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The Dream Cycle is a series of short stories and novellas by author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). Written between 1918 and 1932, they are about the "Dreamlands", a vast alternate dimension that can only be entered via dreams. The Dreamlands are described as beyond human comprehension and deeper than concepts of matter or time, and are a "limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity".

Description

The Dreamlands are divided into four regions:

• The West contains the Steps of Deeper Slumber (descended via the "Cavern of Flame") and the Enchanted Woods, by which many enter the Dreamlands. Other points of interest include the port of Dylath-Leen, one of the Dreamlands' largest cities; the town of Ulthar, "where no man may kill a cat"; the coastal jungle city of Hlanith; and the desert trading capital Illarnek. Here lies the fabled Land of Mnar, whose gray stones are etched with signs and where rise the ruins of the great Sarnath.
• The South, home of the isle of Oriab and the areas known as the Fantastic Realms (described in "The White Ship").
• The East, home of Celephaïs, a city dreamt into being by its monarch Kuranes, greatest of all recorded dreamers, and the dangerous Forbidden Lands.
• The North, location of the feared Plateau of Leng, home of man-eating spiders and the satyr-like "Men of Leng".

Other locales include the Underworld, a subterranean region underneath the Dreamlands inhabited by various monsters; the Moon, accessible via a ship and inhabited by toad-like "moon-beasts" allied with Nyarlathotep; and Kadath, a huge castle atop a mountain and the domain of the "Great Ones", the gods of Earth's Dreamland.

Evidently all dreamers see the Dreamlands slightly differently, as Atal, High Priest of Ulthar, mentions that everyone has their own dreamland. In the same sentence he says the Dreamlands that many know is a "general land of vision".

The Dreamlands are described in Hypnos as beyond anything conceivable to humans, and in which only imaginative men can dream of:

Of our studies it is impossible to speak, since they held so slight a connexion with anything of the world as living men conceive it. They were of that vaster and more appalling universe of dim entity and consciousness which lies deeper than matter, time, and space, and whose existence we suspect only in certain forms of sleep—those rare dreams beyond dreams which come never to common men, and but once or twice in the lifetime of imaginative men.

Continuing on, the Dreamlands are described as limitless and beyond all thought and entity:

There was a night when winds from unknown spaces whirled us irresistibly into limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity. Perceptions of the most maddeningly untransmissible sort thronged upon us; perceptions of infinity which at the time convulsed us with joy, yet which are now partly lost to my memory and partly incapable of presentation to others. Viscous obstacles were clawed through in rapid succession, and at length I felt that we had been borne to realms of greater remoteness than any we had previously known.

Bibliography

• The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death. Del Rey, 1985.

Contents:

• "Polaris" (1918)
• "The White Ship" (1919)
• "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" (1919)
• "The Cats of Ulthar" (1920)
• "Celephaïs" (1920)
• "Ex Oblivione" (1920)
• "Nyarlathotep" (1920)
• "The Quest of Iranon" (1921)
• "The Nameless City" (reference only) (1921)
• "The Other Gods" (1921)
• "Azathoth" (1922)
• "The Hound" (reference only) (1922)
• "Hypnos" (1922)
• "What the Moon Brings" (1922)
• "The Outsider" (1926)
• "The Silver Key" (1926)
• "The Strange High House in the Mist" (1926)
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927)
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (reference only) (1927)
• "The Thing in the Moonlight" (Based on a letter written to Donald Wandrei. Written by J. Chapman Miske) (1927. Published 1941)
• At the Mountains of Madness (reference only) (1931)
• "The Dreams in the Witch House" (roughly connected) (1932)
• "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (with E. Hoffmann Price) (1932)

Other

• Myers, Gary (1975). House of the Worm. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-071-8.
• Brian Lumley wrote books set in Lovecraft's Dreamlands as well, beginning with Hero of Dreams in 1989.
• Harms, Daniel (1998). "Dreamlands". The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. pp. 89–91. ISBN 1-56882-119-0.
• Jonathan L. Howard (2011). Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute. Headline Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0755347995.
• Williams, Chris; Petersen, Sandy (2004). H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands: Roleplaying Beyond the Wall of Sleep (5th ed.). Hayward, CA: Chaosium. ISBN 1-56882-157-3. Retrieved 6 November 2020.
• Myers, Gary (2013). The Country of the Worm: Excursions Beyond the Wall of Sleep. CreateSpace. ISBN 9781484801970.
• Multiple authors (2016). Kill Those Damn Cats: Cats of Ulthar Lovecraftian Anthology. First United Church of Cthulhu. ISBN 978-1535073677.
• Kij Johnson, 2016 The Dream Quest of Vellit Boe. Tor. ISBN 978-0765391414.

References

1. James Turner, ed. (1998). Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1st ed.). New York, NY: Random House. cover blurb. ISBN 0-345-42204-X.
2. ^ ""Hypnos" by H. P. Lovecraft". www.hplovecraft.com. Retrieved 2025-01-06.
3. ""The Cats of Ulthar" by H. P. Lovecraft". www.hplovecraft.com. Archived from the original on 2021-03-05. Retrieved 2021-06-28.
4. ""The Hound" by H. P. Lovecraft". www.hplovecraft.com. Archived from the original on 2021-01-12. Retrieved 2021-06-28.
5. ""The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H. P. Lovecraft". www.hplovecraft.com. Archived from the original on 2021-01-24. Retrieved 2021-01-22.
6. "The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft". www.goodreads.com. Archived from the original on 2021-06-28. Retrieved 2021-06-28.
7. "The H.P. Lovecraft Archive". www.hplovecraft.com. Archived from the original on 2021-01-23. Retrieved 2021-01-22.

External links

• The Collected Public Domain Works of H. P. Lovecraft public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• The Doom That Came To Sarnath public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• The Gods of Pegāna public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Time and the Gods public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• A Dreamer's Tales public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• The Book of Wonder public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Tales of Three Hemispheres public domain audiobook at LibriVox

v t e Cthulhu Mythos
Writers	H. P. Lovecraft Robert Bloch Clark Ashton Smith Robert E. Howard Frank Belknap Long August Derleth Fritz Leiber Stephen King
Deities	Azathoth Cthulhu Hastur Nyarlathotep Shub-Niggurath Tsathoggua
Species	Deep Ones Elder Things Hounds of Tindalos Mi-Go Serpent Men Shoggoth
Related	Aklo Dream Cycle Alan Moore's The Courtyard Neonomicon Providence
Lists	Anthologies Books Characters Works influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos

• Book series introduced in 1918
• Works by H. P. Lovecraft
• Fantasy books by series
• Fiction about dreams
• Fiction about parallel universes