Customer Reviews

Wine of the Dreamers

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John D. MacDonald, along with those other great sci-fi writers of old -- Heinlein, Asimov, Budrys, Gunn, and others -- wrote what I consider to be the last of the greats. These writers and others like them wrote science fiction that was "science based." They also wrote powerful and thought- provoking science fiction which challenged the reader to think seriously about humanity and its moral progress. Their brand of classy sci-fi isn't popular anymore. No, what one finds in the sci-fi section in bookstores nowadays is science fiction polluted with crippling doses of fantasy. It isn't science fiction anymore. It contains today little science and no relevance. All you readers and reviewers who complain about a few out-of-date ideas presented by those wonderful old sci-fi novels need to consider the real reasons why you approve of today's "sci-fi." Are interplanetary swash-bucklings and dragon/evil wizard killings that present little or no moral dilemmas truly science fiction? Are poorly-written "sci-fi"literature containing poorer character development and dumb dialogue really the future of science fiction? After an entire summer wasted on magic spells, scantily-clad, telepathic warrior virgins with wings, and black hole-less universes, I was ready for those fine old inspirational novels -- like Wine of the Dreamers.

Wine of the Dreamers is one of the finest science fiction novels I've ever read. The characters of Lane, Inly, Raul, and Leesa are well-rounded and believable. Their personalities are vivid and unpredictable. Their language is thought-provoking and intelligent. The theme, especially, taps into a hidden desire of the human race -- to find intelligent life in other parts of the universe. The idea of mind control by a superior species was a fantastically original fictional explanation for humanity's violent compulsion. I only hope that others like me who accidentally discover this treasure realize what a gem this novel actually is. Read it!

This book along with his other SF book "Ballroom of the Skies" gives two entirely different reasons for all the violence and destructiveness we face in the world. Both were written over 30 years ago and are still very original ideas. Readers of these two will also like his book "The Girl, the Goldwatch and Everything" If you are a lover of Science fiction you will most certainly appreciate these books. If you are a lover of John D. MacDonald material (like me) then these books just may draw you into the world of SF.

Wine of the Dreamers (1950) is the work of John D. MacDonald, an author not known as a writer of science fiction. Significantly better than its companion piece, Ballroom of the Skies, Wine of the Dreamers has a lot to recommend it.
The Dreamers cited in the title are a sickly race residing in a sterile, surreal building on a planet lightyears away from Earth. The adults sleep in glass cases called dream machines,from which they
are able to gain control of the bodies of random earthlings and make them do things the Dreamers find amusing. Rather than completely taking over the brains of their hosts, the Dreamers merely push their host's mind to the side, so they are left to watch in horror as they say and do things over which they have no control.
The premise underlying Wine of the Dreamers is a very clever, thought provoking one and some of the passages are quite evocative. There's also much about religion to be found in this book. Some directly stated and some subtextual.
Bottom line: This early John D. MacDonald offering is a worthwhile read. It shows a different side to the author's prodigious talent. Recommended.

When I want to be entertained I read John D. MacDonald. The popular novel is a deceptively complex form to master, and MacDonald understood it on the cellular level. He gets deep inside the form, exploiting its power and constructing beautiful patterns and intricate life forms out of its constituent parts.

The animating idea behind this sci-fi story is found in the New Testament and the ancient world in general. In those sources "devils" could inhabit the minds of ordinary people and were the explanation for mental illness, and many of man's most irrational behaviors. MacDonald takes that premise, and converts it into a sci-fi story based on the idea that an alien culture can take over an "earthlings" mind and control it, causing the unwitting victim to perform absurd or dangerous actions.

It's not the premise that's important here, but what MacDonald does with it. He creates characters that may not have great depth, but that nonetheless come vividly to life, and he makes us care about what happens to them. While I was reading this book everything else became a distraction; I wanted to get to its pages because it was entertaining, interesting and fun. I didn't take the premise seriously except as a plot device, but I found it an engaging thought-experiment as MacDonald took it through its seemingly inevitable and obvious permutations. After finishing the book, I felt the plat had always existed for anyone to copy down -- it was just that no one else had, and few could do so with the skill that MacDonald brought to the task. This ability to make a story idea seem inevitable is the mark of a master of the form.

Another talented writer of popular fiction, Stephen King, is a big fan of MacDonald's work. In his book Dreamcatcher, he shamelessly copies MacDonald's premise for this tale, and takes it to great and intricate lengths, as is his want. It seems to me that there were asides in Dreamcatcher that ran to more pages than this entire book. It's not really important which book one prefers, as both are entertaining. This text, however, has the strong feel of classic science fiction from the likes of Asimov, and it is deftly and quickly drawn, while King belabors each scene and elaborates on every possible detail.

Later in his career, MacDonald would craft the Travis McGee series, which is probably the apotheosis of popular fiction, and easily converts to fact whatever seeming hyperbole I can manage to summon forth in describing it. This book is a far more modest endeavor, but if you want to pass some pleasant hours being entertained by a master who knows exactly how to exploit a clever idea, then I would strongly recommend it. It's not MacDonald at its best, it's certainly not great fiction or great prose, but it's great fun, and a wonderful thought experiment that excites one's sense of wonder while giving the reader a little something to ponder.

This early novel by MacDonald is chock full of great sf ideas, as much as any sf book of the early 50's. Unfortunately it is a real let-down when compared to MacDonald's great suspense novels of the same period, like "The Brass Cupcake" and "Judge Me Not". With those two novels MacDonald burst forth on the paperback original market in 1950, after his apprenticeship in the pulp magazines, as a fully developed talent, fully as great a writer from the get-go as he ever would be. Unfortunately, "Wine of the Dreamers", while it succeeds for its ideas, is a dud with respect to execution. It is telegraphed, some of the key scenes happen off stage, it reads like an outline for a novel that never actually got written. Read "Judge Me Not" if you want great early MacDonald, and read "Bright Orange for the Shroud" if you want MacDonald the greatest he ever got.

Tries to account for the things most would ordinarily attribute to the devil. Fun reading. One of only a couple science fiction works of John D. McDonald. Also see Ballroom of the Skies.