Dreamwish Beasts and Snarks

by Mike Resnick

At times humorous, at other times serious, this endearing collection of short fiction explores many concepts regarding fantastical or futuristic safaris. Detailing the many contrasting pitfalls of hunting, a hardboiled detective attempts to locate a unicorn in New York City on New Year’s Day, and in a later tale, must track down a millennia-old vampire in order to save his assistant. In the Nebula-nominated story “Hunting the Snark,” a classical big-game hunt on a newly discovered planet develops similarities to Lewis Carroll’s famous poem, yet ends with a surprising twist. In “The Soul Eater” and “Nicobar Lane—The Soul Eater’s Story,” separate views are offered from the hunter and the hunted in an eccentric love story that incorporates elements of Moby Dick and the legend of the Flying Dutchman. Offering a few somber features, “Safari 2103 AD” looks at a world where the number of wild animals can be counted on one’s fingers, while in “Bwana,” colonists leave industrialized Africa to create a paradise on a new world, only to discover how fragile they are. Imaginative and captivating, each narrative offers a unique spin on what it means to be a hunter.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies

278 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Michael "Mike" Diamond Resnick, better known by his published name Mike Resnick, was a popular and prolific American science fiction author. He is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He was the winner of five Hugos, a Nebula, and other major awards in the United States, France, Spain, Japan, Croatia and Poland. and has been short-listed for major awards in England, Italy and Australia. He was the author of 68 novels, over 250 stories, and 2 screenplays, and was the editor of 41 anthologies. His work has been translated into 25 languages. He was the Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon and can be found online as @ResnickMike on Twitter or at www.mikeresnick.com.

Reviews

[Paul Weiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastical, futuristic vision of hunting and safaris!

I've always admired the cleverness and the creative ability of authors of all stripes. But, as a long time fan of sci-fi, one of the more esoteric and most ignored genres in the universe of literature, I've always had the personal conceit that sci-fi authors had to be blessed with an extra dose of imagination, prescience, daring and, dare I say it, an exceptionally large storehouse of hardcore physical knowledge of the world around us. In a universe of brilliant authors that include such classic standouts as Isaac Asimov, Clifford D Simak and HG Wells, or more modern wordsmiths - Ben Bova, Robert Sawyer and Jack McDevitt, to name only a few - Michael Resnick is rapidly establishing a reputation as a standout in the field.

DREAMWISH BEASTS AND SNARKS is an anthology of several short stories and two novellas based on the theme of hunting and safaris with definite fantastical and futuristic twists.

Knowing that Michael Resnick was a fan of Africa and things African, such as safaris, one of Resnick's friends once challenged him to write "the ultimate sci-fi hunting story". Using Lewis Carroll's poem, THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK/b> as a leaping off point, Resnick knew he had a story to tell. The modern HUNTING THE SNARK, a Hugo and Nebula award nominee, while clearly demonstrating Resnick's admiration for Carroll's poetry is anything but derivative and the ending is pure Resnick. In another homage to classic literature, Resnick's novella, THE SOUL EATER, is a futuristic space-faring version of Herman Melville's MOBY DICK that one reviewer even categorized as "one of the strangest love stories you'll ever read".

BWANA is a satirical fable that criticizes western white man's ethnocentric assumption that modern, civilized man always has something better to offer a nomadic, hunter-gather culture. SAFARI 2103 AD, while perhaps a little beyond the bounds of credibility in terms of a realistic future, certainly offers a very clear warning about the natural world a distant future may face if nothing is done to halt pollution, global warming, deterioration of natural habitats and the like. It is, in short, a cautionary tale about how our ancestors may perceive "big game safaris".

While obviously thematic in nature, DREAMWISH BEASTS AND SNARKS is also eclectic, in the sense that it contains a variety of styles - humour, fantasy, space opera, satire, social comment and even a dollop of horror.

I've read very little of Michael Resnick's body of work but I'm certainly looking forward to exploring more. All fans of sci-fi will love DREAMWISH BEASTS AND SNARKS. I'd even go so far as to say that readers looking for a good place to begin an exploration of the sci-fi genre would do well to look no further than this wonderful of stories.

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

[David Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has one outstanding and one very good story. The rest are modestly entertaining.

http://opionator.wordpress.com/2012/1...

[Jeff Crosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I acquired this to read Hunting the Snark. Like many of Mike’s anthologies, a number of these stories have appeared elsewhere. This collection has hunting as its focus.