The Dream Archipelago

1999 Priest, Christopher [McKenzie] (b. 1943). The Dream Archipelago. London: Earthlight. Includes the first publication of “The Equatorial Moment” (1-7); “The Negation” (7-48) originally published in Anticipations. Ed. Christopher Priest (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978), 55-86; “Whores” (49-70) originally published in New Dimensions 8. Ed. Robert Silverberg (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 27-40; “The Cremation” (71-114) originally in Andromeda 3. Ed. Paul Weston (London: Futura, 1978); “The Miraculous Cairn” (115-85) originally published in New Terrors #2. Ed. Ramsey Campbell (London: Pan, 1980), 11-55; and “The Watched” (186-264) originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction 54.4 (323) (April 1978): 124-60. Book rpt. London: Gollancz, 2009 with “The Equatorial Moment” (1-5); “The Negation” (6-44); “Whores” (45-65); “The Miraculous Cairn” (74-140); “The Cremation” (141-81); and “The Watched” (182-255-) and two additional stories, “The Trace of Him” (66-73) originally published in Interzone, no. 214 (February 2008): 36-38; and “The Discharge” (256-301) which was originally published in  SciFiction  www.scifi.com/scifiction/ Posted February 13, 2002. No longer available online, but it was rpt. in Science Fiction: The Best of 2002. Ed. Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber (Np: ibooks, 2003), 156-210. WU

The Dream Archipelago is made of thousands of islands in an ocean belt around the middle of a planet with a large continent to the north, with many countries regularly at war, wars that are fought on the continent to the south, which is sparsely populated. Various islanders tell stories, some eutopian, some dystopian, and some with elements of fantasy about their islands. Two further volumes are set in the Dream Archipelago. The first is The Islanders. London: Victor Gollancz, 2011, which as short descriptions of many islands. An excerpt from “The Drone” (150-87) was published as “Fireflies.” Celebration: An anthology of short stories commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the British Science Fiction Association. Ed. Ian Whates ([England]: New Con Press, 2008), 207-14. “The Trace of Him” is rpt. from his 2009 The Dream Archipelago retitled “The Trace” (235-43). The second is The Gradual. London: Gollancz, 2016; rpt. London: Titan Books, 2016, in which a composer, who is from a fascist dystopia, twice tours the Dream Archipelago.