| Author | Message | ||
     Kyuba (Kyuba) Username: Kyuba Registered: 03-2010 Posted From: 89.74.89.247 |
Hello, I'm a student of English (Philology) from Poland. I'm writing my M.A. Thesis on the motif of dreams in contemporary gothic/dark fantasy/horror literature. I'm planning to put some of Mr. Campbell's works into my bibliography but I need your help at first. Can anyone direct me to some of his books that touch upon the subject of dreams/hallucinations? I'm looking not only for novels, but short stories as well - basically, anything where dreams are prominent, and influence the plot. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you in advance. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Hi Kyuba, and welcome. The thesis sounds most interesting! There are people here more "expert" on Ramsey's work than me (including Ramsey himself), but some quick off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts are: The short story, Voice of the Beach - quite hallucinatory, that one! Novella - Needing Ghosts (well, you *could* interpret it as a dream, but then it could be interpreted other ways too) Novel - Ancient Images (my mind's a bit fuzzy at the moment but there's a recurring dream/nightmare in there, isn't there?) I'm sure there are lots of others. Indeed, folk here might be able to direct you towards other contemporary genre authors where dreams are prominent in their stories. Good luck!  | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.165.4 |
Dzien dobry Kyuba! Incarnate would be a good choice- the whole novel is based around the concept of prophetic dreaming. | ||
| Kyuba (Kyuba) Username: Kyuba Registered: 03-2010 Posted From: 89.74.89.247 |
Thanks guys, keep em coming ;) Hope I'll manage to get them somehow, it's hard to buy Ramsey's books in Poland. He's not really a popular writer in these regions. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.165.4 |
Try here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_5?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field -keywords=ramsey+campbell&x=0&y=0&sprefix=ramse | ||
| Kyuba (Kyuba) Username: Kyuba Registered: 03-2010 Posted From: 89.74.89.247 |
I can easily obtain the short story collection "The Height of Scream" as well as "Midnight Sun". Ramsey is the missing link in my Bibliography, I started to built my M. A around Lovecraft, Gaiman, and Jonathan Carroll, but needed one more writer from the UK, it was really hard to find someone who would fit the concept. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Graham Joyce's Dreamside is a fantastic novel on the same sort of theme as Incarnate - I actually preferred it (sorry Ramsey) | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.143.133.88 |
Kyuba - try emailing Ramsey personally. He'll answer any questions you might have. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Isn't Jonathan Carroll (good as he is) from the US, not the UK? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Kyuba, the novella 'Needing Ghosts' is the finest attempt to translate the logic of dreams into prose that I have read. Reading it is like experiencing one of Ramsey's own nightmares! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.110.205 |
The Influence is dreamlike when the girl is dispossessed of her existence. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I always found 'To Wake The Dead'/'The Parasite' intensely nightmarish as well... what that poor woman goes through [shudder]. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Welcome, Kyuba! I'd say dreams were crucial to Thieving Fear. They also show up in Creatures of the Pool and in short stories such as "Napier Court" and "The Invocation" (usually very briefly). | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.70 |
Some of the passages of The Long Lost are very dream-like. Though that book's dreaminess - to me at least - probably stems back to the underlying drugs stuff. The book starts in the land of the dragon, wreathed in fog, and everything goes wonky in folk's heads after they partake of a magic pie. Otherwise, on a straight dream front, yup, Incarnate's the book. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.165.158 |
Ramsey, am I right in thinking that your story 'The Hands' was based on a dream? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Not to my knowledge, Huw! It may read that way... | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.47.18 |
Thanks, Ramsey! I had it in my head, for some reason, that it was based on a dream. I'm probably confusing it with something else. | ||
| Kyuba (Kyuba) Username: Kyuba Registered: 03-2010 Posted From: 83.24.177.175 |
Thank you Ramsey, and everybody else for the support. I think I have enough info for now. This message board is a pretty unique place on the net. I suppose I'll resurect this post in some time if I have more questions. | ||
| Kyuba (Kyuba) Username: Kyuba Registered: 03-2010 Posted From: 89.74.89.247 |
Ramsey - Could you recommend me some of your older books? (from the 80's and 90's). Lots of people mentioned "Incarnate" and "Needing Ghosts" as good examples, can you agree with them? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I'd certainly say both of those, Kyuba. And some tales in Alone with the Horrors include dreams - "The Depths" and "Midnight Hobo", for instance. | ||
| Kyuba (Kyuba) Username: Kyuba Registered: 03-2010 Posted From: 89.74.89.247 |
Thank you once again, I'm quite confident now which books to choose. Can't wait to start reading them. | ||
| Kyuba (Kyuba) Username: Kyuba Registered: 03-2010 Posted From: 178.73.15.52 |
Sorry for the topic resurrection, but I've got a question for Ramsey again, and I think this is the fastest way to communicate and not sound out of context. Ramsey, do you get inspired by your own dreams/nightmares, or are the ones included in your works just dreams you make up for the purpose of your books? I'm slowly finishing with my M.A. and would find this information valuable for my last chapter. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.104.137.29 |
Hello Kyuba! Welcome to the board. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
Kyuba, they're invented for the purposes of the tales. "Run Through" was based on a dream, but that's it. I do frequently dream, though, and am fond of the experience - even of nightmares, which I always ask Jenny not to end by waking me. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.60.173 |
Glaaki's dream-pull in Ramsey's early story "The Inhabitant of the Lake" is similar to Cthulhu's in Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu". | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
>>>even of nightmares, which I always ask Jenny not to end by waking me. Ha, that's class, that is. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.60.173 |
Ha, but how does/can she know you're having a nightmare? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
From my wails of terror. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.87.170 |
That gives me a good title for a Welsh horror anthology: Wales of Terror, a collection of nightmarish tales from John Probert, Rhys Hughes, Tim Lebbon . . . | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
Ramsey - another question - are there any of your own books you genuinely love and miss writing? Any you would like to revist, just for the sake of meeting the characters again? I get quite attached to my characters and have genuine affection for them. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
That gives me a good title for a Welsh horror anthology: Wales of Terror, a collection of nightmarish tales from John Probert, Rhys Hughes, Tim Lebbon . . . Don't forget Shamu. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.31.11 |
I'm half-welsh. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
so half of one of Des's stories... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
"Ramsey - another question - are there any of your own books you genuinely love and miss writing? Any you would like to revist, just for the sake of meeting the characters again? I get quite attached to my characters and have genuine affection for them." Jonathan Carroll once asked me that too, but I tend to feel I've said all I have to say about my characters once I've finished writing the tale, though some sorcerers from early in my career have been making guest appearances in some recent stuff. I think the one that (in a way) I miss writing is Needing Ghosts, since it virtually wrote itself while I hurried to keep up. I wish that happened more often! | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
It's my experience I do feel regenerated, even galvanized, when waking up after or because of nightmares and/or "angst" dreams. I am not dejected at all, they even make me happy as if I have tapped the deepest and darkest source of my very being. Ernest Jones asserted nightmares to be the very core of religion. He was a Freudian, of course, but he seemed to be leaving the oedipal track if only just for a moment. To me, the crucial psychological work about nightmares stays James Hillman's "Pan and the Nightmare". Good food for the reflective mind! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
Thanks, Ramsey! Dreams/nightmares are meant to be good for you. It's like your subconscious dealing with what went into your account the previous day, putting it all into the relevant books. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
Tony, I am not so sure dreams/nightmares always deal with what was experienced the previous day. That would coincide with the Freudian concept of the unconscious mind elaborating at night what he calls the "day residues". But maybe he was right, after all. I do have a very personal "superstition" of nightmares not belonging to the general family of "dreams"... | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
Perhaps not incidents, but rather the feelings? I think our feelings act like a bus that take us into particular places when we sleep. We have the places they go in place, but the emotions we're feeling govern which of them we will visit. But i certainly think it can be more complicated than this on occasion. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
"...some sorcerers from early in my career have been making guest appearances in some recent stuff." Ramsey, I'd be worried about that if I were you. It's too much like the Curwen-Orne-Hutchinson trio turning up in different eras and places over hundreds of years, with one of them apparently reinventing himself as Count Dracula. There's a vein of evil sardonic humour in their letters that still got under my skin on the fourth or fifth reading. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
P.S. When I say I'd be worried about I mean the sorcerors are responsible for it happening, not you. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
Kyuba, I hope you found my last answer to you (up this thread on 9 February). | ||
| Kyuba (Kyuba) Username: Kyuba Registered: 03-2010 Posted From: 178.73.15.52 |
Yup, I've found it and it's more than satisfactory thank you again Ramsey. |