated in their language or theme, being mostly written in the 1950s, but Beaumont deserves the wider audience this volume can provide. The collection includes a foreword by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William Shatner.--MM

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