Dogs with Their Eyes Shut

British Fantasy Award nominee 2014.

A novella. Cover art by Vincent Chong.

When dogs sleep, they dream. And the way dogs sleep and the way they dream is very similar to the way humans sleep and dream. It’s all about the eyes, and how they see things. We have a very similar design of eye. When I found Bix, the connection was made and from that day on, when Bix dreamed, I shared those dreams with him and I could go to the Quays.

And so the War with the Autoscopes continues, raging across dreams and drawing the remaining Firmament Surgeons together. Unaware of his spectacular lineage, the narrator of this story enjoys, for a short, sweet time, the delight of lucid dreams through which he follows the adventures of a beautiful girl named Lesley and her battles with the baroque Uproar Contraptions.

Only when he is told that what he thinks are dreams are more than just his imagination, his complacency is shattered and he realises he has to find a way to gain access to the Quays and rescue Lesley from the horrors of the ancient Autoscope they call The Flyblown Man.