Dreamsongs Volume 2 (2004) by George R. R. Martin:
This collection is generous and generously gifted with lengthy, illuminating essays by George R.R. Martin. Originally released in one volume, breaking it up into two volumes definitely helps with actually reading it.
- "A Beast for Norn" (1976): The first tale of Haviland Tuf showcases his biological and ecological engineering skills thanks to the massive seedship Ark, along with his idiosyncratic personality and one of the more medieval-futuristic planets of the far-future Thousand Worlds universe. This version is the original, while that in Tuf Voyaging has been edited and expanded.
- "Guardians" (1981): A Haviland Tuf story that riffs on how seemingly minor changes to an alien environment lead to catastrophic consequences for the human inhabitants of a watery world. Tuf's favourite animals, cats, play a key role in this one.
- "The Road Less Travelled" (Unproduced screenplay, Twilight Zone) (1986): A never-produced screenplay would still make a dandy TZ episode.
- "Doorways" (Unproduced version of pilot) (1993): A different, less-expensive version of this screenplay was made into a pilot that never made it to series. This would now be familiar to viewers thanks to shows like Sliders.
- "Shell Games" (1987): One of Martin's first heroes in the shared-universe superhero series Wild Cards was the amiable Great and Powerful Turtle. Fun stuff.
- "From the Journal of Xavier Desmond" (1988): Compiles the linking story from Wild Cards novel Aces Abroad, focusing on the Mayor of Jokertown, the elephant-trunked Desmond.
- "Under Siege" (1985): Time-travel story incorporates a story Martin wrote for a history class (that story appears early in Volume 1 of Dreamsongs).
- "The Skin Trade" (1988): Award-winning novella involves a city run by werewolves and a mysterious mirror.
- "Unsound Variations" (1982): Martin turns his college experiences with chess tournaments into an excellent time-travel story.
- "The Glass Flower" (1986): Melancholy farewell (for now and then) to Martin's Thousand Worlds universe.
- "The Hedge Knight" (1998): A story from the Game of Thrones universe, set roughly a generation before the events of the novel.
- "Portraits of His Children" (1985): Somewhat metafictional horror story about the lengths some writers go for inspiration.
Overall: Excellent overview of Martin's writing from the mid-1980's to 2003, with a few dips further into the past to suit both thematic divisions and series that ended in the 1980's. Highly recommended.
Dreamsongs Volume 1 (2004) by George R. R. Martin:
This collection is generous and generously gifted with lengthy, illuminating essays by George R.R. Martin. Originally released in one volume in 2003, breaking it up into two volumes definitely helps with actually reading it without being crushed.
Volume 1 covers Martin's career from his days writing for the amateur press in the 1960's to the greatest days of his success as a writer of short stories and novellas in the mid-1980's. I think Martin was a better writer of predominantly science-fictional stories than he is a fantasy novelist, but your results may vary. In any event, this is a fine introduction to Martin's work for those who haven't read much beyond his A Song of Ice and Fire.
The stories:
"Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark (1967): Almost juvenilia. Superhero stuff for an amateur press.
"The Fortress" (1960s): A short story submitted as an essay in a history course. Interesting.
"And Death His Legacy" (1960s): Started life as the first in a projected series about a billionaire super-assassin before transforming into a cautionary tale about the limits of political violence.
"The Hero" (1971): Martin's first professional sale, a stinger about the future of warfare.
"The Exit to San Breta" (1972): Science fiction ghost story. Minor but enjoyable.
"The Second Kind of Loneliness" (1972): From Martin's short-lived "Star Ring" series, a meditation on isolation and madness.
"With Morning Comes Mistfall" (1973): An entry in Martin's loose-knit far-future history of humanity dubbed "A Thousand Worlds." Martin's first truly top-notch story.
"A Song for Lya" (1974): Martin's second top-notch sf story, also set in the Thousand Worlds universe, explores an alien religion and its strange attraction for some humans.
"This Tower of Ashes" (1976): More of a character piece set on yet another of the Thousand Worlds. Bad spiders!
"And Seven Times Never Kill Man" (1975): The title comes from Kipling; Martin's notes indicate that he parodies Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai series in specific (and militaristic sf in general) here. Thousand Worlds.
"The Stone City" (1977): A more Lovecraftian or Clark Ashton Smith-style take on the Thousand Worlds. Really a subtle piece of cosmic, science-fictional horror.
"Bitterblooms" (1977): A more fabulistic piece set on one of the more isolated Thousand Worlds of humanity.
"The Way of Cross and Dragon" (1979): Excellent sf story exploring religion and its mutations in the far future of the Thousand Worlds.
"The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr" (1976): Universe-hopping fantasy story was meant to start a series. It didn't, though Martin would re-use elements in his 1990's pilot "Doorways" (see Dreamsongs Volume 2).
"The Ice Dragon" (1980): Martin is pretty sure he created the idea of a literal ice dragon here. Not part of the Game of Thrones universe, though there are some similarities.
"In the Lost Lands" (1982: Another first piece in a never-continued series, set in a world that combines traditional sword-and-sorcery elements with post-apocalyptic settings.
"Meathouse Man" (1976): The most mournful and disturbing of Martin's three 'Corpse-Handler' sf stories is sometimes viewed as a precursor to Splatterpunk.
"Remembering Melody" (1981): Precise 'traditional' horror story.
"Sandkings" (1979): My favourite of Martin's stories, a terrific novella of science-fictional horror that features a thoroughly rotten protagonist and a fascinating alien species, the eponymous Sandkings. Also meant to be part of a series!
"Nightflyers" (1976/1980): Fine science-fictional horror novella set in the far-future Thousand Worlds timeline was thoroughly misused in both a 1980's movie and the recent SyFy Channel series.
"The Monkey Treatment" (1983): Somewhat traditional 'Be careful what you wish for' horror.
"The Pear-Shaped Man" (1987): Nice horror piece does not go quite where the reader fears it will. It goes someplace way more disturbing!
Overall: Highly recommended.
