Alqua Dreams

by Rachel Pollack

An Earthman seeking to exploit a rare mineral essential to intersteller flight enters into an alien world--where the inhabitants are dedicated to a religion based on the concept that life is a hallucination--and becomes obsessed with one of the young women

Genres: Science Fiction

246 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Rachel Grace Pollack was an American science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot. Pollack was a great influence on the women's spirituality movement.

Reviews

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

“To the Lukai, when a mother bore a child both the mother and child were really dead souls, locked in fake bodies. ‘The child cries,’ the Death Woman told Cooper, “because it still remembers the truth'” (28).

At first glance the mission was like so many others: negotiate with a native people, the Lukai, over a rare resource that facilitates space travel. But Jaimi Cooper is plunged into an ontological nightmare, he is branded as an alqua, “someone who suffers an illusion” (20). According to the Lukai, “you are [...]"

[Justin Howe · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bad book by an author I otherwise like. This has the problem that when we learn what makes the main character tick we have to wonder why any competent organization would send him to do the job he's tasked with doing.