Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Short Story Wednesday -- Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont

After reading Patti Abbott's post featuring "Black Country" by Charles Beaumont, I was motivated to read some of Beaumont's stories in the collection, Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories. From reading articles on his work, it seems he wrote mostly short stories in the horror, fantasy, and science fiction subgenres.

I initially bought the book more for the cover than its contents. In 2017, I bought several classics in the Penguin Classics series, and this was one I came upon by chance. The cover illustration is by William Sweeney.


The book starts with a very enthusiastic and complimentary Foreward by Ray Bradbury. There are 23 of Beaumont's short stories included and an Afterward by William Shatner. At this point I have only read the Foreward and the first six stories.

The title story, "Perchance to Dream", is about a man having the same dream over and over. There is a twist ending and it did surprise me. This one was made into a Twilight Zone episode.

In "The Jungle", a man roams the city he lives in and has designed, looking for the solution to a disease that is killing people. It has themes of development taking over cultures and the assumption that technology always improves things. An interesting story, but not one I enjoyed reading. Also adapted for a Twilight Zone episode, with significant changes in the story.

"Sorcerer's Moon" was a very short story about two warlocks trying to kill each other. Entertaining, with an interesting ending. It was first published in Playboy.

In "You Can't Have Them All", a doctor visits a man who is wasting away. The man's goal in life is to have sex with every woman within his chosen parameters before he dies. It is a long story and goes on and on. I liked the ending, but the premise was so disgusting that I could not enjoy the story. The story was written in 1956, and maybe it was written for its shock effect?

"Fritzchen" was also not a favorite. It was about a man who owns a pet store, and a very unusual animal that his son finds. Not appealing and I did not like the ending. 

The story I liked the best, so far, was was "Father, Dear Father". This very short story (about 5 pages) was panned in another review, at Greenwich Library, saying that the ending was obvious. I guess so, but I enjoyed it anyway. Maybe because I like time travel. 


It may be that Beaumont's stories are too weird for me. The stories with horror elements did not appeal at all. But, I still have seventeen more to go in the collection, and I am sure I will find more that I like. So far I like the shorter stories more than the longer ones.

As noted above, some of Beaumont's short stories were later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes. Although I did watch that show when I was younger, I don't remember having seen the episodes mentioned here. 


17 comments:

Jerry House said...

I am a big Beaumont fan, Tracy. I'd be interested in your opinion once you finish the entire collection.

George said...

Like Jerry, I'm a big Beaumont fan, too. But, his stories are strange and unique. Sadly, Beaumont died young.

Margot Kinberg said...

Like you, Tracy, I'm not a big fan of horror stories, so those stories probably wouldn't have appealed much to me, either. Still, the collection sounds really interesting, and I'm glad you found some that you really liked. And, by the way, I can see why that cover appealed to you so much!

TracyK said...

Jerry, I will definitely report when I have read the full collection. I am eager to try more.

TracyK said...

George, I had read that Beaumont died very young. I agree, his stories are unique.

TracyK said...

Margot, all of the stories are not horror, but they are a mixed bag of science fiction and fantasy, and you don't know what to expect going in. That is not a bad thing, of course. And I haven't read that many of them... yet.

Cath said...

Would you believe I have not heard of this author? Well it's true but also hard for me to believe as I do actually like horror, sci-fi and wierd short stories. Oh, well. I hope you find some further on that you enjoy more.

Cath said...

I meant to add that I love that cover!

TracyK said...

I know what you mean, Cath. On your latest post on short story books I mentioned this author (in my comment today) because I know you like weird short stories. So I thought you might have heard of him even though he is a US author and wrote in the 1950s. He died young so might have been better known had he lived longer.

I am sure I will enjoy some more of the stories. Yes, the cover is very nice. It is out in my bedroom where I see it often because I like it so much, but it still took me all this time to read it.

Rick Robinson said...

I haven't read any Beaumont, that I remember, anyway. Ah, a skull cover, yes, I can see you'd like that, though it's not my style, I'm afraid.

TracyK said...

It was the skull that attracted me initially, Rick, but I also like the bright colors and the design of the cover. Beaumont's stories were new to me, and I will try more.

col2910 said...

Great cover.

Todd Mason said...

Beaumont made a big splash as screenwriter as well as fiction writer in the latter '50s and earliest '60s, hence among other things Penguin being willing to publish a collection...his reputation remains high (Shatner presumably will be writing in some part about starring in the film THE INTRUDER, a contemporary-mimetic film written by Beaumont in which Shatner played a racist agitator). Beaumont also wrote other contemporary-mimetic stories in prose as well, some of them nonetheless "off-trail" enough to be published in the fantastic media...Beaumont's "The Vanishing American" being one of the non-fantastic stories, like Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts", published in the mid '50s by THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, due to their quality, slight oddness, and appeal to F&SF readers.

His fellow writers often helped him finish his last works, in drama particularly, such as the film adaptation of Fritz Leiber's CONJURE WIFE, the version titled NIGHT OF THE EAGLE in the UK and BURN, WITCH, BURN! in the US, the script co-written with Richard Matheson with some revision, originally uncredited, by George Baxt. One could spend am enjoyable long summer reading solely Leiber, Beaumont, Matheson and Baxt's works...and all of them wrote widely, beyond the fields or genres (they aren't really genres so much as collections of genres) of solely fantasy, horror and sf, even though they all (except Baxt) wrote widely and probably most famously in those fields.

Glad you're mostly enjoying this book!

TracyK said...

Todd, thanks for all that information. Beaumont was certainly an unusual person and writer. And was also quite lucky to have supporting friends around him.

TracyK said...

Col, I like the cover a lot too. If all those monsters and creatures are in the remaining stories, I am a bit scared to read them.

dfordoom said...

I was pretty excited when I came across a collection of Beaumont's short stories (Yonder) but I ended up having mixed feelings about them. I like weird stuff. I like weird stuff a lot. But I believe that if you're going to write weird fiction you do need some discipline and Beaumont doesn't seem to have had any discipline at all. There are some wonderful ideas in his stories but too many of them are unfocused and end up being a bit of a mess.

TracyK said...

That is a good description of my reaction, dfordoom. I had mixed feelings when reading the few stories I read. The ideas are interesting but they seems to go for a horrifying ending. I will read more and see how I feel about the rest of the stories in this collection.