<< Back 7/24/02 Meeting on the other side Joyce’s fanciful journey leads characters down a dark path By Gary Carden Dreamside by Graham Joyce. New York: Tor Books, 1991. $23.95 — 254 pp. The plot of Dreamside deserves a partial summary ... just enough to whet your interest. In the beginning, the four college students are merely participants in a clinical study of sleep in a small college in England. Lee, Ella, Honora and Brad — two males and two females — are intrigued by the concept of “vivid dreaming.” (Vivid dreaming is the ability to dream while being fully aware of what you are doing.) Essentially, the participants are told that the purpose of the experiment will be to attempt to “control” their personal dreams; to actually be aware of their state, and to gradually acquire the ability to “direct” the course of their dream-actions. Their mentor, Dr. Burns, requires them to keep diaries and to take meticulous notes on everything that happens to them. Once a week, they meet in the professor’s study and discuss their progress — or lack of it. There are minor personal problems. The two males, Lee and Brad, become competitive, both vying for Ella’s attention. Honora, a timid Irish-Catholic, develops a single-minded drive to accomplish Dr. Burns’ goals and wishes to avoid personal involvement with her fellow students. Determined to impress Ella and Dr. Burns, Lee and Brad fabricate fanciful dream experiences and create false episodes. However, gradually, things begin to change. Even though Lee is in love with Ella and has only become a part of the study so he could be near her, he begins to experience a series of vivid and highly erotic dreams in which he is “aware” that he is asleep. Ironically, his pretense becomes a fact. As the experiments progress and Lee becomes more adept at control, Dr. Burns encourages the two couples to “dream together.” In essence, he wants them to find a mutually acceptable environment, and appear there together — in their dreams. To validate the experience, they are asked to convey a “secret message.” After a series of misadventures, it is Lee and Ella who actually meet in a moonlit park. In their “mutual dream,” Lee approaches Ella and whispers his secret message. The following morning, Ella wakes Lee and repeats the words that he had spoken to her in the dream: “There are stranger things, Horatio ...” The implications are awesome. If it is possible to communicate in dreams, what would be the consequences on personal relationships, communications, politics ... warfare? Disappointed that only two of the four students have been able to “rendezvous,” Dr. Burns takes the couple to an isolated farm and encourages them to “dream themselves together.” The experiment works, and suddenly all four participants arrive in their dreams at dream version of the idyllic retreat. Eventually, they learn to duplicate all of the activities of “the world of awakeness.” They name the place Dreamside. As the relationship between Lee and Ella deepens, and their encounters at Dreamside (and in real life) become increasingly erotic, Brad (an obnoxious and offensive fellow in his own right) develops an obsession for Honora. Feeling excluded from the group, he becomes increasingly aggressive. At some point, the fanciful world of Dreamside begins to change and certain aspects of the natural setting become ominous. For example, the participants discover that it is dangerous to sleep while you are in Dreamside! The dream world can “absorb” anyone who becomes “inattentive.” The genial, elderly Dr. Burn begins to have misgivings about the sinister aspects of the experiment. When he has a near-fatal stroke, he tells Ella that he wishes to abandon the project. After Burns dies, the students are unwilling to stop their visits to Dreamside. However, without Dr. Burns’ direction, the experiment careens out of control. The first significant danger signal is the marked increase in the number of what the participants call “repeater episodes” — the act of awakening only to discover that you are still dreaming ... and that awakening also becomes yet another dream, etc. When Dreamside opens, a dozen years have passed since the four students participated in the original project. Ella, Lee, Honora and Brad have not retained a friendship. In fact, they have an aversion to each other. The final weeks of their Dreamside encounters became troubling, and in Honora’s case profoundly disturbing. Yet, suddenly, all of the original participants are having “repeat episodes” and it is becoming increasingly difficult to “awake.” The implication is sinister — that by staying too long in Dreamside, they have unwittingly created a bridge between the two worlds — Dreamside and reality. The only way that the intrusion can be stopped is for the four participants to return to Dreamside and “undo” a terrible act that was committed there. Graham Joyce is a master of the “sinister atmosphere” and Dreamside bristles with compelling scenes. As the suspense builds, the latter part of this novel contains some genuinely hair-raising episodes. Especially terrifying are the sequences in which the characters find themselves trapped in a kind of “Mobius loop” — forced to repeat routines that become increasingly frightening with each repetition. As the power of Dreamside increases in their real world, their struggles become increasingly futile. Joyce manages to create some provocative questions about the world of dreams. For instance, if a child is conceived in Dreamside ... what becomes of it? Is it possible that the “real world” is also a dream? In the final analysis, I only have one quibble with Dreamside, and that is the conclusion. Despite a harrowing confrontation and Joyce’s considerable powers at evoking tempests and supernatural storms, the resolution seems incomplete. However, perhaps it is too much to expect the author to provide a neat and satisfying conclusion to a novel that has released more demons and provoked more questions that it can possibly capture or answer. (Gary Carden is a writer, storyteller and lecturer whose book, Mason Jars in the Flood, was recently named Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. He can be reached at gcarden498@aol.com.)