I dreamt this morning that I was in large room which resembled a convention dealers room, but wasn’t. It’s really just a hotel ballroom filled with many rectangular tables. The part of the the room in which I’m sitting is quiet, but about a quarter of the room is separated from me by a low wall, and it sounds rowdy over there. A wild and crazy party seems to be going on, with laughter, loud music, drinking, dancing, and even a few fist fights. (Because, after all, what really good party doesn’t have at least a couple of those?)

Suddenly, Edward James Olmos walks up to me—or should I say, Admiral William Adama, because he’s in full Battlestar Galactica garb. He tells me that he’s tired of his people making that ruckus. He tells me that I have to shut the party down. He tells me that I have to pull the plug.

I stand on a chair and look over that wall, and there indeed is the crew of Battlestar Galactica, not the actors, but the characters, in their appropriate costumes and uniforms, whooping it up. I obey Adama. I shout out an announcement.

“Until the crew learns to behave,” I say, “there will be no electricity until further notice.”

I step down off the chair and pull a plug from a socket in the wall, killing the power. Suddenly, all is silence. When I turn around, Adama is gone, and so I sit down behind a table, and return to reading the comic book I’d been engrossed in when he’d arrived. I look at the credits on the splash page, and discover that it was written by director Agnès Varda.

Which, once I wake, actually seems to me to be the strangest part of the dream. I’d kill to read a comic book by Agnès Varda!

In my dream, it’s early morning, and I’m wandering a small cruise ship similar to the one Irene and I took to the Galapagos in 2001 and Antarctica in 2005. It doesn’t seem as if anyone else is awake as I head to the dining area in search of breakfast, but when I get there, Ajay and Edna Budrys are already seated. They’re the only ones there.

It doesn’t bother me that Ajay is dead in the real world. Actually, I’m not even aware of it in the dream, and so chat with them nonchalantly about what’s available for breakfast, and the places we’ll be touring that day. Places which, now that I’m awake, I can no longer remember.

I don’t usually eat an elaborate breakfast, maybe only a bagel or croissant, but I have trouble finding one. The tables are filled with food completely inappropriate for breakfast—hot dogs in buns, marbled cakes with mounds of frosting, thing like that. Finally, after much searching, I do find a bagel, and return to the table to talk with Ajay and Edna.

As I sit, in comes Susan Casper. Gardner Dozois isn’t awake yet, and so it’s just the four of us for awhile. We get to talking about reviews of Ajay’s books, and Susan mentions a particularly devastating one, and how she wanted to contact that critic, whom she knew personally, to see what was up with his undeserved slam.

Bells ring, telling us that the first boat is going ashore. I want to be on it, to see the sights in the early morning light, when fewer people are up and about. Then I slowly come awake, still with no idea what sort of place we’ll be touring that day, but eager to see it anyway.

I dreamt this morning that I was sitting with Peter Heck in a convention dealers room. Not sure why I was just sitting there, chewing the fat, as the only times I ever did that was when I was actually working a table, and I haven’t been involved in something like that for years.

But there we were, parked as if we intended to stay for hours, leaning back in our chairs, relaxed. Somehow we got to talking about the value of old magazines.

“Did you know,” he said to me, “that a complete run of Interzone in mint condition is worth $3,000,000?”

I did not know that, I told him, and thought back to the days when I’d bought the first issues of Interzone at the Forbidden Planet bookstore in New York, and how I’d sold them long ago for far less.

I woke, wishing that I’d hung on to them.

Once awake, I check over at eBay, and see that the sixth issue of Interzone is currently for sale. It has but a single bid, and its price is only $5.58. That tells me that you’re not going to need $3,000,000 should you wish to amass your own collection.

I have no idea why my subconscious thought that you would.

I dreamt this morning that I was sitting with friends in a stadium so huge that when I looked across the way I noted the rows on the other side descending so far down that I could not see the bottom and rising so high into the sky that they vanished into a mist. An announcer’s voice buzzed inside my head to tell me that attendance today exceeded 800 million people, which my mind accepted as a possible number in whatever world this dream was set. The voice promised us all a great show that day, and warned that if we wanted to pick up refreshments or go to the bathroom, we’d better do it right then, because the event was starting soon and we wouldn’t want to miss any of the action.

I stepped into the hallway behind me, not pausing to think what a crowd of 800 million people getting popcorns and sodas would be like. Only once I’d entered it, the hallway wasn’t that of a stadium, but rather that of a hospital. And I was suddenly dressed all in white, like an orderly. I had a picture ID clipped to my shirt, and when I flipped it up to peer at it saw that it was indeed my picture. I accepted the scene change, but also kept hunting for the refreshment stand and the restroom. Wouldn’t want to miss the show!

I wandered endless hallways and eventually came to a break room of some kind in which patients were seated at tables, some playing dominos, others watching the small TV that hung from the ceiling. And who should be sitting at one table but writer Gregory Feeley, performing the role of a patient advocate. He was telling an old man about his complicated insurance options. As I passed their table, Greg looked at me curiously, wondering how I had gotten there, but did not pause in his explanation to ask. We acknowledged each other with nods only, and as I moved back out into the hallway, I could hear him continuing on with his advice, the patter of his very competent spiel unbroken.

I woke while still wandering the halls, without ever finding that refreshment stand, and without ever learning what event could be so popular as to draw 800 million people to one location.

Tom Disch visited me in my sleep this morning. There was no sense of surprise in the dream, by which I mean there was no awareness that in real life he was dead, and that such an encounter would from now on be impossible.

We were sitting at a picnic table, much as we were during my moving one-on-one conference back at Clarion in 1979, which I shared about earlier here. We were in the backyard, not of my current house, but of the one I lived in from 1989 through 2004.

We were having a pleasant conversation, about which I’m sorry to say I remember none of the details. (That’s unfortunately often the way with dreams; the stuff I most want to remember fades upon waking.) But I do remember the twinkle in his eye, which was there during our whole chat, a twinkle which so many of you have mentioned in your posts in the days since his death.

In the midst of all this, it suddenly occurred to me that I was being a poor host. He had traveled so far, and I hadn’t offered him anything to eat or drink. So I apologized, and asked what I could get him. He said that he only wanted juice, so I went inside to get him some, filling a glass with cold orange juice from the fridge.

By the time I came back outside, glass in hand, he was gone.

And then I woke up, missing him.

I dreamt this morning that I had wandered into a huge auditorium in which all the chairs were arranged in a circle, planetarium style. In the center of the room, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were sitting in a circular pit, which, at the proper time, would be covered by a dome, onto which at the right time they’d project one of their favorite films.

They said they were going to screen Lassiter, a title which in the dream meant nothing to me, but which upon waking I see is a 1984 movie starring Tom Selleck. I’ve never seen it, but based on reading about it, I can’t imagine it being anyone’s favorite film. In the dream, however, that’s exactly what Spielberg and Lucas were going to show us, only they never explained why, and I never questioned their choice.

A handsome man was sitting on the lip of the pit, dangling his feet. As I looked at him, I somehow knew he was an actor, but I couldn’t quite recognize him, perhaps because his features kept morphing. (more…)

I had a dream this morning in which I was in an unnamed, unidentifiable foreign country. I was teamed with Donald O’Connor, who bore the same physical appearance as he did in Singing in the Rain, and Robert Silverberg, who looked exactly like he does today.

We were in a marketplace, similar to what you’d see in a film like Casablanca. The three of us were circled around a life-sized, hollow cardboard mock-up of a car. For some reason that never became completely clear, it was very important that we convince someone who was about to show up that this was a real, functional car. So I crouched down and hid behind a rear tire (a cardboard rear tire), while Donald and Bob showed off the car and I made automobile noises as best as I could.

I’m no Mel Blanc, so unfortunately, my attempt was rather pathetic and I wasn’t very successful in my part of this ruse. Luckily, I woke before I discovered what would happen if we failed.

I dreamt this morning that I was at Readercon, walking down a hallway toward the hotel restaurant. I have no idea whether it was time for lunch or dinner. When I stepped through the entranceway, all of the tables were occupied, and the joint was jumping. I surveyed the room in search of a table of friendly faces into which I could insert myself.

As I checked out the restaurant, I realized that I knew everyone there, which wasn’t so unusual, at least not for a Readercon. But what was unusual was that I saw Eric M. Van sitting at one table as part of a group, and then I also saw Eric M. Van sitting at the next table with a different party, and then at the next table as well!

And the next, and the next, and the next …

In fact, there wasn’t a table without one of him. There were dozens of Eric M. Vans scattered throughout the restaurant, each one taking part in a lively conversation.

How did he do that?, I wondered. In my dream state, I didn’t think this impossible. I was just … curious.

As I stood there, unable to decide at which table I wanted to try to squeeze in, I woke. I guess I won’t get to have a meal at Readercon until Readercon itself.

>I had a dream this morning in which I was at a water park, navigating an intricate attraction built of many connected tunnels, slides, and bridges. Sometimes, I’d be swept along to a section which had collapsed, and have to climb along exposed girders from one area to another, rather than simply be wafted forward by the rushing water.

It seemed as if there were too many of these breaks for me to actually ever make it to the end of the ride, so at one point I decided to climb back to the beginning. That proved to be too treacherous, though, so I soon gave that up and let the water carry me on. Which it did, this time with no further interruptions, and I was eventually washed all the way to the ride’s end.

When I got there, I discovered that some people I knew were waiting for me. Tim Pratt was there, along with his wife, Heather Shaw, and their new baby, River. I realized that I was wearing a cowboy hat, which had something to do with the water park, because it suddenly seemed that I worked there, and that the hat was part of my uniform. People were bringing their kids over to have their pictures taken with those of us wearing hats, which makes no sense now but seemed to make sense when I was asleep.

Pictures taken, I woke up, and scribbled this down.

I had a dream this morning in which I was wandering an unidentified convention, though it had to be a Worldcon somewhere due to the size of the crowds. I passed a room in which people were glued to a marathon of episodes from the Swamp Thing TV show, and then came upon the con suite, which contained lots of neon and included its own pizza oven.

I began to snap pictures of the attendees there. Most of them where unfamiliar faces, but I was being a completist about it. When I went to photograph at the table at which Connie Willis sat, I heard a disconcerting popping sound, and looked at my camera, only to see that the flash was sticking out like the bouncing head from a sprung jack-in-the-box. Oh, great, I thought, the con is just beginning, and here I am without a working camera.

Then, from out of nowhere, who should pop up but Bob Howe, who proceeds to pull out many small tools (it looks to me as if he travels with a lock-picking kit), examine the camera, and tell me exactly what to do to fix it.

What I’d like to know is—just when and why did my subconscious decide that was its symbol of competency?