Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
And Not Make Dreams Your Master is Stephen Goldin's 1971 near-future psychological-SF novel, in which a sleep researcher discovers that her dream-recording machine is producing dreams she did not have. The mystery is whether the recordings are real, whether someone is using her machine without her knowledge, or whether her own mind is producing the dreams in waking hours she is forgetting.
Goldin writes the speculative-neuroscience procedural with the care his catalog makes a trademark. The sleep-research detail is sourced from the actual early-1970s state of the field (REM mapping, EEG harmonics, the first dream-recall protocols). The paranoid mystery escalates patiently. The conclusion earns its strangeness rather than reaching for it.
Recommended for fans of 1970s psychological SF (Philip K. Dick's Ubik, Roger Zelazny's The Dream Master), and for readers looking for books like And Not Make Dreams Your Master in the unreliable-sleep-research subgenre. Three solid stars and one of the more inventive Goldin standalones.
Related reads
If you liked And Not Make Dreams Your Master
A World Called Solitude
by Stephen Goldin
Stephen Goldin's 1981 SF novel. A man alone on an abandoned colony world and the AI that has been his only companion. Quiet, moving, ahead of its time.
Mindflight
by Stephen Goldin
Mindflight by Stephen Goldin 1978 review. A hard-SF novel about a starship pilot whose telepathic interface with his ship is the reason he can fly it and the reason he is losing his mind.
The Lincoln Lawyer
by Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly 2005 review. Mickey Haller, a Los Angeles defense attorney who works out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car, takes a case that pulls him into something larger. The novel that launched a series and a film franchise.
Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 2014 review. Three mothers at an Australian elementary school converge on a kindergarten Trivia Night where someone will die. The contemporary domestic-suspense novel that defined the late-2010s book-club shelf.
In the Woods
by Tana French
In the Woods by Tana French 2007 review. Dublin Murder Squad detective Rob Ryan is assigned to a child murder in the same woods where his two best friends disappeared twenty years earlier. The Edgar winner that launched the strongest contemporary literary-crime series.
Tell No One
by Harlan Coben
Tell No One by Harlan Coben 2001 review. A pediatrician receives an email containing a video clip of his murdered wife, eight years after her death. The single best Coben standalone and the one that defined the contemporary domestic-thriller register.
More by this author