Alternate Realities - Fiction, Social Science Fiction, Teen Fiction - Science Fiction

Bad Dream

Name: Bad Dream
Author: John Christopher
ISBN: 9780727859600

by John Christopher

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Overview

A dark vision of the near future, where entertainment and power have become indistinguishable. Is this the Europe of tomorrow? Virtual Reality has become the predominant form of entertainment for the masses: with a helmet and glove and appropriate software programmes, they can spend their leisure time in fantasy worlds. One company has developed Total Virtual, an extension of the original in which the dreamer lies unconscious while fantasy worlds are experienced, not through helmet and glove, but by direct input to the brain. Anna's son has died in an act of rebellion against European dominion over Britain, and she opts for treatment using Total Virtual - to rediscover her lost child, at least in the illusion of fantasy. But when she dies in the clinic and more suspicious deaths follow, her brother, Michael, is left to discover the real, sinister objective behind the Total programme.

About the Author, John Christopher

John Christopher (Sam Youd) was born in England in April 1922, during an unseasonable snowstorm. His early years were spent in Lancashire and Hampshire. He left school at sixteen to work as a local government clerk until being called up for army service in 1941, and spent the following four and a half years with the Royal Corps of Signals, in Gibraltar, North Africa, Italy, and Austria.

On leaving the army he renewed a teenage ambition toward being a writer, and in 1947, on the basis of an unfinished novel, won an Atlantic Award, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, which enabled him to devote himself to writing for a year. He tried to justify the award by writing serious novels, but subsequently also wrote detective thrillers, light comedies, novels based on cricket, and science fiction, to which he had been passionately devoted in his early teens. After several adult science fiction novels, he was asked to write for the young adult field, and ended up writing sixteen books in that genre, including "The Guardians, The Lotus Caves, Dom and Va, Empty World," and the Sword and Fireball trilogies, as well as the Tripods trilogy. Following a BBC television series in 1984 based on the Tripods books, he wrote a prequel, "When the Tripods Came," explaining how it all came about.

Sam Youd is a widower with five children and numerous grandchildren, and lives in Rye, in the county of Sussex, England.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Veteran Christopher, best known for his recent young adult fiction (the Tripods and Sword of the Spirits trilogies), is at the top of his form in a near-future SF novel that calls to mind his adult classic, No Blade of Grass (1956). Thanks to quiet British restraint, the glimpses of increasingly violent wrongness are more disturbing than entire planets being zapped in a routine space opera. Michael Frodsham is part of an influential Anglo-German family involved in producing virtual reality programs for mass entertainment, now also developing VR into a tool for psychological therapy. As a minor bureaucrat in the British hospital system, however, Michael uneasily begins to suspect that the technology could have more sinister uses as the oppressive European union aims to devour Britain whole. And so he must resist. Christopher avoids standard thriller formula with sharp attention to detail and his refusal to oversimplify the characters. Even people who behave the worst have their reasons-some of which they try to explain, some of which readers can figure out for themselves. The villains are convincing in their moral slovenliness. Likewise, Michael reveals himself as a man of honor without being unbelievably priggish or noble; he's just someone who can't take the easy way out by ignoring his sympathies and principles. He turns out to be unexpectedly admirable, and so does this subtle novel. (June) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In a world in which England is ruled by the European Union, and virtual reality has become the number one escape for most of the population, Michael Frodsham finds himself searching for the murderer of his half-sister, Anna, who died after retreating into virtual "bliss" when her activist son Adam was killed. The author of the classic "Tripods" series tells a cautionary tale of the near future, combining high-tech sf and classic suspense, in a tale that begins with deceptive slowness but gathers speed and intensity as the plot moves inexorably toward its conclusion. A good choice for most sf collections, this title is also suitable for mature YA readers. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.