Perchance to Dream

Charles Beaumont (1929 1967) was the author of three collections of short stories and two novels. He penned twenty-two episodes of The Twilight Zone, considered some of the show s finest.

Ray Bradbury (1920 2012) was the author of hundreds of short stories and nearly fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays. His works includeFahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles.

William Shatner has cultivated a career spanning more than fifty years as an award-winning actor, director, producer, writer, and recording artist. In 1962, he earned his first starring role in Roger Corman s The Intruder, written by Charles Beaumont. His career highlights include the iconic role of Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek television series and movies.

"This fresh collection of Beaumont's weird fiction is rife with fantastical tropes and twist endings...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 sometimes gently, sometimes jarringly...[Beaumont s] imagination, as Perchance to Dream amply shows, was more than most writer's enjoy in the longest of lifetimes."
-NPR

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

"Creepy, melancholy short stories from the mid-20th-century master...Each with its satisfying twist, often surprisingly surprising, these stories charm and entertain."
-Kirkus

In every genre he explored, Beaumont wrote with style, with a sure sense of his characters. His stories are often haunting, and though their concerns are ever enduring, they provide a clear window into the fears and hopes of his time.
Dean Koontz

The name of Charles Beaumont will be honored and recognized for generations yet to come.
Robert Bloch

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

"As a writer, Beaumont never seemed particularly concerned with observing the hard boundary lines of genre, and sometimes slipped over it and across again with gleeful abandon. As a writer of imaginative fiction, Beaumont was especially adept at the use of fiction as an object lesson, using it as a mirror to force readers to confront their own complacency and small-mindedness. In Beaumont s hands, wishes become nightmares, and the road to hell is always paved with good intentions."