{"id":177,"date":"2020-12-28T15:41:48","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T15:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=177"},"modified":"2020-12-28T15:41:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T15:41:48","slug":"dream-fighter-by-bob-shaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=177","title":{"rendered":"Dream Fighter by Bob Shaw"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dream Fighter<\/em><\/strong> by Bob Shaw (F&SF<\/em>, February 1977) takes place after the \u201cDust-Up\u201d (which appears to have been a limited nuclear war), and starts with Victor Rowan and his wife Jane checking into a dilapidated hotel. Rowan is a dream fighter, a mutant who can project images, and we get an early demonstration of his abilities when the couple decide to take their disagreement about the quality of their accommodation out of the hotel corridor and into their room:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you mind if we continue the conversation inside? If we\u2019re paying for the room, we might as well make use of it.\u201d
Jane nodded, turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.
Just beyond it, in the shabby dimness of the room, stood a grinning, scaly horror \u2014 part man, part dragon \u2014 which raised a clawed hand in menace. Jane drew breath sharply, but stood her ground.
\u201cVictor,\u201d she said. \u201cVictor!\u201d
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Rowan mumbled. He closed his mind, painfully, and the creature vanished into nothingness.\u00a0 p. 65<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We then learn that Rowan is due to compete in a dream fighter competition that evening and, in the rest of this section, we also find out that (a) his ability is due to a small walnut shaped mutation on the top of his head, (b) he has lost twelve fights in a row, and (c) Grumman, his next opponent, is very good.
There is also a scene where Rowan\u2019s agent, Sammy Kling, meets with Tuck Raphael, who manages Grumman. Raphael has big plans for Grumman (who Kling quickly identifies as a psychopath) and bribes Kling to get Rowan to \u201caccept defeat gracefully.\u201d Kling takes the money but does not tell Rowan, who he figures will lose the fight anyway.
The climactic scene opens with Rowan meeting Grumman at the stadium for the first time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A strongly built man he recognized as Grumman emerged from another corridor and reached the foot of the ramp at the same time. Rowan was instantly aware of his opponent\u2019s chilling psychic aura, but he went through it, like a swimmer breasting an icy tide, and held out his hand.
\u201cI\u2019ve heard a lot about you,\u201d he said.
Grumman looked down at the outstretched hand and conjured a piece of brown, smoking filth into it. The image was too close to Rowan\u2019s sphere of influence to last for more than a fraction of a second before he blanked it out of existence, but the accompanying mental shockwave had the force of a physical blow.\u00a0 p. 70<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Just before the fight begins, Rowan gets another taste of things to come:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the head of the ramp, one on each side, were two low circular bases. Grumman went to the one on the left. Rowan turned right and was still a couple of paces from his base when there was an abrupt silence, followed by the sound of a woman screaming. He spun and found himself facing a thirty-foot high demon.
A red light began flashing in the judges\u2019 kiosk, to indicate that Grumman had made a foul play by leading off before the signal.
Rowan\u2019s senses were swamped by the reality of the beast towering over him. He had seen many monsters during his career, beings designed to inspire fear and thus weakness, but this one was in a class of its own. Its face was a compound of things human and things animal, and of things the earth had never seen. Its body was grotesquely deformed, yet true to alien symmetries \u2014 black, powerful, matted with hair in some places, glistening naked in others. And above all, the demon was obscene, massively sexual, with an overpowering realization of detail which had the intended effect of cowing the beholder\u2019s mind. Rowan was closest to the apparition, and he took the full projected force of it.\u00a0 p. 71<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The fight initially goes as expected, with Rowan taking a psychic beating as his images are overpowered. Later in the contest however (spoiler), Rowan manages to recover when Grumman is briefly distracted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Rowan] summoned up an old friend \u2014 one who had settled many issues for him in the past.
Valerius was a professional soldier, a scarred and weather-beaten veteran who had served with three different legions in Syria, Gaul and Britain. He had withstood rain, snow and desert heat with equal stoicism, and he had slain the varied enemies of Rome with impartial efficiency, regardless of whether they wore silks or skins, regardless of which gods those enemies believed to be giving them protection. He was a stolid, unimaginative man \u2014 as plain, functional and uncompromising as the short sword he carried \u2014 and in all his years of service he had never encountered a creature which could survive having an iron blade driven through its guts. And, as Valerius saw things, this meant that no such creature existed.
Rowan \u2014 knowing by heart every detail, every rivet and thong of the legionary\u2019s equipment and armor \u2014 snapped him into existence in microseconds. He was much smaller than the demon, a sign that Rowan\u2019s strength was nearly spent, but his sword was sharp, and he struck with economical swiftness. The blade went deep into the demon\u2019s protruding belly, and puslike fluids gouted. Rowan heard Grumman grunt with pain and surprise, and he guessed at once that the younger man had never experienced neuro-shock before.
This is what it\u2019s like, he thought savagely, directing onto the demon a flurry of hacking blows which transmitted their fury to its creator, convulsing him with sympathetic shock.\u00a0 p. 73<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Rowan wins the fight but, of course, he is later accosted in the street by Raphael\u2019s thugs, and revenge taken when they cut off his \u201cwalnut,\u201d which robs him of his powers. After the spade strikes down, there is a great line:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, in that ultimate pang of agony, Rowan was born into the world of normal men.\u00a0 p. 74<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The story should probably have stopped there but it continues on for another few paragraphs as Rowan returns to his concerned wife, and asks her whether she wants to hear \u201cthe bad news, or the good news.\u201d
When I first read this is 1977 I thought it was excellent, partly because of the 1950s post-nuclear holocaust feel of the story, partly because I didn\u2019t see the end coming, and partly because of the great line above. This time around I didn\u2019t find it quite so good, probably because I knew what was coming, and I could also see one or two areas where it could be slightly improved (see my comment about the ending above). One other thing that tripped me up a little\u2014and this isn\u2019t the story\u2019s fault\u2014is that I remembered a great scene that isn\u2019t in this story but another one!1<\/sup>
Still, this is a pretty good piece, and I\u2019d probably have it in my \u2018Best Of\u2019 for 1977.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 4200 words.

1. I think that other story is Smoke Gets in Your Eyes<\/em> by James Quinn (F&SF<\/em>, December 1977).
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dream Fighter by Bob Shaw (F&SF, February 1977) takes place after the \u201cDust-Up\u201d (which appears to have been a limited nuclear war), and starts with Victor Rowan and his wife Jane checking into a dilapidated hotel. Rowan is a dream fighter, a mutant who can project images, and we get an early demonstration of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[40,46,47,25,12],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bob-shaw","tag-40","tag-3-3","tag-bob-shaw","tag-fsf","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}