Wine of the Dreamers
John D. MacDonald
175 pages
published in 1950
John D. MacDonald is of course far better known as the creator and writer of the Travis McGee series of mystery stories, of which I've read exactly none (feel free to send me some). Before he started on them however he had a short career as a science fiction writer, during which he wrote three novels, of which this is one. He is the perfect example of James Nicoll's complaint that financial realities drive sf writers to start writing in genres that actually pay enough to make a living. Ironically, his succes with Travis McGee did ensure that his science fiction novels would be regularly reprinted as well...
I first became aware of MacDonald thanks to a Spider Robinson review of one of his other novels, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything in an old back issue of Galaxy or Destinies. It was such an ethusiastic interview (Robinson rarely is subtle in his likes or dislikes) that it made me start looking for these novels. At this point I have not yet found The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything but did read his other two science fiction novels, Ballroom of the Skies and this one.
In Wine of the Dreamers MacDonald pursues an old theme: what if the various troubles humanity finds itself in are not the natural result of our own evil, but the result of deliberate alien intervention. It's a theme that's clearly important to him, as Ballroom of the Skies uses it as well. At a time when World War II had only happened five years ago, the Korean War in full swing and the threat of nuclear annihilation looming in the background, not to mention all the social upheaval caused by WWII, it must've been something of a comforting thought. It often seems easier to win over external forces than it is to change ourselves, after all.
The book is set in 1975, a neat 25 years after publication. Unlike many sf writers MacDonald has not gone overboard in predicting short term change; his 1975 future looks remarkably like our historical 1975, if you can overlook the obvious 1950ties attitudes of his characters. The only major "prediction" MacDonald was wrong about is the one needed for his story: the state of the space program.
In MacDonald's 1975, the space program has failed to get very far, both in the US and elsewhere, because every time any attempt gets anywhere mysterious attacks of sabotage cripple it. The odd thing is, most of the sabotage is done by the people working on the projects....
The gimmick is that these attacks are caused by a race of decadent alien dreamers, who refuse to believe in the reality of the dream realms, including Earth, they visit to slake their lust for violence and destruction. All the Dreamers know is that any space exploration attempt is bad and must be destroyed immediately. It is only when one of them rediscovers the original purpose for the dream machines that the carnage can be stopped...
The background to the Dreamers features one of the more dated, hackeyed sf ideas, that We Are Not From Earth, an idea long since refuted by paleontology. (Though that didn't stop Larry Niven from using it later...) If you can swallow this, Wine of the Dreamers is a fine novel, a good example of 1950ties paranoia science fiction.
