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The Dream Master

Roger Zelazny

3.63 · Rating details · 2,466 ratings · 130 reviews

His name is Charles Render, and he is a psychoanalyst, and a mechanic of dreams. A Shaper. In a warm womb of metal, his patients dream their neuroses, while Render, intricately connected to their brains, dreams with them, makes delicate adjustments, and ultimately explains and heals. Her name is Eileen Shallot, a resident in psychiatry. She wants desperately to become a Sh ...more

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Paperback, 252 pages

Published February 27th 2001 by ibooks Inc. (first published October 1966)

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Oct 13, 2014 Evgeny rated it liked it

Shelves: scifi

If you ever saw the movie Inception, I really do not need to describe the book to you; all of the major ideas of the movie came straight out of this book. Anyhow, Charles Render is a Shaper, in other words he is a psychiatrist who treats people by entering their dreams and changing them for the benefit of the patients. When a woman asks him to help her become a Shaper he is sure it is completely impossible in her case as she is blind from birth. He is still interested enough to try. In fact he i ...more

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Feb 06, 2009 Manny rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

Did anyone else think of this classic 60s SF novel when they watched Inception? I certainly did.

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Nov 25, 2016 notgettingenough rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, modern-lit

I don’t know why this one is largely under the radar. Imaginative, nicely written, vision of the future which isn’t so wrong -love the dog.

But is there anybody who has read this and understands the ongoing part of the man walking along the road who ends up killing himself? Is this Render? Is this how he escapes being trapped in another person’s dream? Is everything that happens in the book a dream except for this part of it?

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre... ...more

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Aug 20, 2018 Craig rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Dream Master is a classic Nebula Award winning novel that isn't as well-remembered as it should be. Perhaps it's been overshadowed by Lord of Light and the Amber books... it's a moving, well-written piece, and deserves a wider current audience. ...more

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Jan 10, 2009 Dan Schwent rated it liked it

Shelves: zelazny

Charles Render is a Shaper, a type of psychiatrist who adminsters therapy via sort of a psychic virtual reality. Enter Eileen Shallot, a woman blind from birth who wants to be a Shaper and wants Render to teach her to see.

I actually don't have a lot to say about this one. While I liked it, it was a little on the meh side of the Zelazny spectrum. I really liked the Shaper concept and the talking dogs but didn't really care about the characters. ...more

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Oct 08, 2008 Erik Graff rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: anyone interested in psychodynamics or Zelazny

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: sf

I encountered the novella in a Nebula Awards Collection while in college, then acquired the expanded version years later. Both were impressive, the novella moreso.

The question of inner states, of private thoughts has long intrigued me. As B.F. Skinner was apt to point out, the only aspect of human being which is scientifically scrutinizable currently is objective human behavior. I will go futher and assert that subjectivity does not exist in any strong sense. There are no truly private thoughts. I encountered the novella in a Nebula Awards Collection while in college, then acquired the expanded version years later. Both were impressive, the novella moreso.

The question of inner states, of private thoughts has long intrigued me. As B.F. Skinner was apt to point out, the only aspect of human being which is scientifically scrutinizable currently is objective human behavior. I will go futher and assert that subjectivity does not exist in any strong sense. There are no truly private thoughts. This follows from the simple fact that we all think in terms of objective referants, be they based on objects of common experience or on some semiotic or symbolic language held in common with others. The ego or self is therefore an illusion.

What Zelazny proposes is a computer of such power and sensors of such acuity that two persons can share, and shape, the worlds of imagination, making the subjective objective with much greater vividness and immediacy than we can accomplish now by, say, telling one another our thoughts, dreams and imaginings.

The possibility of such participation mystique is already suggested by those amazing claims of made by victims of so-called alien abductions. Almost anything is imaginable and it is not very remarkable for a single person to make virtually any experiential claim. What's remarkable is when two or more persons independently make extraordinary claims which are subsequently verified in the sense of being shown to correlate to some objectively shared experience.

To give an example taken from the literature: Two women, strangers to one another, report to their psychotherapists, also strangers, of being abducted, of being teleported into a craft inhabited by nonhuman intelligent beings, held against their wills, subjected to examinations, then returned. The therapists independently record these reports. Then, time having passed, one of them hears the other deliver a paper at a professional conference which sounds weirdly familiar. Later, she checks her notes, pulls out the recording, contacts the other psychologist and arranges to compare notes. The result: their two clients seem to have been on the same craft at the same time, the story of one correlating with that of the other even to the degree of describing the other. What has happened here? Does this prove that alien beings are abducting women?

Not necessarily, not in the sense that the aliens and their craft objectively exist in our world. It may mean that, but it may also mean that there are other domains, other worlds which some of us may sometimes enter, which are, in their own terms, as real and objective as ours--worlds like those constructed in the novel with the help of sophisticated equipment.

Alien abductions are one of many interpretative schemas placed on what may be a kind of experience, a schema that is currently popular. Some years ago it was common to hear of cases of satanic infantile sexual abuse. For some populations it is still common to report heavenly (or hellish) visitations or visions, such as in the mass case reported early in the last century from Fatima, Portugal, where literally thousands of people saw something from "another" world. Indeed, a recent book, which I'll review if I live long enough to get to it, attempts to interpret Fatima in terms of alien visitations.

Interestingly, when one considers alternative explanations such as those adduced above, one engages in an "argument" of sorts not unlike that which occurs between the two main characters in Zelazny's fascinating story.

...more

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Mar 19, 2018 Jörg rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, inner-space, dreams, psychology, sell, calibre

This story leaves me very confused. It's not that I totally disliked it, but I'm also not sure that I could follow till the end what was going on. It probably would help to discuss it with other readers. ...more

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Jan 05, 2013 William rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Compared to modern SF novels the length of this book might almost be closer to being a short story than a novel but Zelazny does mange to pack more ideas into a short space than many other manage in much longer works.

The main character, Render, is a dream therapist who works by manipulating the dreams of his patients to turn them into immersive experiences where Render shapes the dreams to help his clients gain new perspectives on their issues. This is a perilous occupation since if the therapi Compared to modern SF novels the length of this book might almost be closer to being a short story than a novel but Zelazny does mange to pack more ideas into a short space than many other manage in much longer works.

The main character, Render, is a dream therapist who works by manipulating the dreams of his patients to turn them into immersive experiences where Render shapes the dreams to help his clients gain new perspectives on their issues. This is a perilous occupation since if the therapist gets too involved in the dreams they are creating then they risk their own sanity. Render is one of the best in the world at what he does, however in this book he takes on his biggest challenge to date as he takes on a blind woman (and aspiring dream therapist) as a patient who wants to experience seeing in her dreams what she can never see in reality.

The novel being partially set in various dreams that Render has created does allow for some memorable scenes and there’s also plenty of imagination shown elsewhere in the world Zelazny describes, particularly memorable is a guide dog with an enhanced intellect and some genetic modifications allow him some ability to speak whose personality is an intriguing mix of canine and human. Occasionally the technology does feel a bit dated (the book was written in the 1960s) but most of the time it doesn’t detract from the story.

I think Zelazny is one of the genre’s best writers of prose and there is some very good writing in here. The plot is also intriguing but some parts of it are perhaps a bit underexplained and the ending feels rushed and unnecessarily vague in terms of describing what exactly has happened. I’m also unsure about the purpose of some of the scenes and subplots, particularly concerning Render’s precocious son whose visit to an exhibition on interplanetary travel feels a bit disconnected from the rest of the novel. There is some good characterisation in here, particularly of Render and his patient although the supporting characters mostly don’t get much depth.

Overall, I’d say this was a good book but not one of Zelazny’s best works, compared to a masterpiece like “Lord of Light” it feels as if it wasn’t quite as good as it should have been.
...more

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Oct 19, 2010 Alazzar rated it liked it · review of another edition

Huh. I just finished reading The Dream Master, and I’m not quite sure what to say. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t quite understand everything.

I know that this was originally based on a Nebula-winning novella called He Who Shapes, and I definitely wonder if the novella is the superior version of this story. It seemed like there were a lot of scenes and sections that weren’t really necessary.

But, once again—maybe I just didn’t get it.

Sometimes when I read Zelazny, I’ll come across Huh. I just finished reading The Dream Master, and I’m not quite sure what to say. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t quite understand everything.

I know that this was originally based on a Nebula-winning novella called He Who Shapes, and I definitely wonder if the novella is the superior version of this story. It seemed like there were a lot of scenes and sections that weren’t really necessary.

But, once again—maybe I just didn’t get it.

Sometimes when I read Zelazny, I’ll come across something that doesn’t make sense. I’ve learned to just go with it, trusting that eventually something will happen that gives me an epiphany and makes me realize what that nonsensical section was all about. That’s what I did in this book—I just kept going. But there were still a lot of things that seemed sort of odd by the end.

The worst part is, I can’t even tell you specifically what those parts are, because I’ve already mostly forgotten them. Part of this is because of my terrible memory, surely, but part is because I found myself uninterested in large sections of this book because I couldn’t understand what their significance was at the time.

Also, there was a very long stretch of the book where I was asking myself when something was going to happen. There didn’t seem to be an established conflict or problem for a lot of the book. Sure, there’s the premise we know about (dream-shaping psychiatrist takes on the task of showing a blind woman visions in her dreams), but in the middle of the book that plot seems to be entirely abandoned for several pages in favor of . . . what? I’m not sure.

I’d be willing to bet that I’d get a lot more out of this book after a second reading, but that probably won’t happen for a while yet, as there’s still plenty of Zelazny books out there that I haven’t even read once.

This is my least favorite Zelazny book so far, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. I'm just dense and missed something important, apparently.

UPDATE (01/19/2011): I just read "He Who Shapes" in The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume One: Threshold. And I have to say, WOW. It was a lot better the second time through. I'm not sure if that's because the novella ("He Who Shapes") is better than the novel (The Dream Master), or if the second read-through made it easier, or what. It probably also helps that I read the "Notes" section at the end of the story BEFORE I started reading it, so that really helped me understand some of what I'd read in The Dream Master.

This story just got a lot higher on my list of Zelazny awesomeness. ...more

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May 08, 2020 Keso Shengelia rated it really liked it

Shelves: ფენტეზი-და-სამეცნიერო-ფანტასტიკა

Evoked an automatic association with Christopher Nolan's "Inception". Not one of Zelazny's best, but it is a good one.
აი თურმე რა ქონდა ინსპირაციად ნოლანს ინსეფშენზე რო გადაკიდა ხალხი ერთმანეთს
ის ბზრიალა ტიტრების შემდეგ დავარდა and other hilarious jokes you can tell yourself
შეიძლება საუკეთესო არ არის მაგრამ მაინც ზელაზნია და შესაბამისად რეკომენდაცია გაწეულიც <3 ...more

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Aug 25, 2014 Leonardo rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, nebula-winner

"The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe."

A little hard to review this one. It's one of those books that I like even though it makes me feel very intellectually diminished. It makes me feel like a ape trying to figure out sarcasm, to put it simply.

You see, even though I clearly missed a lot of references to a lot of things, I feel I did understood more than less of what was going on, but some parts I just didn't understand. Some simply seemed "The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe."

A little hard to review this one. It's one of those books that I like even though it makes me feel very intellectually diminished. It makes me feel like a ape trying to figure out sarcasm, to put it simply.

You see, even though I clearly missed a lot of references to a lot of things, I feel I did understood more than less of what was going on, but some parts I just didn't understand. Some simply seemed unnecessary. This book was originally a short Story called He Who Shapes and I intend to read it in the future. Maybe I'll be able to comprehend it more by then.

That being said, I still enjoyed the book a lot. That's Zelazny for you. Even if you don't understand something, he makes you just go with it and days after you get this delayed epiphany and all is a bit clearer.

The book deals with a "neuroparticipant therapist" name Charles Render. Render does his thing by shaping shared dreams with his patients. In these dreams he exerts his will to do as he wishes and is omnipotent. I found this concept very cool, but that just shows my lack of vocabulary.

Render is a strong willed man, will personified, if you may. He's a very successful doctor in a prestigious field. But he's kind of bored. Then Elaine Shallot enters the scene. She wants do become a neuroparticipant therapist too. The problem is that she's blind from birth. Having never seen, she has never dreamt like ordinary people. She asks render to take her as a patient and basically show stuff to her, so that she be acclimatized to seeing and, in so, being able to perform as a therapist herself.

The problem is that this is a very dangerous thing and since the beginning Elaine is able to exert control over the dreams that she shouldn't. Despite this and advice from his former teacher, Render continues with the treatment. Be it by the challenge and opportunity to do an unheard thing is his area or because he was physically and intellectually attracted to her. I think the latter is more like it.

Also, there's a genetically engineered talking dog with the intelligence of an ape and vocabulary of 400-500 words. His name is Sigmund (at least this Freud reference I caught) and he's Elaine's guide dog.

"—And if something that strong should break, in a timeless moment of anxiety." smiled Barlelmetz sadly, "may the shades of Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung walk by your side in the valley of darkness." ...more

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Sep 02, 2013 Mel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, award-nebula

I feel I should give this rating a disclaimer. If this book were not a re-read, if I had come into it completely new, it would have been a 3 to 3.5 for me. But the memories I have of this book are so pervasive and so revolutionary back when I read it that I can't give anything that formative less than five.

Honestly, these recollections were not all The Dream Master. I just started cutting my teeth on "adult" sci-fi at the time, and threw myself recklessly at anything that purported to be a class I feel I should give this rating a disclaimer. If this book were not a re-read, if I had come into it completely new, it would have been a 3 to 3.5 for me. But the memories I have of this book are so pervasive and so revolutionary back when I read it that I can't give anything that formative less than five.

Honestly, these recollections were not all The Dream Master. I just started cutting my teeth on "adult" sci-fi at the time, and threw myself recklessly at anything that purported to be a classic. This is why I had the fortuitous luck of reading Zelazny's The Dream Master right up against Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven. Both dealt with dreams, albeit it in different ways. One was a tool consciously then unconsciously wielded, the other was an unconscious wildness that others sought to tame. Both ended in a manner that was both tragic and suitable.

What I remember was the description of the son as he described how an inventor dreamed of efficient machines while he pulled off the legs of grasshoppers and how the metal gears must have sounded like the shrieks of all those murdered grasshoppers. I remembered comparing it to the Kafka-esque descriptions of lacquered shells in The Lathe of Heaven, the otherness of nature and how it is molded. I remembered cars that drove themselves and didn't stop when someone walked into traffic, and deep set eyes of a guide dog who could speak but not exactly like a human nor howl like the dogs he had been mutated from.

I remember glancing at the computer for practically every other scene, looking up things like Eloise and Abelard (which I still remembered) and enantiodromia (which I did not), fascinated at how symbols played out while the language and structure unraveled. The references and scenes helped me to better appreciate the rest of the scenes, and the narration of dreams kept my imagination going at full throttle to picture it.

So essentially what I am doing is justifying why I love this novel even though it can feel padded with the many threads and does not come qualitatively close compared to Zelanzy's other works. Because this is a book that can work like Render's machine, and it has left its mark when so many other novels are completely forgotten; although this mark may be malleable and refitted with a new awareness, it lingers the same way a particularly memorable dream will retain flashes and remnants even when you wake. ...more

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Jan 16, 2012 Paul rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I love this story. The fact that it can be construed as circular (and there are some good arguments to this effect) really adds to my enjoyment of the story, and it's something that can really only be appreciated under certain conditions (which is one of the reasons I rated it shy of perfection):
* you have to read it more than once to catch it
* you have to be familiar with some of the symbolic imagery, such as kabalism
* familiarity with a couple different versions of Tristan & Isolde, since n ...more

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Oct 04, 2016 T.N Kaz rated it it was ok

Terribly anti-climactic and contrived plot. Paper thin characters. Cringeworthy romance. Typos and errors galore. The only salvageable aspect is the writing itself, which pushed me to get through this book as fast as I possibly could. Not quite sure how this won a Nebula Award....

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Jan 04, 2021 Alex rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, 1966

It's fine.

Starts out as a simple enough story of a dream doctor who wants to teach a blind woman to do his job. There's also a talking dog.

It then becomes really confusing and I honestly have no idea what was going on in some parts. Probably someone took too much LSD. ...more

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Jun 06, 2019 John rated it liked it

I feel so odd bestowing a mere three stars upon a Nebula-winning novel. The concept is creative and intelligent, the language is beautiful and powerful, the world-building is (as usual with Zelazny) effective... but I think the main character just didn't engage me. I neither liked Render nor cared enough about him to disregard my lack of liking, so I felt no stake in the progress of the narrative. I think I would find much more compelling a version of this story from Eileen's point of view. ...more

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Sep 11, 2016 Seton Catholic Central High rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-11r-4

This book talks about the some of neuron-technology in the future, which is the kind of the technology to solve the some of the hidden psychological problem in the people's mind by modifying people's dream. The people being modified would be lying in a simulator and, the people who solve them would be able to go into the dream, and do something in the patient's dream in order to inflect the direction that the dream goes. Just like the movie Inception, the people's dream is connected with people' This book talks about the some of neuron-technology in the future, which is the kind of the technology to solve the some of the hidden psychological problem in the people's mind by modifying people's dream. The people being modified would be lying in a simulator and, the people who solve them would be able to go into the dream, and do something in the patient's dream in order to inflect the direction that the dream goes. Just like the movie Inception, the people's dream is connected with people's subconscious, so they could be able to make a little affection in the patient's subconscious. And the people mind, thought, action, emotion, feeling would all be changed. Every tiny change in the dream would cause a great change in the people's mind. Render is the leader in this program, and he always help people, and fix all kinds of problem that is impossible to fix. But there is a patient called Eileen went to see him because of her visual defection. Because of his will of seeing something, the evil take all the place in her mind, and she locked the Render the one who tried to help her to fix her eyes.

That because the darkness inside her mind take her mind, instead of the kindness. That's the freewill which made her do so. Everyone had the freewill, but there are a lot of the good guy in the world because of power of choice, and they uses the power of the choice to get good. But Eileen's freewill beats the power of choice, and take all the place in her mind. So she lost her good part in her mind, and became evil, so she did that. She is really selfish, in order to achieve, her personal goal, she totally ignored others' feeling, and made others suffering from the pain made by her. But that was not totally her foul, because she was born in an age without humanity, almost nobody cared about each other, that's why Render did that, he did that in order to re-awake the humanity deep buried inside of the human's mind, with the danger of the facing all kinds of the patient with all kinds of psychological problem without humanity. But Render failed, he did not awake the humanity of Eileen, he is controlled by Eileen, and he is locked in the dream by Eileen, never had a chance to come back to the real world that he lived.

In my opinion, this book leads us to thinks of the relationship between the humanity and the technology. With the technology, we can do whatever we want, this imposed the development of the world. But when we are developing the technology, we should also think of ourselves, humanity. Without humanity, the more technology we have, the more dangerous that our world would have been. That's because that the people without humanity would not care about any body else except their selves, so with the help of high technology, they would have been able to harm others more easily in order to achieve his goal. So, when we had the great the technology, we should have humanity, or that would be more harmful than that without technology. So as the development of the technology, we should also keep humanity in our mind, so we would not use the great technology to do the bad thing, and not to harm other people. We need to find a way to control ourselves, control our mind, so our mind will not get controlled by the dark side of our mind, and we will maintain to be the good people, and we can maintain the humanity, and we will stop doing something to harm people, and the world we lived would become better. ...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Deborah Ideiosepius rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, classic-sci-fi

The Dream Master was originally published as a novella titled He Who Shapes and I think that in many ways it is far more of a novella than a novel. I don't know how much changed before it became the novel it is today, but the novella won a Nebula Award in 1966.

Zelazny is one of my favourite all time authors but my recent re-reading of this book confirmed that this book is not one of my favourites of his despite it having impressed the 1966 Nebula judges. The setting is a 'far future' one with hi The Dream Master was originally published as a novella titled He Who Shapes and I think that in many ways it is far more of a novella than a novel. I don't know how much changed before it became the novel it is today, but the novella won a Nebula Award in 1966.

Zelazny is one of my favourite all time authors but my recent re-reading of this book confirmed that this book is not one of my favourites of his despite it having impressed the 1966 Nebula judges. The setting is a 'far future' one with high population and high technology. As the concept of the technology a 1960's one, the resulting society and devices can seem quite quaint to the modern reader. The technology does not feature heavily, for example, this book would not qualify as 'science' fiction today. The one piece of technology that is really relevant to the story is the enormous simulator which our protagonist, Charles Render who is a neuroparticipation analyst, uses. specializes. In neuroparticipation, the patient is hooked into this simulation controlled directly by the analyst's mind, then the analyst Render in our case, then works with the patient to construct images and stories which can afford insight into the underlying neuroses of the patient

It is a great concept which I enjoyed, and I liked the description of how it all worked, though there was not a lot of it. Also, the main characters are good if fairly superficially constructed. We have Charles Render himself, his precocious ten year old son appears briefly in places but without actively advancing the plot much at all; though he does help build the world a fair bit as he is the only point of contact which lets us find out that humanity has gone out into the solar system. We also have Jill DeVille who is Render's kind-of girl friend. The main other character is Eileen Shallot who wants to become a neuroparticipation analyst herself, despite having been blind from birth. Render agrees to take her into the simulator in order for her to learn what 'seeing' is like. Ultimately Render becomes to emotionally bound up with her and her will overpowers his in the simulator and something bad happens. I honestly have no idea what, exactly, happens despite having just finished reading it.

The novel is rich on imagery, metaphor, long stories and diversions. It has many scholarly references and I am sure I did not 'get' many of them. There is a lot of elegant literary waffle and a great deal of convoluted musing on the human condition and the human experience. I liked the fact that parts of Render's dialogue explores the same concepts of Future Shock as Alvin Toffler did in his 1970 non-fiction book. However in general, the story is heavy on outdated philosophy, light on plot and evasive about explanations. It seems bent of delivering parsecs of dialogue that are purely imagery/scenery and do nothing to advance the plot (there was a plot - right?).

While it is pretty enjoyable to read, if you are able to drift along in the stream of language I would still have rather had a few more actually events and a decent ending where I knew what actually happened. If you are trying to get into Zelazny, in my opinion, this is not the book to start with.

...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Denzil Pugh rated it liked it · review of another edition

The Dream Master is the second full length novel written by Zelazny in 1966. The title page informs the reader that it had been a serialized short story in a magazine. Unfortunately, it reads like a fleshed out, stretched short story. It becomes disjointed, a series of scenes seemingly unconnected and written at different times, so much so you can tell which parts are original, and which parts are added.

The main story deals with Render, a psychologist who has become known as a pioneer in the ne The Dream Master is the second full length novel written by Zelazny in 1966. The title page informs the reader that it had been a serialized short story in a magazine. Unfortunately, it reads like a fleshed out, stretched short story. It becomes disjointed, a series of scenes seemingly unconnected and written at different times, so much so you can tell which parts are original, and which parts are added.

The main story deals with Render, a psychologist who has become known as a pioneer in the new technology of "Dream Therapy," in which he uses a holodeck type machine to enter people's dreams and control them, constructing and deconstructing (in every sense of the philosophical term) until the underlying causes, as Freudian as they may be, are exposed and can be dealt with outside of the sleep state. Stepping outside of the boundaries his craft sets, he decides to help a blind woman, a professional psychiatrist in her own right, to "see" using dreams. But, as things go when man tries to play "God," things rarely turn out well. This is a book that would go along side Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven, Frank Bonham's The Forever Formula, or Chayefsky's Altered States. The latter most definitely, since they both deal with the idea of the collective subconsciousness, the idea that there are certain things we see and know that come from the primal state of our being, as a coding of our "form," embedded into our DNA.

Zelazny writes in spurts, in images, in hallucinatory frames, and I would imagine that, like so many other artists in the 60's (18 and 19), that some sort of stimulation was used to create the muse for these writings. It would remind someone of Coleridge's 'In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan..." or T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland" (April is the cruelest month). This is not to denigrate the story at all, rather, it rescues it from being unreadable. In fact, Zelazny's usage of myths, whether we know them or not, of poetic fits in between sections of plot, is what makes this an actually good book to ruminate upon. Masterful writing style, deep, thoughtful nuggets that you have to mine from the rocky wording, phrases that are pure gold, it makes the once award winning short story well worth reading, despite its obvious flaws.

Amongst the flat characters are diatribes of how technology has so placed us in a state of security, of peace, that we become bored, even to the state of having nothing, verily, to live for. He deals with the usage of stories, of myths, to recreate the heart-rendering sorrows that mankind has lost, and the sub-culture of role-playing that has surfaced so that man can actually face that danger, instead of being lost to banality. This is a theme also taken on by Simak in A Ring Around the Sun, which was a masterful work. I doubtless will use some of Zelazny's thoughts in some of my future blog postings (giving credit, obviously), as they were truly amazing. Having never read Zelazny's work before, I will certainly find others in my Dad's sci-fi collection pilfered from the Bethany, OK library so many years ago, and read them as well. ...more

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Sep 08, 2014 Matus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The first half or so of the book was pretty rough; it was a little preachy and awkward, trying a little hard, and moreover tediously brought in a lot of usual Zelazny elements: writes himself into the book as someone attractive to women and generally superior to his colleagues (but unwilling to engage in direct competition), there is some form of magic, and there is obsession with death.

But the details and setting were nice and interesting, and even in the rough parts there were interesting elem The first half or so of the book was pretty rough; it was a little preachy and awkward, trying a little hard, and moreover tediously brought in a lot of usual Zelazny elements: writes himself into the book as someone attractive to women and generally superior to his colleagues (but unwilling to engage in direct competition), there is some form of magic, and there is obsession with death.

But the details and setting were nice and interesting, and even in the rough parts there were interesting elements (e.g., the form of the magic is believable and interesting, and quite specific rather than some vague force hardly described). Following the title, the book was concerned with dreams, consciousness and subconsciousness, and there were interwoven narrative elements from sometimes confusing (sleeping/dreaming?) perspectives, sometimes not being explained until much later if at all (* see below for a particular one).

But the ending is really an incredible crescendo, told just immaculately. It's exciting even with the heavy foreshadowing. The first moment that really grabbed me is below at the (***), I almost slipped over a comment that really forced me to change my interpretation of MANY earlier events. This was perhaps the main theme of the book, that crazy stuff can lurk just beneath...

awesome book. Maybe my favorite zelazny...

Some spoiler-ish references:

(* took me a while to figure out we were getting the helper dog's perspective! At first I thought it was a dream by the main character due to all his "fenris" references...).

(** the constant appearance of the big red "exit" button in the final dreams is awesome; one always wonders how the control panel invades in the shaper's dream-consciousness...)

(*** when we see eileen at home and she starts having a slightly meltdown, and she references "riscomb" fallign apart (bottom of page 143). We've heard nothing of him having problems, and indeed there are references to him saying eileen is stable. Now we see it was a crazy cover, just like this meltdown by eileen is hidden when the call comes, and just like she acts normal when the dog brings the main character over... basically that one reference drastically changed my engagement to the book...)
...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Lee Krieger rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I originally read this book back in the early 80's and remembered it fondly.
I just reread it and was sadly disappointed.

Maybe they just floated over my head when I read them as a young adult, but the endless obscure literary references got increasingly annoying, and I kept wondering what they had to do with the story. It was as if Zelazny was trying to impress his readers with his vast knowledge and understanding of science, music and literature... like it was a job interview.

Dude... what happe ...more

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Oct 12, 2015 Stuart Dean rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book won the Nebula Award so it must be great, but I just don't see it. It's like Zelazny had just read a book on psychotherapy and wanted to impress his readers with his vast knowledge of the subject. And it reads like a short story stretched into a novel.

It's about a a future psychiatrist who can enter people's dreams and give them therapy. He meets a blind girl who wants him to use his technique to show her what it's like to see. He is warned repeatedly that this is a bad idea, where he ...more

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May 22, 2010 Raj rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

This is a story of a Shaper, Charles Render, who is part artist, part psychologist, as he shapes people's dreams to try and cure psychological problems. His latest case is unique: Eileen Shallot, a blind psychologist who wants to become a Shaper herself but must be cured of her sight-neurosis before she can begin.

Being a book about dreams, this book had plenty of dream imagery, whole sections that didn't seem to fit into the main storyline, but which made sense in their own dream-logic. The end ...more

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Feb 23, 2011 Simon rated it liked it

Shelves: sf

An interesting premise with a weak execution in a needlessly fragmented narrative. It wasn't a long novel but I felt that it would have either worked better as a short story or fleshed out in more depth as a longer novel.

Surprisingly, this book one a nebula award (or so the blurb on the cover claims) which just goes to show that winning an award is not always a good indicator of quality. Despite its award this is not one of Zelazny's well-remembered novels and, as far as I am concerned, for good ...more

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Jun 14, 2016 Matt rated it really liked it

Myth and psychology intertwine in Zelazny's The Dream Master. In the future, Charles Render, a neuroparticipant therapist- a Shaper- renders mental landscapes for his patients to explore their psyche. Which, of course, is the most dangerous terrain there is. By mixing the trauma of his characters with their realities and the underlying mythic themes which drive the human experience, Zelazny crafts a unique novella. A story about how easy it is to get lost in our trauma. ...more

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Dec 05, 2016 Jack rated it really liked it

3.5

So I've just finished this, and I'm still mulling it over really. As always with Zelazny it was a very interesting read, which I did enjoy. It, however, was very spasmodic. It felt like so many vignettes, which might have been the idea, but I'm not quite sure why he chose to do it that way. They were interesting, but I'm not sure how that contributed to the story. Perhaps could have had a stronger ending, but I'm not really complaining. ...more

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Apr 27, 2017 Andrea Turner rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi-and-fantasy

This book was an interesting read, however the ending didn't feel complete to me. I also noticed several typos in this edition. ...more

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Aug 20, 2018 David Caldwell rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Roger Zelazny has been one of my favorite authors for many years now. But some of his books are just harder to read/get into than others. This was one of the hard ones for me. Several reviews said it reminded them of Inception (or more accurately Inception reminded them of this book since it came out in 1966 or so).

The story revolves around a doctor that is the next step of psychology. They "go into" a person's mind and create a dream-like state that helps them to deal with whatever problem whi ...more

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Aug 13, 2019 T.L. Barrett rated it liked it

Every now and then a bibliophile must go through the piles and piles of books he or she owns and justify the occasional trips to used bookstores by actually reading some of the treasures he or she has gathered. This time I picked up this Nebula Award winner first published in novel form in 1964. I wanted to love this book. I didn’t.

The novel focuses on Charles Render a psychologist in near-future America, who has the rare ability via machines to travel into the subconscious mind of a dreamer. It ...more

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Feb 28, 2019 Daryl rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, zelazny

Continuing my chronological reading of Zelazny's works, this is his second novel, published, like his first, in 1966. This was my first reading of this novel, and I found it a bit of a disappointment. Charles Render is a psychoanalyst (a "neuroparticipant therapist") and a Shaper of dreams. Render enters the dreams of his patients and controls (shapes) them in order to analyze and treat the patients. (A lot of other reviewers have mentioned the movie Inception, and how this novel apparently insp ...more

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About Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny

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Roger Zelazny made his name with a group of novellas which demonstrated just how intense an emotional charge could be generated by the stock imagery of sf; the most famous of these is A Rose for Ecclesiastes in which a poet struggles to convince dying and sterile Martians that life is worth continuing. Zelazny continued to write excellent short stories throughout his career. Most of his novels dea ...more

Books by Roger Zelazny

Nine Princes in Amber (The Chronicles of Amber #1)

The Great Book of Amber (The Chronicles of Amber, #1-10)

The Courts of Chaos (The Chronicles of Amber #5)

The Guns of Avalon (The Chronicles of Amber #2)

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Quotes from The Dream Master

“The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe.” — 29 likes

“A single name of a multitude of practices centered about the auto-driven auto. Flashing across the country in the sure hands of an invisible chauffeur, windows all opaque, night dark, sky high, tires assailing the road below like four phantom buzzsaws—and starting from scratch and ending in the same place, and never knowing where you are going or where you have been—it is possible, for a moment, to kindle some feeling of individuality in the coldest brainpan, to produce a momentary awareness of self by virtue of an apartness from all but a sense of motion. This is because movement through darkness is the ultimate abstraction of life itself—at least that’s what one of the Vital Comedians said, and everybody in the place laughed.” — 1 likes

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