Dreamwish Beasts and Snarks
Mike Resnick
Golden Gryphon, $24.95, 278 pages, ISBN: 9781930846609
reviewed by Barry Hunter

Mike Resnick is one of those authors that can come up with some seemingly common ideas and give them a small tweak or a big twist to turn it on its ear and make an uncommonly good story. This volume is filled with some of those and I’m sure ther is plenty here for all to enjoy.

He starts out with "Hunting the Snark" based on the Lewis Carroll poem and shows that even the best prepared hunter really isn’t when he faces the unknown. "Stalking the Unicorn with Gun and Camera" warns of the many mistakes that can be made. "Stalking the Vampire" is in much the same vein as the "Unicorn" entry. Teddy Roosevelt enters the picture as one of the "Two Hunters in Manhattan". "Bwana" is a story of the Kirinyaga and of the arrogant hunter. "The Soul Eater" is another tale of trying to hunt something that has never been seen, the Dreamwish Beast, with the story told from both points of view.

Entertaining and delightful are a couple of words that can be used to describe Resnik and his writing. This volume gives you a good sample in case you’ve never read him before.