 Jacket illustration of first edition | |
| Author | Lin Carter |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Tim Kirk |
| Language | English |
| Genre | poetry |
| Publisher | Arkham House |
Publication date | 1975 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | xv, 72 |
| ISBN | 0-87054-067-X |
| OCLC | 1323872 |
| 811/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PS3553.A7823 D7 |
Dreams from R'lyeh is a collection of poems byLin Carter. The book was released in hardcover byArkham House in 1975[1] in an edition of 3,152 copies. It was Carter's only book published by Arkham House.[2][3][4][5] The title sequence of sonnets, "Dreams from R'lyeh", has also been reprinted in Robert M. Price'sThe Xothic Legend Cycle: The Complete Mythos Fiction of Lin Carter (Chaosium, 1997).
Carter conceived the sonnet cycleDreams from R'lyeh as early as 1959, as revealed by a note in his 1959 publicationLetter to Judith, where the cycle is announced as forthcoming. Most of the poems were written in the 1960s and were first published in the poetry anthologyFire and Sleet and Candlelight (1961) and the magazinesThe Arkham Collector andAmra. The sequence of numbered poems wasn't initially the same as depicted in the Arkham House volume. Most of the non-cycle poems were reprinted from various sources, a few of them from Carter's earlier poetry collectionsSandalwood and Jade (1951) andGalleon of Dream (1953).
The sonnet cycleDreams from R'lyeh, which comprises the first two-thirds of the book, consists of poems inspired byH. P. Lovecraft and theCthulhu Mythos. Unlike Lovecraft'sFungi from Yuggoth, where the sonnets don't tell a continuous story,Dreams from R'lyeh from start to finish clearly narrates the story of Wilbur Nathaniel Hoag, from his childhood to just before his disappearance in late 1944. Mental (and perhaps physical) degeneration are apparent near the last sonnet.
The remainder of the verses are on various topics, celebrating other fantasy authors or reflecting on fantastic themes. "Diombar's Song of the Last Battle" is a heroic poem set in the prehistory of Carter's "Thongor" novels, and "Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian" an end-of-life summation ofRobert E. Howard's barbarian heroConan, written from the perspective of the character himself.
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Fritz Leiber, reviewing the collection inFantastic, cites "[o]ne poem, "Shard," [as] very nice," and comments on the "delightfully Cthulhu-cultish cover byTim Kirk, best current Arkham artist," while otherwise singling out isolated lines from various of its poems for approval or disapproval.[6]
The collection was also reviewed by W. N. MacPherson inThe Science Fiction Review, May 1975, Daniel Bailey inMyrddin, August 1975, Stuart David Schiff inWhispers #6/7, June 1975, and #8, December 1975, and C. D. Whateley inCrypt of Cthulhu #13, Roodmas 1983.[1]