Wine of the Dreamers: A Novel

By John D. MacDonald and Dean Koontz

Wine of the Dreamers, a classic science fiction novel from John D. MacDonald, the beloved author of Cape Fear and the Travis McGee series, is now available as an eBook.
 
They are the Watchers: pale laboratory creatures living in a remote, sealed-off world. Their game, their religion, their release is to dream, and their dreams carry across the galaxy to lodge in the minds of the inhabitants of another world: the planet Earth. But as the human race approaches a dream of their own—traveling beyond their own planet to other worlds—the Watchers step in. For escape from Earth is an impossible dream, one that the Watchers will go to any length to destroy.
 
Features a new Introduction by Dean Koontz
 
Praise for John D. MacDonald
 
“The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King
 
“My favorite novelist of all time.”—Dean Koontz
 
“To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt Vonnegut
 
“A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about the best.”—Mary Higgins Clark

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9780307827128

Reviews for Wine of the Dreamers

[andyray_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book makes me wish John Dann MacDonald had written much more science fiction. We have a dying mother race of humans who have seeded three worlds and controlled them through their dreams. Unfortunately, the good use of those controls has denigrated along with the population (now less than 1,000), and when a brother and his ister find out the three worlds are not just fun and games, but filled with real people, they begin a plan to liberate the worlds from the dreamers, as many of the dreamers are causing random acts of violence in the worlds. (That's the truth behind "Son of Sam" Berkowitz. The dreamers took over his mind and did the shootings!). Seriously, the characters are drawn deeply, and the theme of love and care flows throughout the book. If it is not the best that MacDonald has written, it surely is in the top five.

[waldhaus1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Early science fantasy by John D MacDonaldAn outsider in a controlled society discovers the evils being perpetrated by that society and fights back. Set against backdrop of a more contemporary society than Bladerunner. Written in the cities some of the prognostications about the future ring eeriely true. What cars the craziness of our school shootings. The answer proposed here is entirely fantastical, and the dialog and concerns are dated the idea that women lack the logic of men certainly sounds laughable to a contemporary reader.

[baswood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

[John D Macdonald - Wine of the Dreamers] John D Macdonald was a prolific writer of crime and suspense novels, which started appearing as paperbacks in the early 1950's. Before that he had earned a living selling stories to pulp fiction magazines. Wine of the Dreamers published in book form in 1951 was a venture into science fiction, he tried again in the next year with [Ballroom of the skies], but soon turned to a regular churning out of crime novels, usually three or four a year. Wine of the Dreamers starts off with a car journey: Bard Lane a scientist and Sharon Inlay a psychiatrist are speeding across New Mexico after being summoned by the military head of Bard Lanes' rocket building project. General Sachson is looking at ways to curtail the project after one of the scientists has run amok injuring two military personnel and smashing some delicate equipment. The tension of the car journey is well described interspersed with news flashes of people across the country doing crazy things, many of them involving murder. It is in chapter three that I realised I was reading a science fiction novel when we meet Rual Kinson trapped in a building on a planet of dreamers. The early part of the novel is well written as is the development of the dreamers on the mystery planet, the two stories run side by side until the connection between the dreamers and the crazy events on earth is made. The later part of the novel runs away with itself a little, as far too much happens too quickly and events that seemed plausible in science fiction terms rapidly become less so. The idea of alien mind control leading to murderous events on earth is not a new trope, but the rational behind the events is given a twist by Macdonald. The quality of the writing, the characterisation and the absence of racism and sexism helped to keep me reading right to the end. Not bad and so 3 stars.

[datrappert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a thought-provoking, surprisingly modern science fiction story that MacDonald wrote in 1951 and that is one of his two works of science fiction. Didn't know exactly what to expect, and this greatly exceeded my expectations. It has its awkward moments in alternating between Earth, where a scientist and a psychologist are key players in building an interstellar spaceship, and a distant world whose inhabitants enter "dream machines" where they can inhabit and take over the bodies of men and women on Earth (and visit a couple of other planets as well.) These two threads become closely entwined, of course, and the story is surprisingly moving in places as we see the violence inflicted on Earth by these alien dreamers, who don't consider any of their dreams to be real. In his excellent afterword, written in 1968, MacDonald talks about why he allowed the book to be republished and why he didn't change a word of it, even though he was tempted. All in all, this book, despite some very dark and cynical passages, and a few stock bad guys (generals, politicians, broadcasters--the usual suspects) succeeds in being one of MacDonald's more hopeful works.