THE DREAM CYCLE OF H.P. LOVECRAFT: Dreams of Terror and Death

If you rub up against a mammoth in your sleep, should you scream or just enjoy it? From realms beyond the wall of sleep, telling of people and places with names such as Samath, Ulthar, Celephais and Nyarlathotep, again slinks Lovecraft (1890-1937), father of modern horror, here offering three unpublished fragments of dreams and an anthology of 20 other works in a Dream Cycle linking up with his revered Cthulhu Mythos. This cycle is not Lovecraft's but that of a nameless editor's with a round eye for cyclopean nightmares and an encyclopedic memory of Lovecraft's dreams. Four hundred pages of nocturnal vapors, each paragraph hung with hippocephalic winged beasts, gaunt gargoyles, and thoughts like flickering waxwings, may daunt most readers. But as a prosy guide through the figured silks and curious lamplight of the hypogeal, it's not to be missed. As the Master writes, in a kind of purple narcolepsy: ""Morning after morning he would lie on the cliffs and look over the world's rim at the cryptical aether beyond, listening to spectral bells and the wild cries of what might have been gulls.