A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers
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Author | Jeffrey Thomas |
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Language | English |
Series | A Nightmare on Elm Street |
Release number | 5 |
Genre | Horror, science fiction |
Publisher | Black Flame |
Publication date | 11 July 2006 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Paperback) |
Pages | 416 |
ISBN | 9781844163830 |
OCLC | 65469780 |
Preceded by | A Nightmare on Elm Street: Perchance to Dream |
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers is a 2006 British science fiction horror novel written by Jeffrey Thomas and published by Black Flame.[1] A tie-in to the Nightmare on Elm Street series of American horror films, it is the fifth and final installment in a series of five Nightmare on Elm Street novels published by Black Flame and is set in a future where technological advancement has allowed for the recording and reliving of dreams, attracting the attention of supernatural killer Freddy Krueger.[2]
Plot
[edit]In a near future where dreams and memories can be recorded and relived with Saxon Systems' TranceBoxes, the government has contracted the Springwood, Ohio, branch of Macrocosm Research to study the digitized brains of local murder victims, all of whom had strange tumors in the parts of their brains associated with dreaming; unbeknownst to the Macrocosm researchers, the victims were killed by Freddy Krueger, a serial child rapist and killer who, after being burned to death by angry parents, now haunts the Dream World. Freddy, long dormant due to a lack of fear from Springwood's populace to feed on, is revitalized by his old victims' nightmares being studied and begins terrorizing the Macrocosm researchers and the employees of Mnemonic Designs, a company Alex Carmack, a researcher for Macrocosm, had smuggled the recorded dreams to work on in secret in hopes of selling them to Saxon. Alex gives TranceBox copies of the recorded nightmares to his younger brother, Devon, and five of Devon's friends, unknowingly granting more power to Freddy.
One of Devon's friends, a hacker named Autumn Langevin, contemplates making the nightmares available for illegal download on the Internet, which would give Freddy the means to torment the entire world and not just Springwood. As Freddy begins killing people, including two of Devon's friends, he also tries to tempt Autumn into uploading the nightmares, promising to make her a God. After three of his colleagues at Macrocosm are killed, Alex trashes the company's equipment in an attempt to combat Freddy and calls Trisha Smith, his girlfriend and co-worker at Mnemonic, and instructs her to destroy everything related to the nightmares at Mnemonic. After dismantling Mnemonic's equipment, Trisha calls Devon, and together they use a TranceBox to enter the Dream World in an attempt to save a trio of Mnemonic employees being held there by Freddy. Devon and Trisha fail to stop Freddy from butchering the three Mnemonic staff members, but do call and warn Devon's girlfriend, Grace Simmons, and her friend, Ama Oduro, to destroy their copies of the nightmares while Devon checks on Autumn.
Devon discovers Autumn had begun uploading the nightmares onto her website and stops the upload by destroying Autumn's computers, though he is unable to prevent Freddy from murdering Autumn. Alex uses Macrocosm tech to erase Trisha, Grace, and Ama's memories of Freddy, weakening the killer enough for him to be vanquished by Devon, who leaves Freddy at the mercy of the vengeful souls of his recent victims after blowing him up with a bomb he brought into the Dream World. Alex wipes his and Devon's memories of Freddy, but a few weeks later, Macrocosm, goaded by the government, begins studying the tumors found in the brains of Freddy's latest victims, with the project being headed by the amnesiac Alex, who believes he can use memories extracted from the brains to discover the identity of whoever killed his and Devon's friends and "drag him out of the shadows—into the light."
Publication
[edit]In 2004, Black Flame solicited pitches from author Jeffrey Thomas for tie-in novels based on films produced by New Line Cinema. Black Flame turned down Thomas's pitch for a Jason X novel but accepted his proposal for one based on A Nightmare on Elm Street, "which had a little bit of a SF spin to it."[3] The concept of combining science fiction with horror by setting a Nightmare on Elm Street story "a couple years in the future" was suggested to Thomas by Black Flame associate editor Mark Newton.[4] The novel, Thomas's first mass market release, was, according to Thomas, "a blast to write" and "an exciting challenge" in which he was able to "bring my own imagination to the task of writing a story based on an established series."[5] When it came to writing Freddy Krueger, Thomas took inspiration from the 2003 film Freddy vs. Jason, specifically the film establishing Freddy needing to be remembered to retain his power, paced Freddy's appearances to build suspense and so as to not water down the character's impact, and characterized Freddy as having a "nasty" and "smugly self-amused" sense of humor comparable to the demon (Pazuzu) from William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel The Exorcist.[4]
Reception
[edit]Don D'Ammassa of Science Fiction Chronicle commended the novel, calling it "quite readable" and further commenting, "Thomas has proven himself to be an interesting writer, particularly at shorter length, and here demonstrates his ability to take an existing theme and do something new with it."[6] Similarly, Louis Fowler of Bookgasm opined that the book's plot was "brilliant in its simplicity" and concluded, "Thomas has written a great read, one that, while using familiar characters, works so well on its own that [it] would be an incredible way to bring the franchise back to life if it ever hit the silver screen."[7]
References
[edit]- ^ Stephen Jones (2007). The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18. Constable & Robinson. Introduction: Horror in 2006. ISBN 9780786720491.
- ^ Marie Toft, ed. (2007). What Do I Read Next? 2007: A Readers Guide to Current Genre Fiction, Volume 1. Gale. p. 233. ISBN 9780787690250.
- ^ Thompson, Robert (7 December 2007). "Interview with Jeffrey Thomas". fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com. Fantasy Book Critic. Retrieved 4 September 2024.
- ^ a b "Exclusive Interview: Jeffrey Thomas". nightmareonelmstreetfilms.com. Nightmare on Elm Street Companion. 12 February 2006. Retrieved 4 September 2024.
- ^ Eden, Dierdra (13 July 2011). "Interview with Author Jeffrey Thomas". astorybookworld.com. A Storybook World. Retrieved 4 September 2024.
- ^ "Critical Mass by Don D'Ammassa". Science Fiction Chronicle. Vol. 1, no. 267. United States: Warren Lapine. August 2006. p. 32.
- ^ Fowler, Louis (17 August 2006). "A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers". bookgasm.com. Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 26 January 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2024.
External links
[edit]- The Dream Dealers title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Interview with Jeffrey Thomas at Nightmare on Elm Street Companion
- 2006 British novels
- 2006 science fiction novels
- 2000s horror novels
- British horror novels
- British science fiction novels
- Fiction about brain–computer interface
- Fiction about child murder
- Fiction about father–daughter relationships
- Fiction about memory erasure and alteration
- Fiction about shapeshifting
- Fiction about uxoricide
- Ghost novels
- Juvenile delinquency in fiction
- Literature about pedophilia
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (franchise) mass media
- Novels about adultery
- Novels about alcoholism
- Novels about computing
- Novels about dysfunctional families
- Novels about mass murder
- Novels about nightmares
- Novels about revenge
- Novels about serial killers
- Novels about siblings
- Novels about technology
- Novels about telekinesis
- Novels about telepathy
- Novels about the Internet
- Novels about theft
- Novels about writers
- Novels based on films
- Novels set in high schools and secondary schools
- Novels set in Ohio
- Novels set in the future
- Novels set in the 2010s
- Novels with multiple narrators
- Science fiction horror novels
- Stuttering in popular culture
- Supernatural novels
- Techno-horror
- Third-person narrative novels
- Works about computer hacking
- Works about cybercrime
- Works about fear
- Works about neuroscience
- Works about sexual harassment
- Works about single parent families
- Works about torture
- Works set in laboratories