Perchance to Dream, Charles Beaumont
Perchance to Dream, Charles Beaumont
2 Rating(s)
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Perchance to Dream
Selected Stories

Author: Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury

Narrator: Paul Boehmer, Gabrielle de Cuir, Harlan Ellison, Alex Hyde-White, Arthur Morey, John Rubinstein, Stefan Rudnicki, various narrators

Unabridged: 12 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/02/2016


Synopsis

The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writerIt is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone—for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more—all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible; it all seems plausible, even likely.

About Charles Beaumont

Charles Beaumont (1929–1967) was a prolific American writer of speculative fiction, including the signature collection Night Ride, and Other Journeys, also available from Blackstone and Skyboat. His stories provided the source material for over twenty classic Twilight Zone episodes.

About Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including such classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award-winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.

About William Shatner

William Shatner, an acclaimed actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director, is best known for his role as Captain James T. Kirk in the highly successful Star Trek television series. He has also starred in the television series T. J. Hooker and as Denny Crane in the hit television series Boston Legal, a role for which he has won two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award.He is also the author of numerous Star Trek novels, memoirs, and nonfiction books.He is actively involved in charitable activities for the Juvenile Justice Connection Project, Tourette’s Syndrome, the California Endangered Species Campaign, and Toys for Tots, and he also speaks at Star Trek conventions nationwide. He made his film debut in the 1957 production of The Brothers Karamazov, followed by Judgment at Nuremberg, The Intruder, and other films. During the early 1960s he had guest roles in many of the top television shows.

About Paul Boehmer

Paul Boehmer attended his first Shakespearean play while in high school; he knew then that he was destined to become the classically trained actor he is today. Graduating with a master's degree, Paul was cast as Hamlet by the very stage actor who inspired his career path. A nod from the Universe he'd chosen aright! Paul has worked on Broadway and extensively in regional theater. Coinciding with another of his passions, sci-fi, Paul has been cast in various roles in many episodes of Star Trek. Paul's love of literature and learning led him by nature to his work as a narrator for audiobooks, his latest endeavour. Paul is married to the love of his life, Offir, and they live in Los Angeles with their two midnight-rambling tomcats, Dread and David.

About Gabrielle de Cuir

Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award. She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and presently has several projects in various stages of development for film.

About Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) wrote and edited more than 120 books and more than 1,700 stories, essays, and articles, as well as dozens of screenplays and teleplays. He won the Hugo Award nine times, the Nebula Award four times, the Bram Stoker Award six times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès Fantasy Film Award twice, and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by PEN, the international writer’s union. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006.

About Alex Hyde-White

Alex Hyde-White is an actor and a producer of two films and hundreds of audiobooks thru his label Punch Audio.

About Arthur Morey

Arthur Morey’s work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.

About John Rubinstein

John Rubinstein is an actor, composer, and director who won a Tony Award for his starring role in Broadway’s Children of a Lesser God. He has narrated dozens of audiobooks, earning several AudioFile Earphones Awards and being named a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2013.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won several Audie Awards and been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices. A longtime fan of Weird fiction, and of Robert W. Chambers in particular, Stefan’s dramatic adaptation of The King in Yellow received the Madolin Cervantes Award from the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers and was staged by him at the Donnell Library Center in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Eloy

Tal vez soñar(relato) - Charles Beaumont "Dicen que los sueños solo duran un par de segundos —dijo—. No sé si eso es cierto o no. No importa. Parecen durar más. A veces he soñado toda una vida. A veces han pasado generaciones. De vez en cuando, el tiempo se detiene por completo. Un instante helado, q......more

Goodreads review by Tristan

Known primarily for his work on Rod Serling’s ‘The Twilight Zone’, Charles Beaumont’s life and writing career was cut short at the age of 38 by a then mysterious illness, which now is deemed highly plausible to have been early onset Alzheimer’s. At time of death, it has been reported that he looked......more

Goodreads review by Sandy

If the name "Charles Beaumont" strikes a familiar chord with you, it is likely because you have seen that name in the opening or end credits of any number of popular entertainments. Beaumont was the screenwriter for the 1958 sci-fi shlock classic "Queen of Outer Space," "The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao," and......more

Goodreads review by Sam

Charles Beaumont was a writer on the original Twilight Zone TV show who also wrote weird/fantastic short stories which are collected in Perchance To Dream. It’s easy to see why Beaumont isn’t nearly as famous as Richard Matheson, another Twilight Zone writer, because his stories are TERRIBLE. The co......more


Quotes

“Twist endings get a bad rap in our oh-so-sophisticated millennium, but in Perchance to Dream, they’re in the hands of a master…Throughout the book, Beaumont challenges perception, norms, and our smug reliance on appearances, using supernatural and science fictional elements to drive home his points.” NPR

“This is a worthwhile and important collection, preserving an author’s work for a new generation of readers. Read them. Get angry. Be shocked. Laugh. Charles Beaumont’s work will certainly provoke your imagination.” Weird Fiction Review

“These stories recall a more innocent Americae…Beaumont celebrates the American landscape in prose that’s often lyrical…Each with its satisfying twist, often surprisingly surprising, these stories charm and entertain while mapping out the landscape of (white, male) American anxieties in the middle of the last century.” Kirkus Reviews

“Beaumont’s short stories provide fantastic listening—all the more so as told by the skillful variety of narrators in this production…Stefan Rudnicki takes the lion’s share of the narrations, and, given that he excels at science fiction, he also steals much of the show. Yet every narrator executes his or her story with a strong, spot-on delivery. Taken together, the stories make for a well-curated collection with narrations that listeners will enjoy.” AudioFile

“Beaumont’s stories offer flashes of true horror, subverting shock value with vertiginous questions about good, evil, and human nature.” Seattle Times

“Terrifically creepy pieces that almost always end with a twist…Beaumont deserves the wider audience this volume can provide.” Library Journal