Dreamlands Canon?

[AlHazred]

I've been rereading Lord Dunsany and Lovecraft online in my late-shift at work, and working up a gazetteer of locations mentioned for my own use. I've gotten through the Dunsany stories I'm going to include and am finishing Dream-Quest (which I saved for the end of my HPL rereads). I had a few issues deciding what Lord Dunsany stories to include, because he was a lot looser with boundaries on his stories than HPL or later authors, I ended up going with the following list of Dunsany works:

• “Time and the Gods,” from Time and the Gods (1906)
• “The Journey of the King,” from Time and the Gods (1906)
• “Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean,” from A Dreamer's Tales (1910)
• “Bethmoora,” from A Dreamer's Tales (1910)
• “Idle Days on the Yann,” from A Dreamer's Tales (1910)
• “The Hashish Man,” from A Dreamer's Tales (1910) [refers to “Bethmoora”]
• “Carcassonne,” from A Dreamer's Tales (1910) [this is not the real-world Carcassonne, but a dream version]
• “The Hoard of the Gibbelins,” from The Book of Wonder (1912)
• “The Injudicious Prayers of Pombo the Idolater,” from The Book of Wonder (1912)
• “Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men,” from The Book of Wonder (1912)
• “Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller,” from The Book of Wonder (1912) [refers to “Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men”]
• “How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles,” from The Book of Wonder (1912) [refers to “Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men”]
• “The Dream of King Karna-Vootra,” from Fifty-One Tales (1915)
• “How the Enemy Came to Thlunrana,” from Fifty-One Tales (1915)
• “The City on Mallington Moor,” from Tales of Wonder (1916) [no gazetteer info can be drawn from it]
• “The Bird of the Difficult Eye,” from Tales of Wonder (1916)
• “The Long Porter's Tale,” from Tales of Wonder (1916)
• “A Shop in Go-By Street,” from Tales of Three Hemispheres (1919) [sequel to “Idle Days on the Yann”]
• “The Avenger of Perdóndaris,” from Tales of Three Hemispheres (1919) [sequel to “A Shop in Go-By Street”]

The HPL Dream-Cycle is a bit better defined:

• “The White Ship,” from The United Amateur v19 #2 (Nov 1919)
• “The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” from The Scot #44 (Jun 1920)
• “The Cats of Ulthar,” from Tryout v6 #11 (Nov 1920)
• “Nyarlathotep,” from The United Amateur v20 #4 (Nov 1920)
• “Polaris,” from The Philosopher v1 #1 (Dec 1920)
• “Ex Oblivione,” from The United Amateur v20 #8 (Mar 1921)
• “The Crawling Chaos,” from The United Co-operative v1 #3 (Apr 1921)
• “The Nameless City,” from The Wolverine #11 (Nov 1921) [references only]
• “Celephaïs,” from Rainbow v2 #2 (May 1922)
• “What the Moon Brings,” from National Amateur v45 #5 (May 1923)
• “The Green Meadow,” from The Vagrant #15 (Spr 1927)
• “The Hound,” from Weird Tales v3 #2 (Feb 1924) [references only]
• “Hypnos,” from National Amateur v45 #5 (May 1923)
• “The Outsider,” from Weird Tales v7 #4 (Apr 1926)
• “The Silver Key,” from Weird Tales v13 #1 (Jan 1929)
• “The Strange High House in the Mist,” from Weird Tales v18 #3 (Oct 1931)
• “The Dreams in the Witch House,” from Weird Tales v22 #1 (Jul 1933) [roughly connected]
• “The Other Gods,” from The Fantasy Fan v1 #3 (Nov 1933)
• “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” from Weird Tales v24 #1 (Jul 1934) [with E. Hoffmann Price]
• “The Quest of Iranon,” from Galleon v1 #5 (Jul/Aug 1935)
• At the Mountains of Madness, from Astounding Stories v16 #6/v17 #1/v17 #2 (Feb 1936/Mar 1936/Apr 1936) [references only]
• “The Night Ocean,” from The Californian v4 #3 (Win 1936) [feels very Kingsporty]
• “Azathoth,” from Leaves #2 (1938)
• “The Thing in the Moonlight,” from Bizarre v1 #1 (Jan 1941)
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, from Weird Tales v35 #9/v35 #10 (May 1941/Jul 1941) [references only]
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1943)

Now I'm wondering who else to read for stuff to add to my Gazetteer. The works cited are all in the public domain (so what I have so far would be sharable), but I have Gary Myers books (though I haven't read them yet), and was thinking some of the locations in Italo Calvino's Le città invisibili would be a good fit. I've also found out about Kij Johnson's The Dream-Quest of Vellit Boe, which I will have to track down because it sounds great. Does anybody have any suggestions, either for Dream-Cycle stories I missed, or ideas about such a gazetteer in the first place?

EDIT: I'm reluctantly removing “The Fall of Babbulkund.” It seems more like one of Dunsany's At the Edge of the World stories, not Over the Edge of the World in the Lands of Dream. Also, I added the full Lovecraft Dream-Cycle, since the Wikipedia entry is incomplete.

• “The Fall of Babbulkund,” from The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories (1908)

Edited May 24, 2022 by AlHazred
Removing “The Fall of Babbulkund” from the list, listed HPL.

[Kevin]

There's Brian Lumley's stories of David Hero and Elden the Wanderer, explicitly set in HPL's Dreamlands (though a pulpier version of it): Hero of Dreams, Ship of Dreams, Mad Moon of Dreams, and Iced on Aran.

[AlHazred]

I'll have to check those out, though I'm not that fond of his later Titus Crow stuff, which is the only stuff of his I've read.

[Qizilbashwoman]

21 minutes ago, AlHazred said:

I'll have to check those out, though I'm not that fond of his later Titus Crow stuff, which is the only stuff of his I've read.

I'm here to agree that I Do Not Like Lumley Lovecraft (and also I don't like Titus Crow)

[jajagappa]

16 hours ago, AlHazred said:

Now I'm wondering who else to read for stuff to add to my Gazetteer.

Clark Ashton Smith? 

[Qizilbashwoman]

Kij Johnson, The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe

[AlHazred]

6 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Clark Ashton Smith? 

Sure, but while his stuff feels appropriate, I haven't found anything definitively "Dreamlands." I have his complete works, and have scanned a bunch but I haven't found any definitively Dreamland stuff yet.

5 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Kij Johnson, The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe

Already mentioned above! It's in my reading list! 🙂

[AlHazred]

23 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I'm here to agree that I Do Not Like Lumley Lovecraft (and also I don't like Titus Crow)

To be fair, the first story, "The Caller of the Black," is, I think, decent. I haven't read most of them, but I picked up a later novel in the series, and it was, to my reading tastes, hot garbage. But then, I have a weird sense of what I like -- for instance, I would have loved a further exploration of the Pickman Mythos, which few writers seem to have expanded on.

[AlHazred]

I think this is the Gary Myers Dream-Cycle. I think I have all of these in The Country of the Worm collection.

• “The House of the Worm,” from The Arkham Collector #7 (Sum 1970)
• “Yohk the Necromancer,” from The Arkham Collector #8 (Win 1971)
• “Passing of a Dreamer,” from The Arkham Collector #9 (Spr 1971)
• “The Return of Zhosph” from HPL (1972)
• “Xiurhn,” from The House of the Worm (1975)
• “The Three Enchantments,” from The House of the Worm (1975)
• “Hazuth-Kleg,” from The House of the Worm (1975)
• “The Loot of Golthoth,” from The House of the Worm (1975)
• “The Four Sealed Jars,” from The House of the Worm (1975)
• “The Maker of Gods,” from The House of the Worm (1975)
• “The Gods of Earth,” from Nameless Places (1975)
• “The Snout in the Alcove,” from The Year's Best Fantasy Stories #3 (1977)
• “The Priest of Mlok,” from Crypt of Cthulhu #22 (Roodmas 1984)
• “The Fourth Cryptical Book of Hsan,” from Crypt of Cthulhu #23 (St. John’s Eve 1984) [as “The Third Cryptical Book of Hsan”]
• “The Gods of Drinen,” from Crypt of Cthulhu #29 (Candlemas 1985)
• “The Tomb of Neb,” from Crypt of Cthulhu #31 (Roodmas 1985)
• “The Treasure of the Ancients,” from Crypt of Cthulhu #56 (Roodmas 1988)
• “The Last Night of Earth,” from The Azathoth Cycle: Tales of the Blind Idiot God (1995)
• “The Lord of the Hunt,” from Crypt of Cthulhu #89 (Eastertide 1995)
• “The Keeper of the Flame,” from The New Lovecraft Circle (1996)
• “The End of Wisdom,” from Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror #8 (2003)
• “The Tower of Mormoroth,” from Worlds of Cthulhu (2012)
• “The Mouth of God,” from The Lovecraft eZine #29 (Feb 2014)
• “Dusk,” from The Country of the Worm: Excursions Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2016)
• “Sadiva’s Lover,” from The Country of the Worm: Excursions Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2016)
• “The Door Through the Fire,” from The Country of the Worm: Excursions Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2016)
• “The City of the Dead,” from The Country of the Worm: Excursions Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2016)

Hopefully get through this collection over the next couple of weeks. I won't be able to share any of this stuff, but it may be helpful for someone else trying to track down material.

[Qizilbashwoman]

Daughter of Hounds by Caitlín Kiernan is not set in the Dreamlands but it is a fantastic novel about a ghoul changeling and if you are a fan like me...

[AlHazred]

It suddenly occurred to me that Clark Ashton Smith's City of the Singing Flame stories might make sense as taking place in the Dreamlands.

• "The City of the Singing Flame" (Jul 1931)
• "Beyond the Singing Flame" (Nov 1931)
• "The Rebirth of the Flame" (1989)

Now I have to reread them and see if it tracks. Practically everything else he wrote doesn't take place in dreams, but in fantastical regions that are supposed to be real.

[AlHazred]

It occurred to me to look at precursors to HPL, and stories they wrote that might also have influenced the Dream Cycle.

• Robert W. Chambers: his stuff will need a bit of unpacking. I'll have to reread it carefully -- he's got a lot of dreams and dream-imagery, but I don't remember it having the "Dreamlands" character, but more mundane (... relatively, in context) dreams of doom.
• Ambrose Bierce: stories like "The Death of Halpin Frayser" show a strong element of dreaming, but in general there isn't a lot of actionable information. It is possible that "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" can be understood to take place in the Dreamlands, but in AGB it's ambiguous; RWC puts a lot more dream imagery into the Carcosa Mythos.
• Edgar Allen Poe: I was looking at "To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad" and was struck by the similarity between it and some of HPL's Dreamlands poems. The ghoul-haunted forest of Weir; the dark, misty lake of Auber; hoary Mount Yaanek; these could all comfortably be in the Dreamlands, and as the poem itself says, "This is nothing but dreaming!" And EAP's poem "Dream-Land" definitely refers to a Lovecraftian Dreamlands.

Any other older authors with appropriate works? I know Jason Thompson has put Etidorhpa's Country and Zimiamvia in his Dreamlands map, but I'm not sure those fit as well as these examples above.

[AlHazred]

So, earlier this year, I had the idea to comb various Dreamlands stories and collect geographical information to produce a gazetteer. There's some of that sort of thing in the CoC Dreamlands books, but they don't reference where each item comes from, which makes it difficult to follow up on the entries. Then it only became a matter of, what to include?

I started with Lord Dunsany. His dream stories inspired HPL's own Dreamlands stories, so it seemed appropriate. The problem with Lord Dunsany's work in this regard is he had no real interest in consistency in some details, even if he was very good about consistency in others. He definitely felt there was a difference between Fairyland and the Dreamland, but they're adjacent. I decided to divide Dunsany's stories into three regions: At the Edge of the World (most of his contemporary stories, featuring mild (if any) supernatural elements), Over the Hills and Far Away (questionably located, possibly near or far from the regular world), and Beyond the Fields We Know (definitely Dream- or Fairy-land). I included geographic items from Beyond the Fields We Know.

With HPL, it was much, much easier to determine what to include. I also included some of his poems, but I'm probably still missing an item or two. Also, some of the items that usually get included were shown in the story that introduces them to be nonexistent, which is awkward.

So, I put together a gazetteer of the above sources, since those are all in the public domain as far as I'm aware. I've been delving deeper, into Gary Myers and Brian Lumley and others, but that won't be sharable, obviously. Anyway, here it is. I should mention, it's very early draft; call it version 0.1.