What do you think?
Rate this book
Nightmare's Realm: New Tales of the Weird and Fantastic
Dreams and nightmares—what Ambrose Bierce called “visions of the night”—are the basis of some of the greatest weird fiction in literary history. The unruly images that torment us in sleep are usually dispelled by the coming of day—but can they be dismissed so easily? Do nightmares have some impalpable reality that can affect our daily lives, the lives of those around us, and perhaps the very fabric of the universe?
This volume contains seventeen original stories by some of the leading contemporary writers of weird fiction. Each tale probes the relation of nightmares to the real world, and to the human mind, in ways that are baffling, intriguing, terrifying, and poignant. Are we dreaming or are we awake? Can dreams gain a kind of quasi-reality and affect the workings of the real world? Can technology enhance or even create a dream-realm?
All all-star cast has contributed stories long and short … David Barker … Jason V Brock … Ramsey Campbell … Gemma Files … Richard Gavin … Caitlín R. Kiernan … Nancy Kilpatrick … John Langan … Reggie Oliver … W. H. Pugmire … Darrell Schweitzer … John Shirley … Simon Strantzas … Steve Rasnic Tem … Jonathan Thomas … Donald Tyson … Stephen Woodworth … The volume is edited by S. T. Joshi, a leading critic and anthologist of weird fiction.
Who can say that the nightmare is merely a wisp of fancy engendered by our own minds? After all, it was Edgar Allan Poe who said: “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
This volume contains seventeen original stories by some of the leading contemporary writers of weird fiction. Each tale probes the relation of nightmares to the real world, and to the human mind, in ways that are baffling, intriguing, terrifying, and poignant. Are we dreaming or are we awake? Can dreams gain a kind of quasi-reality and affect the workings of the real world? Can technology enhance or even create a dream-realm?
All all-star cast has contributed stories long and short … David Barker … Jason V Brock … Ramsey Campbell … Gemma Files … Richard Gavin … Caitlín R. Kiernan … Nancy Kilpatrick … John Langan … Reggie Oliver … W. H. Pugmire … Darrell Schweitzer … John Shirley … Simon Strantzas … Steve Rasnic Tem … Jonathan Thomas … Donald Tyson … Stephen Woodworth … The volume is edited by S. T. Joshi, a leading critic and anthologist of weird fiction.
Who can say that the nightmare is merely a wisp of fancy engendered by our own minds? After all, it was Edgar Allan Poe who said: “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
322 pages, Paperback
First published March 31, 2017
39 people are currently reading
687 people want to read
About the author
S.T. Joshi
795 books455 followersSunand Tryambak Joshi is an Indian American literary scholar, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors. Besides what some critics consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 1996), Joshi has written about Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James, and has edited collections of their works.
His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.
Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press. He is also the editor of Lovecraft Annual and co-editor of Dead Reckonings, both small-press journals published by Hippocampus Press.
In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader, collecting pieces by such writers as Isaac Asimov, John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, Corliss Lamont, Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Westermarck, was published in 2007.
Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.
In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.
Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, New York, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.
His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers, including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T. E. D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, Les Daniels, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, L. P. Davies, Edward Lucas White, Rod Serling, Poppy Z. Brite and others.
Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, published by Necronomicon Press. He is also the editor of Lovecraft Annual and co-editor of Dead Reckonings, both small-press journals published by Hippocampus Press.
In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and social relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; In Her Place (2006), which collects written examples of prejudice against women; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan, among others. An Agnostic Reader, collecting pieces by such writers as Isaac Asimov, John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Henry Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, Corliss Lamont, Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Westermarck, was published in 2007.
Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, Jr., William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell, which is dedicated to theologian and fellow Lovecraft critic Robert M. Price.
In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.
Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, New York, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 20, 2016
S. T. Joshi has established himself as a leading figure in the study of weird fiction, from his literary criticism, his acclaimed bibliographies (of Lovecraft, Bierce, Dunsany, and others), and the many anthologies and collections he’s edited over the years. One of his newest anthologies is Nightmare’s Realm from Dark Regions Press, collecting 17 original tales about dreams and nightmares—a common theme in weird fiction, as evident by the prologue and epilogue, poems by Poe and Lovecraft. Joshi has assembled some of the best voices from the genre today to write these tales of terror and madness.
Dreams, by nature, are baffling and mercurial, layered metaphors from deep within the dreamer’s mind. Many of these tales are similarly odd or obscure, following their own obtuse logic through surreal landscapes. Jason Brock’s “Kafkaesque” is a dark comedy full of surreal landscapes echoing its namesake, as the protagonist—a writer—dreams that he’s been recruited him to tell one last, great story by Kafka himself, descending through a series of Kafkaesque realms on this epic quest. The story is as evocative as it is compelling, and I was hooked, eager to see what strange new environs the protagonist would wander into next. Steve Rasnic Tem’s excellent “The Wake” sees a man fall asleep at his father’s wake, only to slip into a dreamscape where the dead man walks. Tem somehow captures the quintessential feel of a dream, with the protagonist following the dream’s flow and adhering to its unique dream-logic as he meanders through this strange wake.
Other stories are set in the borderland where dream and reality are intermingled, entwined, and inseparable. Ramsey Campbell’s “The Dreamed” follows a tourist on holiday in Greece, whose passport was switched with another passenger’s by mistake. Despite his fitful nights of half-sleep in his sweaty motel room, and the apathy of the staff who barely speak English, he tries to adhere to his travel itinerary, crossing paths with the man whose passport was exchanged with his—a man who looks more familiar with each passing day. A looming sense of dread pervades the story, along with a cramped, trapped tension. John Shirley’s “Dreams Downstream” shows the dangers of technology: the rollout of a new, untested high-tech communications array causes mass hallucinations, the subconscious turned into audio-visual apparitions that run amok across suburbia.
Then there’s the stories that echo the . David Barker’s “Beneath the Veil” could have been ripped straight from an 1890s ghost story collection, with its ornate language and structure. It’s about a man who’s had two vivid dreams, in one marrying a beautiful bride and the other marrying a withered corpse; he wakes, wondering which dream was real and which one a figment of his imagination. Donald Tyson’s dark and sinister “The Art of Memory” has a Victorian scholar studying memory, but as he delves deeper into his own psyche he finds that the mind represses some memories for a reason. W. H. Pugmire’s “The Barrier Between” is also very evocative of classic weird fiction, but has a distinctive modern-day setting, where a photographer stages an artsy photo-shoot in front of a gnarled, freakish old tree that holds true horror inside it. His reality begins to bend, replaced with rot and carnage.
And, of course, there are stories of dream therapists and the darker things that lurk in dreams. Gemma Files wrote an excellent tale in “Sleep Hygiene,” invoking the invasive unease when a sleeper’s dream-landscape is invaded by something unknown and sinister. Confronting this invader reveals dark truths that didn’t even exist in the sleeper’s mind, something left from the therapist’s earlier methods. In “The City of Sharp Edges” by Stephen Woodworth, we find a unique conundrum, for our sleeper is a blind man trapped in a labyrinthine maze of sharp corners and jagged pits, with some bellowing beast that continues to follow him. Woodworth has come up with a great idea, conveying great terror not just from the strangeness of the dream but from the protagonist’s inability to see any of it.
Overall, Nightmare’s Realm is an impressive anthology; one or two of the stories didn’t work for me, but overall the quality is quite high, and the imagination on display is unchecked and limitless. Dream makes for an excellent theme as well, and not a single story wastes that theme’s promise or potential. Yet the stories are also wide-ranging and varied, and while every one of them deals with dreams, only a few of the stories share any similarities. Nightmare’s Realm is an excellent anthology, one of the best that I’ve read this year. I highly it to any readers of weird fiction, dark fantasy, or horror who don’t mind that this volume of weird dreams may cause nightmares.
The signed and limited hardcover of Nightmare’s Realm is available now for preorder, which includes a free immediate download of the eBook. Trade paperback and eBook editions will be available for purchase in early 2017. I received an advance review copy from the publisher in exchange for this review.
Dreams, by nature, are baffling and mercurial, layered metaphors from deep within the dreamer’s mind. Many of these tales are similarly odd or obscure, following their own obtuse logic through surreal landscapes. Jason Brock’s “Kafkaesque” is a dark comedy full of surreal landscapes echoing its namesake, as the protagonist—a writer—dreams that he’s been recruited him to tell one last, great story by Kafka himself, descending through a series of Kafkaesque realms on this epic quest. The story is as evocative as it is compelling, and I was hooked, eager to see what strange new environs the protagonist would wander into next. Steve Rasnic Tem’s excellent “The Wake” sees a man fall asleep at his father’s wake, only to slip into a dreamscape where the dead man walks. Tem somehow captures the quintessential feel of a dream, with the protagonist following the dream’s flow and adhering to its unique dream-logic as he meanders through this strange wake.
Other stories are set in the borderland where dream and reality are intermingled, entwined, and inseparable. Ramsey Campbell’s “The Dreamed” follows a tourist on holiday in Greece, whose passport was switched with another passenger’s by mistake. Despite his fitful nights of half-sleep in his sweaty motel room, and the apathy of the staff who barely speak English, he tries to adhere to his travel itinerary, crossing paths with the man whose passport was exchanged with his—a man who looks more familiar with each passing day. A looming sense of dread pervades the story, along with a cramped, trapped tension. John Shirley’s “Dreams Downstream” shows the dangers of technology: the rollout of a new, untested high-tech communications array causes mass hallucinations, the subconscious turned into audio-visual apparitions that run amok across suburbia.
Then there’s the stories that echo the . David Barker’s “Beneath the Veil” could have been ripped straight from an 1890s ghost story collection, with its ornate language and structure. It’s about a man who’s had two vivid dreams, in one marrying a beautiful bride and the other marrying a withered corpse; he wakes, wondering which dream was real and which one a figment of his imagination. Donald Tyson’s dark and sinister “The Art of Memory” has a Victorian scholar studying memory, but as he delves deeper into his own psyche he finds that the mind represses some memories for a reason. W. H. Pugmire’s “The Barrier Between” is also very evocative of classic weird fiction, but has a distinctive modern-day setting, where a photographer stages an artsy photo-shoot in front of a gnarled, freakish old tree that holds true horror inside it. His reality begins to bend, replaced with rot and carnage.
And, of course, there are stories of dream therapists and the darker things that lurk in dreams. Gemma Files wrote an excellent tale in “Sleep Hygiene,” invoking the invasive unease when a sleeper’s dream-landscape is invaded by something unknown and sinister. Confronting this invader reveals dark truths that didn’t even exist in the sleeper’s mind, something left from the therapist’s earlier methods. In “The City of Sharp Edges” by Stephen Woodworth, we find a unique conundrum, for our sleeper is a blind man trapped in a labyrinthine maze of sharp corners and jagged pits, with some bellowing beast that continues to follow him. Woodworth has come up with a great idea, conveying great terror not just from the strangeness of the dream but from the protagonist’s inability to see any of it.
Overall, Nightmare’s Realm is an impressive anthology; one or two of the stories didn’t work for me, but overall the quality is quite high, and the imagination on display is unchecked and limitless. Dream makes for an excellent theme as well, and not a single story wastes that theme’s promise or potential. Yet the stories are also wide-ranging and varied, and while every one of them deals with dreams, only a few of the stories share any similarities. Nightmare’s Realm is an excellent anthology, one of the best that I’ve read this year. I highly it to any readers of weird fiction, dark fantasy, or horror who don’t mind that this volume of weird dreams may cause nightmares.
The signed and limited hardcover of Nightmare’s Realm is available now for preorder, which includes a free immediate download of the eBook. Trade paperback and eBook editions will be available for purchase in early 2017. I received an advance review copy from the publisher in exchange for this review.
June 22, 2018
Some creepy, haunting stuff in here, in particular I was taken by the very first story in here by Campbell.
February 20, 2022
A lot of it was... tired, I guess, which might be appropriate for the subject, but less so for the reader.
October 4, 2022
The Ramsey Campbell story here is OK, but for the rest the quality control is quite sloppy. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews