The Book of Dreams

Edited by Nick Gevers. Dust jacket and interior illustrations by J. K. Potter.

Perchance to dream...

To dream is to enter inner worlds of terror and revelation, to look the collective unconscious in the face. In this ground-breaking anthology, five modern masters of the fantastic conjure especially potent encounters with the stuff of the sleeping mind, unveiling dark hints about who (or what) we truly are, about our uncertain relationships with the waking world. The stories in The Book of Dreams are bold ventures into the kingdom of Morpheus, upon which individual destinies crucially depend – or perhaps the destiny of the entire human species.

In “The Prisoner”, Grand Master Robert Silverberg, long an explorer of visionary realms, indicates just how dangerous it can be to respond to a cry for help – especially when you are unconscious at the time.

In “Dream Burgers at the Mouth of Hell”, the commanding prose of Lucius Shepard explores the secret dream factories of Hollywood, tracing where the inspiration of scriptwriters really originates.

In “Testaments”, Jay Lake brilliantly employs the language of prophecy to consider the totality of human history, and where its contradictory trends may lead us as new kings dream of glory.

In “Rex Nemorensis”, Kage Baker incisively considers the violent dream landscape of Vietnam veterans, and fuses it with the territory of ancient myth and ritual.

And in “86 Deathdick Road”, Jeffrey Ford, dreamer of dreamers, plunges into an oneiric domain in which fateful symbols are everywhere, but truth is forever elusive.

The Book of Dreams is a cornucopia of strange enlightenment, a quintet of voyages to wonderful yet disturbing worlds within.