Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective

Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective
UK edition hardback
Author(s)	George R.R. Martin
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fantasy novel, Short stories, novellas
Publisher	Victor Gollancz Ltd
Publication date	21 September 2006
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	1286 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-575-07905-3 (UK first edition, hardback)
OCLC Number	67374681

Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective is a career-spanning collection of George R. R. Martin's short fiction. It was first published in 2003 as a single volume hardcover from Subterranean Press under the title GRRM: A RRetrospective and debuted in Toronto at Torcon 3, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention, where Martin was the Writer Guest Of Honor. The collection features 34 pieces of fiction (including two TV scripts), an introduction by Gardner Dozois, commentary by Martin on each stage of his career, a Martin bibliography, and original art for each story. Subterranean published the book in three formats: a trade hardcover, a signed, numbered, and slipcased deluxe hardcover, and a very limited, deluxe leather-bound, lettered hardcover. The Washington Post called Subterranean's single-author collection "the most ambitious volume ever to come from an American specialty press".

A UK first hardcover edition (right), running to more than 1,200 pages, was published three years later, in September 2006, by Victor Gollancz Ltd. Bantam then reprinted the collection in the United States in 2007 as a two-volume trade hardcover set. Both the 2006 UK reprint and 2007 USA reprint carry the new title Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective.

List of stories

The collection is divided into nine thematic sections, with all the stories arranged in rough chronological order. The sections, and the stories they contain, are as follows:

A Four-Color Fanboy

• Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark
• The Fortress
• And Death His Legacy

The Filthy Pro

• The Hero
• The Exit to San Breta
• The Second Kind of Loneliness
• With Morning Comes Mistfall

The Light of Distant Stars

• A Song for Lya
• This Tower of Ashes
• And Seven Times Never Kill Man
• The Stone City
• Bitterblooms
• The Way of Cross and Dragon

The Heirs of Turtle Castle

• The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr
• The Ice Dragon
• In the Lost Lands

Hybrids and Horrors

• Meathouse Man
• Remembering Melody
• Sandkings
• Nightflyers
• The Monkey Treatment
• The Pear-Shaped Man

A Taste of Tuf

This section features two stories in the Haviland Tuf series, about an overweight space trader encountering various civilizations.

• A Beast for Norn (original version)
• Guardians

The Siren Song of Hollywood

This section features two television screenplays by George R. R. Martin. The former is a script for an episode of The Twilight Zone, and the latter is a pilot for a never-made science fiction series similar to Sliders.

• The Road Less Travelled (Twilight Zone teleplay)
• Doorways pilot/first draft (unproduced teleplay)

Doing the Wild Card Shuffle

This section features two of George R. R. Martin's contributions to the Wild Cards shared universe.

• Shell Games
• From the Journal of Xavier Desmond

The Heart in Conflict

• Under Siege
• The Skin Trade
• Unsound Variations
• The Glass Flower
• The Hedge Knight (A Song of Ice and Fire novella)
• Portraits of His Children

External links

• Official entry on Subterranean page
• Announcement of British edition on author’s page
• Bantam page