ISLAND DREAMS: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic

"Editor Claude Lalumiere has assembled one of the best original anthologies of the year. Pleasingly heavy on cyberpunk visions of the future, yet with a fair smattering of slipstream and fantasy, this book strikes a beautiful balance
among fabulist modes [...] Highly recommended."
Paul Di Filippo, Asimov's

"Highly recommended; it's an intriguing idea for a collection [...] some skilled writers live in Montreal!"
BiblioTravel

"Ambitious [...] a diverse, interesting collection. Some stories are rigorously constructed science fiction, others are canny inhabitants of the horror genre [...] Véhicule Press has put together a striking edition [...] Kudos.
Challenging Destiny

"One of the best original anthologies I've seen in 2003."
Rich Horton, Locus Magazine

"A strong collection of some of the best science-fiction writing today [...] Lalumière certainly knows how to spot talent [...] he has succeeded once again."
Eileen Travers, The Montreal Gazette

"With flashes of brilliance, Island Dreams provides at least a half dozen new names to watch [...] this anthology certainly provides ample hope for the future of Montreal's fantastic fiction."
SFSite

"A really excellent collection and I have to congratulate Claude Lalumiere for finding such top-notch fiction."
Snadzmatazz

"A diverse collection of speculative, and often dark, fiction from a number of daring and distinctive voices."
The McGill Daily

"The next two books are both edited by Claude Lalumière, and both feature only Canadian writers. Island Dreams, in fact, is restricted to writers from Montreal only, while Open Space features writers from all over Canada. One might think the more restricted anthology would be weaker, as having a smaller pool of writers to choose from, but in fact I preferred Island Dreams. From Island Dreams my favorite stories were a few novelettes. Glenn Grant's "Burning Day" is an SF mystery in which an android detective and his human partner investigate the murder of a number of androids, in which a radical anti-AI group is implicated. The mystery part is fine, but the best part of the story is the look at a combined human/android society, and the tensions within such a society. Yves Menard's "In Yerusalom" is about a mysterious alien city dropped on the North American plains, from whence the aliens distribute mysterious benefits. They also sponsor an artform, controlled dreaming, and the story concerns a team of people hoping to win a contest judged by the aliens. Linda Dydyk's "The Strange Afterlife of Henry Wigam" is about the treatment of a man revived from cryogenic sleep, a revival that didn't go very well. Of the short stories I liked Dora Knez's "The Dead Park", an oddly sweet story of a man living in a house next to a park where the risen dead congregate; and I respected but didn't exactly like Elise Moser's brutal "Human Rites", about a nearly feral band of homeless children."
Rich Horton