I’m a fan of Bailey’s short fiction. It isn’t always uniform and thus my fondness varies, but this book, my third read by the author, was absolutely – and quite uniformly – lovely.
Bailey tends to oscillate between speculative genres and the stories in this collection mostly all have a distinct science fiction angle – the author’s first love.
Not the hard science-heavy jargon-heavy sort of sci-fi but the conceptual whimsical fantasy-like kind. And it works. Very, very well.
The stories are original, charming, fun, humorous and just the right sort of whimsical. In other words, a pleasure to read.
Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

This is my absolute favorite type of plot!

Great introduction, nice pace of the story, characters well developed with interesting elements, allowing the readers to connect truly with them. The writing is what makes it a little underwhelming, however some editing could easily fix this issue.
The world building is good but there could be more details and descriptions to support the readers imagination on the initial concept.
Overall, it's a nice book and I definitely recommend it.

Upon A Waking Dream by J.S. Bailey is a collection of 12 sci-fi/fantasy short stories. From aliens and space travel to magic pens, this book seems to have it all. The stories are original and funny, and some of them raise really interesting questions.

I’ve been getting into short story collections more lately, but this one might just be a new favourite. I especially loved the mix of fantasy and sci-fi stories. The variety of stories meant that I never got bored, plus the stories didn’t seem to blur together at some point (which sometimes happens to me with collections of similar stories). All in all, I really flew through this book, there simply wasn’t a dull moment.

Personally, my favourite stories would have to be “Letter from Glomsuet” (a flat-earther gets abducted by aliens), “Larry” (an imaginary friend in bunny slippers) and “The Last to Pass” (what would happen if immortality was a thing). “Daily Log from Outpost #602” is definitely an honourable mention (I don’t even want to give away what it’s about, just read this one, it’s great).

Overall, Upon A Waking Dream is a great book, and I recommend you pick it up if you’re even remotely interested in sci-fi and fantasy stories (or even if you aren’t, maybe this book will convince you otherwise).