The driving idea behind this book is the ability, with the help of some fancy technology, of a trained neuroparticipant therapist to directly monitor and control his patient's dreams. There is a downside to this: the therapist had better be very emotionally stable himself, else he runs the risk of having the patient take control and impress his thoughts and emotional problems on the therapist. Zelazny takes this basic concept and wraps it first in truly excellent prose; much of this work reads almost like a prose poem. He adds two strong characters, Charles Render, the therapist, and Eileen Shallot, a blind-from-birth woman who wants to be a therapist herself, but must first get over the problem of how to deal with the sights and visions that her future patients will have. Render (and I believe the name is significant, though this is a literary device Zelazny did not normally use) is a tightly controlled person, carefully bulwarking his emotional walls from the pain of the death of his wife and driven to over-protect his brilliant son. Though repeatedly warned of the dangers, he finds the challenge of introducing Eileen to the world of sight irresistible. Thus the stage is set for a trip through the world of dreams, dreams that are perhaps both simpler and more comprehensible than the garden variety most people have, but described with such excellence that it is almost like seeing a sequence of pictures, watercolors and oils in vivid colors.

This story was originally published in slightly shorter form as "He Who Shapes", which took the Nebula award for best novella in 1965.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd