{"id":610,"date":"2021-02-18T13:56:18","date_gmt":"2021-02-18T13:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=610"},"modified":"2021-03-15T14:57:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T14:57:46","slug":"the-dreamsman-by-gordon-r-dickson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=610","title":{"rendered":"The Dreamsman by Gordon R. Dickson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>The Dreamsman<\/em><\/strong> by Gordon R. Dickson (<em>Star Science Fiction #6<\/em>, 1959) begins with a Mr Willer shaving, until:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>[He] poises the razor for its first stroke\u2014and instantly freezes in position. For a second he stands immobile. Then his false teeth clack once and he starts to pivot slowly toward the northwest, razor still in hand, quivering like a directional antenna seeking its exact target. This is as it should be. Mr. Willer, wrinkles, false teeth and all, is a directional antenna.\u00a0 p. 78 (<em>The Year\u2019s Best SF #5<\/em>, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Shortly afterwards, Willer goes to a house and confronts the couple who live there, stating that they are telepaths who are transmitting. After he manages to win their confidence (admitting in the process that he is almost two hundred years old) he tells the couple that he can take them to a colony of similarly talented people. They then drive to a military base and, after Willer has hypnotised his way past the soldiers and guards, reach a spaceship that will supposedly take the couple to Venus.<br>At this point (spoiler) a man dressed in silver mesh arrives and reveals that Willer routinely disposes of psi-capable people so Earth people won\u2019t evolve and be admitted into Galactic Society (of which the silver-mesh man is a representative). The reason? Mr Willer likes things the way they are.<br>An unconvincing squib that is a collection of worn out clich\u00e9s.<br>* (Mediocre). 2,850 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dreamsman by Gordon R. Dickson (Star Science Fiction #6, 1959) begins with a Mr Willer shaving, until: [He] poises the razor for its first stroke\u2014and instantly freezes in position. For a second he stands immobile. Then his false teeth clack once and he starts to pivot slowly toward the northwest, razor still in hand, [&hellip;]<\/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":[177],"tags":[21,168,179,12,180],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gordon-r-dickson","tag-21","tag-168","tag-gordon-r-dickson","tag-short-story","tag-star-science-fiction"],"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\/610","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=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}