Asimov’s July 2006“Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt
Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2006
Hugo Award nominee for Best Short Story

Pete, a low-key guy who loves movies more than anything else in the world, finds a strange little video store called Impossible Dreams, a store that he’s positive wasn’t there before. Unable to resist going in, he finds the shelves lined with movies that shouldn’t exist — The Magnificent Ambersons with 50 minutes of restored footage (it was edited out by the studio and later destroyed) and director’s commentary (Orson Welles died in 1985), I, Robot written by Harlan Ellison (published in book form but never produced), Casablanca starring George Raft instead of Humphrey Bogart, and so many others. It is literally like walking through a dream for Pete. Unfortunately, though, the movies aren’t the only things that are different inside Impossible Dreams, and those other differences might keep Pete from ever getting to watch even one of these films. Then there’s Ally, the cute clerk who seems to be the only person in the store — can she help or does she just think that Pete’s a crazy person?

Fantastic, wonderful, delightful. Can you tell I loved this story? In the limited space of only about 6,600 words, Tim Pratt manages to give us two completely appealing characters and an actual plot. If you have any appreciation for film, especially the classic kind, this story will hit you right between the eyes. I was reminded of the Library of Dreams in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman comic, where all the books that had been dreamed of but never written existed. Pete, our protagonist, is presented with, essentially, his heart’s desire, and also presented with a number of obstacles to him attaining that desire. And the best part was how, over the course of the story, Pratt makes it even more interesting than that with a romantic subplot that was cute and perfectly intertwined with the main story thread.

All in all: A fantastic feel-good story, economically packing lots of good stuff into a deceptively short story.