Just finished this book thanks to your first video. This video is a great companion to the book. Im glad i wasn't the only one a little confused by certain sections of the text.

Exceptional video!! I really find your points to be quite interesting and moreover accurate. One thing that I have a theory on is the idea that the comedian's suicide is in fact incredibly related to Render. My thought builds off of yours in that this is a case study that Render is exploring for his. I think , though, that the reason it is so important to give so much screen time is that this one stuck with him. It affects him in such a way because it is an accident involving a car, much like his own. There is no doubt that reading about such an accident would trigger Render throughout his study of such a case. I think also the fact that the man killed himself with the car is in a sense what Render's subconscious does at the end of the book. His conscious mind, tries to escape the final nightmare but fails to do so, each time being confronted with the piles of emotion he buried deep inside himself from the trauma of the car wreck. It is this emotion, this subconscious emotion, that ultimately pulls him under. I think especially illustrative of this idea too is the end. We as the reader have only really seen Render from Render's perspective throughout the book. The fact that at the end it is from someone else's perspective shows us that we are exploring Render's subconscious in the way that he had done for every patient he's had. It is not Render, but his subconscious that CHOOSES to see the white sails, thus CHOOSING suicide each time, that is, suicide to his conscious mind. I think the point of this could be that the emotional subconscious mind built up such a pressure from years of repressed trauma that it took control. The whole time the book was hinting at this idea that Render might not be in control, so the next thought is that Eilleen is in control, but I think ultimately she serves as a red herring or at the very least only the catalyst, and really it was Render who lost control to himself; to his trauma, to his subconscious. He was afraid of the dog so it showed up consuming his family. He was afraid, or at least, turned off by commitment to either Jill or Eilleen so she shows up as this person offering him a love potion that he is terrified to drink, and get this! she shows up wearing his wife's necklace! He is afraid of her and Jill because ultimately they are stand ins for his wife he lost in the wreck. I could even see that him turning into the knight in shining armor was his image of himself through Eileen's eyes. Maybe it is the case that Eilleen served as a sort of hole allowing Render's subconscious to leak out through these sessions. Since she appeared with the necklace of his wife that he kept in the box, this was the straw that ripped the whole wide open. Renders subconscious consumed itself. Eilleen watched him tear himself apart.

I just finished this book last night after your previous video, I really enjoyed it in places, and the technology Roger portrayed was incredible, however I found myself getting really lost in places, including the end, so seeking out this video really helped get a better grip on it thank you. Bonus easter egg I discovered - the vehicle Render uses throughout is a "S-7 Spinner", the same name of the vehicle Deckard used in the Blade Runner movie, nice!

Thank you so much for explaining the ending. The Tristain and Isolde myth really explained everything. Thanks again!

This channel is badass man. I dig how you split this into 2 parts.

Thank you so much for this excellent much needed deep dive! It would be wonderful to watch another from you, this time on "For A Breath I Tarry" which is a much shorter Zelazny piece, but also built upon the theme exploring all that we're losing about our human selves, as our technology gets more and more advanced! Thanks again for all your research and spot on takes!

thanks :) Perhaps Render has never fully recovered from losing his wife and daughter, and because of this when Eileen gives him the opportunity of complete detachment from reality his will is too weak to resist. This would be the countertransference that his colleague warned him about at the ski lodge. I feel like Eileen was driven to trap Render too, to feed her addiction to visual stimuli. I read the car scene as Render's attempted suicide in the past and it is presented in a kind of 'play within a play' with a comedic presenter you mention, its almost like a tv broadcast with ads, etc. Have you read 'Doorways in the Sand'? That one is pretty crazy, lol. It also has talking animals. Some serious plot holes in that one though, but still pretty cool. It's amazing how much of the tech that Zelanzny predicts in Dream Master is around rn, right.

Absolutely the best précis and explanation of this novel. It would be just about impossible to understand large parts of this book without some understanding of the classics. You have given me closure on this story, that I had given up hope of ever achieving.

Thank you for this, im so glad I found your channel and this book.

Just finished reading it after seeing your first video. Seriously blown away by the ending. It sent me down a rabbit hole afterwards researching all the symbology of it. (Also I didn’t realize until now that the servitor was his colleague/mentor from the ski lodge!!) Can’t believe I didn’t know about Zelazny. This was such a treat to analyze and delve into. Thank you!!!

1:08:02 after listening to your explanation of Render trying to regain control and Eloise helping, couldn’t help but see the similarities between that scene and “Inception” in the scene where his ex wife is taking over his dream shaping.

Your overview of the story was great, was really amazed on how many things had slipped past me when finishing the audio book, thank you sm

This was a fascinating read, thanks for the recommendation. Bit of surprising resolution. I really enjoyed how humorous and allusion rich the prose was.

I just read this and it was so out there that I wanted someone else's perspective. This is super helpful. I really liked a lot of the ideas Zelanzy's vision of the future, really solid idea of what a talking dog would be like. Edit: I totally slept on the part about the comedian too. It really makes you think about people trying to do art in the age of the internet, finish your work and everyone sees it. Forward thinking stuff.

Oh wow, this book sounds absolutely amazing! Thanks for this, I just subbed up!

THANK YOU SO MUCH.!! SUBBED & LIKED & BEST WISHES FROM SCOTLAND 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🙏 ❤️

hey, just finished the book, i did read it in a very weird scan to pdf file so this really helps. this is one of those amazing concepts which i would love to see brought back to popular culture through like a nolan movie (even though he did already inception which maybe riffs a lot from this??) as a latin american i think i would like to recommend the invention of morel if you havent read it and if you can find a good translation. thanks a lot

Thank you for shaping such a top tier hour of quality time for your viewers. I can feel the passion and dedication that so many others are lacking shining thru very strongly in your breakdown of this novel. I am curious to hear what you think of the tech in this story, designed to maximize comfort and efficiency, actually being unmasked as the real agent of malice and quickening the demise of our characters, mankind, and life as a whole?

Fantastic video and channel! I understand the story so much better now! I hope the book will become more readily available in the future (the remaining paperbacks available currently are out of my price range) but luckily I found the audiobook on CD at a more affordable rate. Thank goodness for my local library too!

great video, brother. love this book.

This was awesome! Subbed

Thank to you I found out about that book, I really loved it and thanks a lot for the explanation of the ending! I was a bit confused and was thinking in the end that he found the red button, but I was so wrong😅

Zelazny is amazing. Read Eye of Cat and you'll be amazed at his poetry

I decided to read the original short story for same reason you sought it out. Everyone praised it but most said the novel just got confusing. Re: the death of the comedian. This might be referenced in Render's speech where he talks of the power to hurt, which is to ignore, and in this machine utopia, people think of machines as their society that ignores them as well. So the comedian makes a point that the driverless cars are ignoring him by walking into the road until they thoughtlessly kill him. The references really were over the top. The same sentence that talked about the death of a famous bullfighter juxtaposes the murderous bull with the gates of horn, which is a reference to the horn and ivory gates of dream, where true dreams pass through ivory, but false dreams pass through horn. I wonder about Jill deVille. Your camera died as you got there, so you never talked of Eileen's description of her argument with Jill. Eileen said Jill made accusations and called her a bitch. If we follow name references, Jill's chosen last name is deVille which in other stories is a reference to "devil". One could suppose that Jill (probably unwittingly) planted a poisonous seed in Eileen's head. Jill wanted to marry Render. Eileen was obsessed with Render. Render said he was bringing Eileen a cathedral. I think the altar made both of them think of marriage--Eileen pictured it as a forbidden love. The cave where Tristan and Isolde shelter after exile is a lovenest. Render's thoughts of marriage were wrapped around his dead wife. His trauma and Eileen's addiction created the perfect storm. The two headed devil Thaumiel (like the goblet that might be two people?) is connected with the Kether of the Kabbalah, the point of consciousness coming into existence. A double edged sword, certainly. In some gnostic thought, physical consciousness is a curse by evil gods. Is he a metaphor of Jill and Render's fear of intimacy and commitment? Back to Jill's name, I laughed when I thought she shared a last name with Cruella deVille. I am prejudiced, because I like Jill and her 'not very prettiness', and I did NOT like Eileen. So who was the real enemy of dogs? Eileen is a very rich woman. She has a dog that required a process that tortures hundreds of puppies with only a few surviving. She was very self-pitying and might argue she needs it. But this is a machine utopia where all physical needs are met. Eileen could have easily hired a servant or companion. Instead animals are tortured so she can have a sapient being she treats like a slave. She flatters herself on keeping Sigmund sane with some freedom vacations, but Render spends time with very privileged people and only met one rich man with a mutant dog. The rich jerk's dog seemed much happier and more stable than Sigmund. Sigmund's 'unbreakable chain of Fenris' isn't his leash, its his love for Eileen. I think Eileen can be justly blamed for demanding others be endangered for her desires. I am not as confident that she was helping. Its been pointed out multiple versions of Tristan and Isolde might be referenced. Eileen once mentioned her own preference for Wagnerian leitmotifs. The Wagner version of Tristan and Isolde is influenced by Wagner's thoughts on Schrodinger. When Tristan speaks of Day and Night, Day is the real world where people must control themselves. Night is where people can truly be free. Suicide is a big theme. In this version, Tristan murdered Isolde's true love, then tricked her into healing him, before being sent to take her to an unwilling marriage. She intends to trick him into sharing (secretly poisoned) wine to bury the hatchet, but her maid tries to save her by switching the poison to the love potion. Tristan gets maudlin after being revealed canoodling with Isolde, and speaks with longing of the Night where everything ends. Both Tristan and Isolde die, where presumably they can be 'free'. Of course, the freedom of the Night is both the shaping and Eileen's blindness and the death the servitor urges that will cure Render. One wonders, given all the suicide themes and the theme that suicide is a cure, how suicidal Render was.

Do you have a GoodReads account?

Once again... I have to encourage you to read the "Chronicles of Amber." They stand far above "Lord of Light" and "This Immortal" (and _very_ far beyond "The Dream Master") as works of fiction and philosophy. I read the entire ten book series every two or three years because they are the best guide available to understanding the personal experience of the multiverse and what we actually do with it as time wanders down the millennia. Pay close attention to the role of gender in any work by Zelazny. The Chronicles is quite specific that male and female are hardcoded into the functioning of the universe--and deeply embedded in the possibilities of computer science, which are central to the second five books of that series. You can clearly discern this preoccupation even in his very first works, like "The Dream master."

The free😊 to three 😊

Thank you so much for explaining the ending. The Tristain and Isolde myth really explained everything. Thanks again!