DreamChaser
| Zine | |
|---|---|
| Title: | DreamChaser |
| Publisher: | Quantum Fire Press/Moon Magick Productions (Moon Magick West) |
| Editor: | |
| Author(s): | Leah S. |
| Cover Artist(s): | |
| Illustrator(s): | |
| Date(s): | May 1993 |
| Medium: | |
| Size: | |
| Genre: | |
| Fandom: | Quantum Leap |
| Language: | English |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
DreamChaser is a slash 148-page Quantum Leap novel by Leah S.. It won a 1993 STIFfie.
From Media Monitor: "Join the adventures of our heroes take on ruthless pirates, brutal elements... and each other. Live the novel - chase the dream."
Reactions and Reviews
It was published May 1993: Was $14 in person at Media West, 147pp, color laser-print of photograph for cover.Summary: on the [scale] from 1-10, 7 in a good mood, 5 in a critical mood.
The specifics: In QL /, the author has to
a. write "phone-sex"
b. write before or after Sam leaps
c. leap Sam into Al's life (or his own, or into a doppleganger's)
d. get Sam and Al together in a leap.
_Dreamchaser_ takes option D, by way of Stonehenge and the Bermuda Triangle. [Peeve #1: Sam accepts the supernatural without question, though he never did in the TV series.] Sam and Al wind up on a pirate ship, the _Dreamchaser_, with Al leaping into the captain and Sam, his cabin-boy, who is kept as a sex- slave. Some h/c, some agonizing over is-he-teasing-me, I-love- him-but-he's-straight, then realization and consummation. They play pirate for a while, growing ever-closer [peeve #2: Doesn't the crew notice the change? Or the fact that Cap'n Damon Kim and cabin-boy Luke now address each other as "Sam" and "Al"?]. Al is worried that Sam is going native, but finally decides that staying in 1887 with Sam is better than going back to being an Observer, and they set up house in a little cabin in California. [General note: WHY do Sam and Al ALWAYS get domestic in QL novels?]
Domestic bliss is not forever, though. Sam and Al go back to the _Dreamchaser_ to rescue old shipmates and are lost in a storm in the Bermuda Triangle. [Peeve #3: Transcontinental travel wasn't trivial in this time. The Panama Canal wasn't built yet, so the ship would have had to either go around South America, then back, or send a message to California and wait for Sam and Al to arrive by train. This time lag isn't addressed at all.] They are picked up by a navy ship in 1989, and must figure out how to evade their 1989-selves, lest history be changed. Here the points-of-view get a little muddled with 2 sets of Sam and Al.
Events culminate at the "little cabin in the woods", which 1989-S&A had stumbled across while hiking previously, and where they discover the feelings and love that they will-have in 1889. [Big Peeve: The cabin seems to exist in a state of temporal grace, because no explanation is given for a house abandoned for 100 years to be inhabitable, its garden only a little overgrown, its mattress not full of mice-nests, mold, and mildew, and its home-made wine still drinkable. Sam is a country kid {which the author obviously isn't} and would know the mischief mice can get into in an inhabited house, much less an "abandoned" one. If the reader can believe Stonehenge and the Bermuda Triangle, an explanation of temporal grace is no stretch, so GIVE IT.] All ends mushily, with a brief mention that the original captain and cabin-boy are alive and well at Project Quantum Leap in the year 2000, with no mention of what the funding committee thinks of developments.
Overall comments:
Definitely A/U. Requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, especially wrt period details.
As is the case with most zines published by their authors, _Dreamchaser_ would have benefitted greatly from a critical read before publication. The facts that were botched could have been easily explained away, and the characterization yanked back to something closer to televised QL's "reality" when it started to wander. (Past-Sam wimps out badly when he hits 1989, with the stresses not sufficient explanation.)
I was distracted by the presence of sea-metaphors in the shipboard sex scenes: "waves of desire", "tide carrying me out to sea", etc. Too close to Tom-Swiftlys for my taste. ("Oh, no, I've dropped my toothpaste!" said Tom, crestfallenly.) Typos were few, and mostly confused homonyms.
The shifts between Sam and Al's POVs could have been handled better in places. "Skippies" usually, but not always, denoted POV-changes in the shipboard portion of the story, but sections got labeled with "Sam", "Al", "Damon", and "Luke" in the 1989 portions to keep things clear.
Piracy protection measures: The table of contents has a note, "Look for your free postcard inside!" Taped to page 95 is a postcard from a motel in Alamogordo, NM, a souvenir from the author's LeapCon roadtrip. Unique and not obnoxious to the buyer. The copies are also numbered and initialed in purple ink by the author on the title page.
In summary: Nice that the author put some plot and external events in to a relationship story. I could wish for fewer coincidences and "poof!" explanations, though. I suggest borrowing before you buy -- I don't think this zine is a "keeper". [1]