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TheDream Cycle is a series of short stories and novellas by authorH. P. Lovecraft[1] (1890–1937). Written between 1918 and 1932, they are about the "Dreamlands", a vast alternatedimension that can only be entered via dreams.[2] The Dreamlands are described as lying deeper than space, matter and time, and are a "limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity".[3]
The Dreamlands are divided into four regions:
Other locales include the Underworld, a subterranean region underneath the Dreamlands inhabited by various monsters; theMoon, accessible via a ship and inhabited by toad-like "moon-beasts" allied withNyarlathotep;[7] and Kadath, a huge castle atop a mountain and the domain of the "Great Ones", the gods of Earth's Dreamland.[7]
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".[7]
The Dreamlands are described inHypnos as beyond anything conceivable to humans, and of which only imaginative men can dream:[3]
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.
The Dreamlands are comparable to the physical cosmos, which in Lovecraftian cosmology, is itself vast and infinite in dimensions[8]. The Dreamlands can transcend even these infinite dimensions, as human three-dimensional dreamers can communicate with dreamers of higher or lower dimensions. The Dreamlands are also beyond basic concepts such as time and gravitation, as demonstrated when in "Celephais", the human dreamer Kuranes is able to speak with a violet covered gas who merely identifies Kuranes as from a universe where "matter, energy, and gravitation exist"[5]. This is also described in the short story "The Trap", wherein the narrator is able to communicate with the boy Robert even after Robert is sucked through a mirror into a 4th dimensional reality.[9] In fact, the Dreamlands seem to be where the physical cosmos originates from, as in "Hypnos", it is described how the physical cosmos is "born" from the Dreamlands "as a bubble is born from the pipe of a jester".[3]
The Collected Public Domain Works of H. P. Lovecraft public domain audiobook atLibriVoxThe Doom That Came To Sarnath public domain audiobook atLibriVoxThe Gods of Pegāna public domain audiobook atLibriVoxTime and the Gods public domain audiobook atLibriVoxThe Sword of Welleran and Other Stories public domain audiobook atLibriVoxA Dreamer's Tales public domain audiobook atLibriVoxThe Book of Wonder public domain audiobook atLibriVoxTales of Three Hemispheres public domain audiobook atLibriVox