Reviews for Somerset dreams and other fictions

The average rating for Somerset dreams and other fictions based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-11-19 00:00:00 Martin Southworth What are the repeating themes in Somerset Dreams? Family history of mental illness or black magic? Seamless flashbacks escalating the tension contemporarily - the trauma of the past cropping up from returning to the scene of the crime. The autonomous woman not having a place in the small town of her upbringing or in the visions of the future constructed by her modern-times husband. The bulk of the stories in this book take these themes and apply them to science fiction in varying degrees of severity. Some of it is magical realism, real stand out, chilling stuff. The po-mo topics and homey settings evoke a real Stephen King vibe (Somerset Dreams, Planet Story), some of it more social commentary as PKD (Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Your Crisis), even the absurd sex with mystical meaning of Kilgore Trout can be found in State of Grace, the normal turns evil of Gene Wolfe's Peace. The standout stories are her own. Without giving too much away: The Hounds is about a woman who is followed home (and everywhere thereafter) by two otherworldly dogs. The Encounter is a man and a woman who are snowed in at an empty bus station. Symbiosis is about old friends. There were moments I found myself beguiled by the writing- What am I even reading about? A bus station? Where can this go? The answer, always darkness. Mrs. Bagley Goes to Mars- written off with State of Grace in the introduction as the wacky satires of the collection- has a moment of horror illustrative of the hairpin turns perspective can take in Wilhelm's writing. The titular Mrs. Bagley returns from space to find her guide to Mars left behind a grizzly corpse that more resembles a hobo with a knife in his chest than a transcendent being. This is her at her cheekiest. The Hounds, The Encounter, some of this is on another level. Absolutely brutal storytelling with nothing. Haunting.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-07 00:00:00 Kevin Richmond A short collection of mostly not-sf short stories. Wilhelm is a good writer, and the stories are all good, but they're also rather low-key mystical, dealing in psychology and symbolism (memory, relationships, dependency, anxiety amidst normalcy) that reminded me more of magical realism than "normal" sf. So with that caveat, and with maybe half a star removed for genre-disappointment, I would recommend it. The title story and "Planet Story" were maybe my favorites, not coincidentally the most sfnal, but the quality was pretty consistent throughout. Somewhat like Joe Haldeman's collection INFINITE DREAMS, some of the stories do feature very similar motifs, so that might also affect the overall impression.