originally published Beyond the Wall of Sleep, Arkham House, 1943
Randolph Carter is having one of those frustrating dreams where the damn thing shuts down just when its about to get good. And its recurring no less! Randy's recurring dream happens to be of a beautiful city, "All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles" - well, this is Lovecraft, after all. You didn't really think Carter would have recurring dreams about Catherine Zeta-Jones or something, did you?
Frustrated, Carter prays to the gods of the dreamworld/dreamlands to tell him where the city is. In response, the dreams stop altogether. Now very determined, Carter decides to stage a home invasion on the dreamworld gods, at their crib in Kadath. Only hitch is - he's not sure where Kadath is, or how to get there.
Well, every journey begins with the first step, right? Well, Randy takes 70 of `em to the Cavern of the Flame - the entry to the Dreamlands. There the guardian priests tell its a harebrained scheme and that there's probably a reason why the gods took his dreams away. But Randy ain't takin' no fer an answer.
So he enters the Enchanted Wood and hangs out with some "zoogs", who have good wine and sometimes eat people (but not Randy cuz he's an old friend and speaks their language). They can't tell him how to get to Kadath, but suggest he try Atal, in the the town of Ulthar. Atal isn't all that helpful, but, plied with wine Carter got from the zoogs, he does let slip that on Mount Ngranek, there's a giant stone face that's modeled on a Dreamlands god. And gods often mate with mortal women. So, if Carter can get a look at that face, he'll get an idea of what gods look like, and thus the mortal offspring of gods look like, and if he can find folks that have god-like features, he might be getting close to Kadath! Right???
(If your head's starting to hurt trying to follow this line of logic, please know that I understand)
Carter makes his way to Dyath-Leen, a port city where sinister black galleys, crewed by weird, turbaned men and manned by oarsmen who are never seen, dock and trade. His plan is to book passage for Oriab, whence he can go to Mt. Ngranek. Instead he ends up shanghai'd aboard a black galley. They sail to an ocean on the moon, where he discovers the turban-heads are actually slaves of the gloopy octo-toad moon-beasts. He is rescued by a vast army of cats from Ulthar, who can leap from the rooftops of their hometown to the moon itself(!). They take him back to Dyath-Leen.
Carter goes to Baharna, a port of Oriab, buys a zebra and sets off for the mount. Along the way he hears spooky tales of things called "night-gaunts". He makes his way up the Mount (no easy task!) and finds the carving. He realizes he has indeed scene people with similar features to this god - in Celphais! (you know Celephais, right?). Before RC can plan his itinerary further, he's snatched by the night-gaunts - flying devil-bat people without faces, and dropped into the Vale of Pnath.
But wait! All hope is not lost! Some friendly(!) ghouls lead Carter (who also speaks ghoul. Miskatonic U foreign languages department must be an interesting place), who lead him to his old buddy, Richard Upton Pickman, last seen running off "rats" in his Boston studio, currently a half- or semi-ghoul himself. Pickman and a couple other ghoulies agree to help Carter get back on his track.
In the city of the gugs, Carter and co are attacked by ghasts, and a gug sentry, but escape back into the Enchanted Wood. There Carter finds himself in the middle of a war between cats and zoogs. Carter warns the cats, allowing them to surprise attack the zoogs and cause them to sue for peace.
In the city of Thran, Carter books passage on a ship to Celephais. There he learns that the men he believes to be offspring of the gods come from a cold, dark land called Iganok. And that is a place most folks avoid. And there's no cats there! It apparently lies too close to the Plateau of Leng, a place of greeeeeeeeaaat eviiiiiiil, for most folks to want to hang. He does some drinking with King Kuranes, who encourages him to forget his plan.
Carter books passage to Iganok and hears some more creepy tales. But no one will tell him much. At night, strange howls are heard from the land. Carter gets himself a yak and sets out in search of a rare onyx quarry, which he believes will put him in proximity of his goal. He finds it, but is promptly captured by the sneaky slant-eyed merchant he met in Dyath-Leen, and he finds himself making an unwanted trip via shantak to the monastery of the dreaded High Priest Not to Be Described.
Carter realizes that ol' Slant is a Man of Leng, and that the turban conceals horns. Carter is taken before the high priest. Though terrified, he pushes Slant into a well and escapes. He realizes that he is in the ruins of Sarkomand. He finds his three ghoul-friends captive of the Men of Leng and some more moon-beasts. He trips back to the underworld and raises an army of ghouls and night-gaunts, rescues the captives, and arranges for a flock of night-gaunts to transport him and some ghouls to Kadath.
After a flight full of ominous implications, they arrive at the palace of the gods, but no one's home (though the lights are indeed on). A pharoah-looking fellow arrives and tells Carter that (a) the gods have, in fact, taken up residence in that very city he seeks and that (b) that city is, in fact, Boston!
(I have honestly never heard Boston described as "golden and lovely" - "dirty, old, crime-ridden, drivers who run down pedestrians" yes. But maybe I don't get out enough.)
Pharoah reveals himself to be Nyarlathotep. He pops him on a shantak to fly him home. Mid-flight, Carter deduces that Ny has been f'ing with him, and is actually sending him to Azathoth himself. Remembering at last that this is, after all, a dream, Carter jumps off the bird, falls through space, and wakes up to a beautiful day in Boston. Back in Kadath, Nyarlathotep broods.
What we have hear is, effectively, a travelogue. Of the Dreamlands, Lovecraft's own version of "beyond the fields we know".
Lin Carter states emphatically that Dream Quest is not a Cthulhu Mythos tale. To prove this further, he asserts that Lovecraft scholars Robert E. Briney and Robert Weinberg agree with him - so there! And if that isn't enough, he trots out no less than August Derleth, who insisted that Dream Quest was distinctly separate from Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories, as his own Sac Prairie stories were separate from his "Wisconsin" stories - despite the fact that characters may interconnect in both.
My own opinion is that this is a lot of hair-splitting bullshit that only a bunch of very literal minds or hapless nerds would give much credence to. Lovecraft wrote it, it's Lovecraft, its Cthulhoid. If that's too simple or complex for ya - go suck on a dhole.
It's hard to know what to say about Dream-Quest. For starters, it's not really a finished work, and in some places, it reads like a detailed outline or treatment as much as it does a story. HPL set it aside in 1927 and never returned to it. He wrote little or no Dunsany-influenced fiction afterwards, and I suspect he simply no longer related to it. Perhaps, had he lived to a ripe old, he would revisited and polished it up. Perhaps not.
I first read Dream-Quest when I was around 15 or 16, the tail end of my Lovecraft Lust phase. It was one of the last major HPL stories that I read. I recall somewhat struggling with it. The nature of the story seemed to cry out for more ... dialog? action? I wasn't sure. The lack of chapter divisions troubled me for some reason, and somehow made the story more of a slog (though it isn't really all that long - 90 pages in printed form). In all the years since, it is one of the pieces I've never revisited - though there are many other Lovecraft stories I've read only once, this is probably the only major Lovecraft tale I had not previously revisited.
So what now, is my perception, 35+ years later? A bit hard to say. I didn't find it a slog - in fact, I genuinely enjoyed reading it (though the lack of chapter divisions still bothers me - and I couldn't even tell you why). I found myself both awed and amused by the creativity and imagination, and sheer surrealism of the whole venture (It's a shame Basil Wolverton never illustrated Dream-Quest. He's almost the only one I can imagine doing it justice.) There are several memorable moments. The whole cat-battles thing which made me laugh - both for HPL's obvious love of felines (which I share) and the absurdity of imagining cats forming a disciplined army; the chase through the city of the gugs is both spooky and exciting. There are several memorably eerie moments (though the story is not intended to be horror) of the sort HPL did best. Basically, I had a lot of fun with it.
But I didn't love it. Whether its the unfinished feel of the whole thing, a preference for different kinds of fantasy, the thought that perhaps Dunsany did this sort of thing better (I can't be sure of that - I read quite a bit of Dunsany in the 80's, but not since. He too is someone I need to revisit). In any case, I'd rule Dream-Quest to be worthwhile and enjoyable, not one of HPL's most shining moments.
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