Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft, The

Verhalen

• Pickman's Model (1927): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• Azathoth (1922): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Descendant (1926): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Thing in the Moonlight (1927): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• Polaris (1918): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Statement of Randalph Carter (1919): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Cats of Ulthar (1920): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• Celephais (1920): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• From Beyond (1920): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• Nyarlathotep (1920): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Nameless City (1921): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Other Gods (1921): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• Ex Oblivione (1921): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Quest of Iranon (1921): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Hound (1922): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• Hypnos (1922): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• What the Moon Brings (1923): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Silver Key (1926): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Strange High House in the Mist (1926): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• The Dreams in the Witch-House (1933): Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key (1933): Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Inhoud

Dreams of Terror and Death. This volume collects, for the first time, the entire Dream Cycle created by H. P. Lovecraft, the master of the twentieth-century horror, including some of his most fantastic tales: The Doom That Came to Sarnath - Hate, genocide, and a deadly curse The Nameless City - Death lies beneath the shifting sands, in a story linking the Dream Cycle with the legendary Cthulhu Mythos The Cats of Ulthar - In Ulthar, no man may kill a cat... and woe unto any who tries The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath - The epic nightmare adventure with tendrils stretching the entire Dream Cycle and twenty-one more tales of surreal terror.

Bespreking

An excellent collection of stories of the macabre

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are commonly seen as the cornerstones of modern horror. In my opinion Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) must to be added to this list, because horror wouldn't be the same without the influence of this phenomenal writer. One can say that Lovecraft brought the "Dark Monsters" into the genre, take for example the H.R.Gigger creature used in the movie Alien, but this simplification neglects his true talent: composing great atmospheric horror stories.

Although the common threads in this collection are clearly relating to dreams, there is one maybe even more important aspect that returns in all the stories: every main character is obsessively engaged in a personal or even scientific quest that brings him face to face with the most unreal dangers. The eagerness to see the invisible is what links these stories all together. Even if the worst is about to happen to the main character, he just takes that last step because he must know what is crawling behind that wall.

If you love fantasizing about more dimensions and time travel, than this collection is certainly an enticing dip into these mathematical riddles. In addition the stories all weave together, so you get the urge to reread them again after finishing. Don't hesitate to do this because you will get absorbed even more into the surreal mythos of Lovecraft.