Back to the Dreamlands

Art by Albert Rodriguez

LOVECRAFT'S DARK DREAMLANDS is a new anthology from PS Publishing edited by Darrell Schweitzer. The Dreamlands is one of H.P. Lovecraft's most enduring and beloved creations. It's where his mastery of cosmic horror intersected with the dream-like fantasy of Lord Dunsany. Dunsany was a major influence on Lovecraft, who wrote an entire cycle of tales about the phantasmagorical Dreamlands.

These tales feature HPL's most poetic and lyrical prose, and he wrote enough of them to fill an entire book (which they have done numerous times). The greatest of all these dream-tales is undoubtedly the novella known as THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH--which has always been my personal favorite of all HPL's work. Many writers across the years have expanded the Dreamlands Mythos with new tales set "beyond the wall of sleep," including Brian Lumley, Gary Meyers, W.H. Pugmire, and plenty of others.

Legendary gaming company Chaosium supplemented their CALL OF CTHULHU RPG with a superb DREAMLANDS expansion that codified many of its kingdoms, creatures, and deities. There are also plenty of Dreamlands comics and graphic novels, as well as an independent feature film long in development. In 2017, Kij Johnson’s novella THE DREAM-QUEST OF VELLITT BOE won a World Fantasy Award for its clever subversion of patriarchal fantasy tropes.

Most often Dreamlands tales feature mortal protagonists who "dream" themselves into the fantastical landscape of the Dreamlands, having strange adventures where surreal wonder mingles with lurking horror. When Darrell asked me to contribute to LOVECRAFT'S DARK DREAMLANDS, I was immediately interested because I've always wanted to play in the Dreamlands sandbox. I have only a passing interest in Lovecraft's horror work, but I've always been a fan of his Dreamlands cycle, probably because I'm a hardcore Lord Dunsany fan, and those tales have that sweet Dunsany flavor, albeit with some extra darkness.

I considered the usual approach of a mortal sleeper entering this world of dreams and nightmares, then I decided to take a different path. My story would be about a Dreamlands native whose ultimate journey takes him into the Waking World. While most Dreamland protagonists escape the "real" world for adventures in the land of dreams, my lead character would be trying to escape the Dreamlands for a better life in the mortal world. Once I settled on this idea, I had to invent some kind of motivation to explain why a dream would want to become a man.

I ended up writing a 20,000-word novella called "The Exodus of Sammon Hardbough." To my great relief, Darrell loved the story, calling it a real "swashbuckler"--probably because of all the swordplay and battle scenes. What can I say? It's what I do best. The lead character is a liberator, a raider, an avenging warrior who goes against the grain to carve his own bloody path across the Dreamlands. But his true quest is to find a way into the world beyond dreams. Yet can a dream actually become a man, any more than a man can become a dream? Is one world truly any better than the other? Driven by a restless and indomitable spirit, Sammon Hardbough is determined to find the answers to such questions. His tale is an epic odyssey of hope, romance, and tragedy.

LOVECRAFT'S DARK DREAMLANDS is set for a release later this year. Recently, Darrell announced the book's complete contents, so here are the contributing authors and the titles of their stories (and poems). The list is random, with the final order of stories yet to be determined.

John R. Fultz - "The Exodus of Sammon Hardbough"

Adrian Cole - "In the Realm of Restless Dreams"

Gregory Frost - "The Dream Quest of Kathleen Blodgett"

Will Murray - "Through the Ghoul-Guarded Well"

Don Webb - "Dreamy Nights and Other Terrors"

Art by Hauke Vagt

Tim Lees - "Mapping the Dream House"

Susan Schwartz - "Beneath the Ice"

Darrell Schweitzer - "Three Dreamers"

Robert M. Price - "Death is But a Dream"

John Betancourt - "The Cats of Thran"

Steve Woodworth - "And Somebody Spoke"

Geoffrey Hart - "A Dream Within a Dream"

Gordon Linzner - "Mars Ascending"

Will Murray - "The Gemel"

Don Webb - "The Ugly Cousin"

Ef Deal - "On the Horns of the Moon"

Ann K. Schwader - "Pickman's Sister" (poem)

John Betancourt - Two Limericks

I'll post more about the anthology as we get closer to its publication date--including the highly anticipated cover art.

Peace & Broadswords,

John