The Nile on eBay Perchance to Dream by Charles Beaumont
Contains a selection of Beaumont's stories, including five stories that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes. This volume contains an introduction by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William Shatner, two fellow science fiction luminaries who counted themselves among Beaumont's close friends.
FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description
The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writerWith Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone reboot arriving, read the stories that inspired some of the show's greatest episodes, including "The Howling Man"!The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer, with a foreword by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William ShatnerIt is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts forThe Twilight Zone-for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dreamcontains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including seven that he later adapted forTwilight Zoneepisodes.Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more- all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont's hands, nothing is impossible- it all seems plausible, even likely." Beaumont's imagination, asPerchance to Dreamamply shows, was more than most writers enjoy in the longest of lifetimes."-NPRFor more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.
Author Biography
Charles Beaumont(1929-1967) was the author of three collections of short stories and two novels. He penned twenty-two episodes ofThe Twilight Zone, considered some of the show's finest.Ray Bradbury(1920-2012) was the author of hundreds of short stories and nearly fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays. His works includeFahrenheit 451andThe Martian Chronicles.William Shatnerhas cultivated a career spanning more than fifty years as an award-winning actor, director, producer, writer, and recording artist. In 1962, he earned his first starring role in Roger Corman'sThe Intruder,written by Charles Beaumont. His career highlights include the iconic role of Captain James T. Kirk in theStar Trektelevision series and movies.
Review
Charles Beaumont was one of the seminal influences on writers of the fantastic and macabre -- Dean KoontzThe name of Charles Beaumont will be honored and recognized for generations yet to come -- Robert Bloch
Promotional
Perchance to Dreamcontains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories - including five that he later adapted forTwilight Zoneepisodes - with a foreword by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William Shatner.
Review Text
Charles Beaumont was one of the seminal influences on writers of the fantastic and macabre
Review Quote
"This fresh collection of Beaumont's weird fiction is rife with fantastical tropes and twist endings...Twist endings get a bad rap in our oh-so-sophisticated millennium, but in
Promotional "Headline"
Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories - including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes - with a foreword by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William Shatner.
Excerpt from Book
About the Author Title Page Copyright Foreword: Beaumont Remembered by RAY BRADBURY Perchance to Dream The Jungle Sorcerer's Moon You Can't Have Them All Fritzchen Father, Dear Father The Howling Man A Classic Affair Place of Meeting Song for a Lady Blood Brother In His Image The Monster Show The Beautiful People Free Dirt The Magic Man Last Rites The Music of the Yellow Brass The New People A Death in the Country Träumerei Night Ride The New Sound Afterword by WILLIAM SHATNER Foreword The facts have been written before. In the summer of 1946, when I was 26, a sixteen-year-old boy bumped into me in Fowler Brothers Book Store in downtown Los Angeles, and began babbling about his Terry and the Pirates comic collection, plus Tarzan, plus Prince Valiant, plus who-can-remember-now how many other truly amazing and life-enhancing subjects. It could only follow, out of such a passionate encounter, that a friendship developed like those stop-motion films of flowers speeded up from seed to stem to full blossom in ten seconds flat. I invited Charles Beaumont, for that was the young man's name, over to gaze at my Buck Rogers Sunday color panels. He trotted along his somewhat dog-eared copies of Terry and his irresistible Pirates. We made some trades, and moved on into a friendship that would last until his untimely death twenty years later. What followed over the years was joy in the sandbox, or, if you prefer, tomorrow is New Year's so what does that make today ?-a celebration! For Chuck there were no cries of "Thank God, It's Friday." It was always the long weekend, as it was with me, when some new love occupied, hell, preoccupied the senses and delivered us forth to worlds where nothing else existed except our creatures and our architectures. Our friendship leaned half in and half out of cinema long shots, comic-strip surrealistic closeups, carnival magicians, old radio shows, and longlegging it to ancient bookstores for a hyperventilating snuff of book dust. If I had allowed them, dogs might have followed me down the street. I didn't know where I was going, but it was sure great going there. Which is what dogs and budding writers are all about. Chuck was the same, save the dogs did dance about him, and friends . . . too many, perhaps. They used up his air. In the end, it might be true, he dispensed so much creative and conversational energy that there was none left over to fight any disease that chanced to dart in. But, all that comes later. First, after a series of jobs, working for United Parcel delivery services, and finally in the music-copying department at Universal Studios, Chuck showed up at my house one night in the early fifties with his first short story. He handed it over, his face flushed with excitement, and cried, "It's good! Or-I think it is!" I read the story, cried: "Good, hell; it's fine!" I sent the story out to an editor. It sold. Bombed into super-activity by the sale, Chuck wrote dozens more, hundreds more, over the years. I often use him as an example to other young writers. It does work. Writing, that is, a story a week for a year, three years, ten years! You can't help but get better every single week of every single year. Chuck got better. Better at what? He was, and remains in his work today, a writer of ideas, notions, fancies. You can tell his ideas to your friends in a few crisp lines. He is a story-teller who weaves his stories out of those ideas, some large, or, you may claim, predominantly small. No matter. At least the seeds are there, as they have rarely been since Poe got lost in the snow, Melville sank from view, shipwrecked on land, or Nathaniel Hawthorne invented a mechanical butterfly to be promptly destroyed. For, remember, those American writers of the 19th century were, one and all, idea folks. Slap their backs and they spat cosmic seeds. The years between 1830 and 1900 were brimful of metaphor, chock full of nuts, fruits, and, if not sublime Holy Ghosts, at least headless horsemen ruining your midnight sleep, but delighting your tranquil noons. Charles Beaumont, if not equal, is at least heir to these, even as most of us in the science fantasy field have felt ourselves to be their lost sons. You can, in sum, remember Beaumont's ideas long after the stories slide away into yesterday. Compare this with trying to tell the ideas of Hemingway, Faulkner, or Steinbeck. In Faulkner's case, the metaphor, while present, is lost in place, time, and character, if not completely sunk in an endless timbercut of words. You cannot remember or describe Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath or his The Long Valley in terms of metaphor. What you warmly recall is well-rendered scene, blooded people. The Joads may well be, and are indeed, symbols for us on our way somewhere, towards a future, every dawn, settling at dusk to dream it better than it happened three hours ago. But we rarely deep-think Steinbeck. We deep-feel him, and arrive at our thoughts later. So it is with Hemingway, and the mob of imitators who have flooded his wake since 1929. His metaphors are obvious, but the bullfight is too easily symbolic, as is the running of the Pamplona bulls, or the shooting of the white hunter in lost Africa. Again, we remember places, people, but none of Hemingway's characters go anywhere, even though they move. They do little to change time, or the architecture of anyone's future, even their own. They stand still while traveling, and die dumb, not knowing where they've been or how it all happened. Paco, who gets a kitchen knife in his belly, in Hemingway's masterful "The Capital of the World," represents them all. He sees his blood on the floor and wonders how it got there. Why him ? Jules Verne's characters, more primitive, of course, nevertheless deliver idea-talk. They live metaphor more grandly and uniquely. It is boy-chat yes, but Verne's metaphors span the globe and land us on the Moon. Listen to Ver≠ he really moves your mind, heart, soul, body, and blood. Listen to Papa and you fire your gun at a sky where you think there are birds, but none exist. Verne's character s make things happen. If their blood falls on the ship's planking or the rocket's hull, they know the reason why, and are not afraid to say it. Nemo is out to sink the world's armadas, and thus sink War. He is the metaphor of Peace, dreadfully personified. Beaumont, it follows, is closer kin to Verne and Hawthorne than he is to Hemingway or most of the writers who have come up through the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties to our time. Am I claiming that Charles Beaumont is the equal of or superior to those giants? No, I only say that while those large talents strode deeply, Beaumont gives better companionship. He's more fun because he is the neglected thing in our present society: the idea-writer. Now consider this. America is the Idea culture of all time. Our fancies have fulfilled an Industrial Revolution, split the atom, delivered us to the Moon, and promised us incredible futures stored and delivered forth by computers. Yet how ironic it is to prowl your local bookstore only to find the average novel hip-deep in dishwater and dull as soapsuds. Among one hundred best sellers, hardly one with a ghost of a fancy, or half the spirit of a notion. Ideas, stillborn, everywhere. Here is where Beaumont, and many another science fiction writer today, takes over, even if at a minor level. Offer his stories to school kids, then watch them toss his notions, at play. His metaphors are fresh, vivid, irresistible. Hand Hemingway's Spanish toreros or African cowards to most students, and they will be hard put to do their own variations. Same with the Joads in their rickety Ford, heading out of the dust into the sunset. Same with Faulkner's Hound. Their stuff, great and beautiful as it is, cannot be hurled at students, hot after literature, seeking the right corn to drop in their heads to make the Ideas pop. Idea is everything. So say most modern science-fiction and fantasy writers, who stand as true avant-garde forces at the center of writing today. So says Beaumont. Ricochet one of his ideas around a classroom, and crack a dozen variations within minutes. If you want children to read, Beaumont cries, for God's sake bomb them with Revelations! Give them a chance to join the author's game, feel smart, guess themselves into creation. The stories gathered here prove my point. Beaumont plays a game for himself, but invites you in. His stories are four-man basketball teams; you are the fifth player. Often, you feel that you've won the game yourself, because you write your own version of Beaumont's metaphor. Which is what makes him, finally, such fun. How can you resist a story like his "The Beautiful People," in which we find a world where everyone has been made over to beauty, where all bodies are perfect, all faces cookie-stamped to handsome-lovely? Then, what happens? One revolutionary girl, one soul, stands up and refuses to be operated on, cookie-stamped, changed! Okay, class, in the next hour, write your own variation on that ! Haven't we all, at one time or another, been more in love with a car than any girl who rode in the car with us? Read R
Details ISBN0143107658 Author Charles Beaumont Short Title PERCHANCE TO DREAM Language English ISBN-10 0143107658 ISBN-13 9780143107651 Media Book Format Paperback Subtitle Selected Stories Imprint Penguin Classics Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom Year 2016 Publication Date 2016-05-05 UK Release Date 2016-05-05 Pages 304 Publisher Penguin Books Ltd DEWEY 813.54 Audience General NZ Release Date 2015-11-17 AU Release Date 2015-11-17 We've got this
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