Bad Dream [Hardcover]

John Christopher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Severn House Publishers (May 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0727859609
• ISBN-13: 978-0727859600
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #970,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Subtle, horrifying look at near future Virtual Reality, March 27, 2004

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bad Dream (Hardcover)

Veteran British science fiction writer John Christopher tells a subtle, lyrically poignant saga on the potential dangers of Virtual Reality in his latest novel "Bad Dream". In its understated way, it shares much of the same themes echoed in such classic cyberpunk fiction as William Gibson's "Neuromancer, without resorting to much of the rich detail found in Gibson's literary debut. Instead, it works as a tranquil psychological thriller about an unlikely hero, Michael Frodsham, a minor British government healthcare bureaucrat, dealing with a dangerous Virtual Reality technique designed by the German half of his family, and Great Britain's domination by a coercive, almost tyrannical, European Federation. Christopher's villains are intriguing, three-dimensional characters whose motivations are easily understood - if not appreciated - by the reader. This is yet another fine work of science fiction by the author of classics such as "No Blade of Grass" and the Tripods trilogy.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars mature, questioning sf from a master, December 29, 2004

By 

Robert Spencer (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bad Dream (Hardcover)

I am an american reader who read Christopher's early work years ago. Christopher has matured as a writer, and I was very impressed by the complexity of this novel, both politically and in terms of character development. Here is a character far from a Hollywood hero; a thoughtful, doubting man living in a web of personal hiistory and family relationships who must come to grips with a horrifying secret. The novel is set against a not too distant future that is a bleak vision of Britain's place in the EU, vividly imagined by Christopher. A book that would be an excellent choice for reading groups, there's a lot to think about here, issues of technology, freedom, and resposiblility the West must face soon.