| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.172.184.103 |
Dream Sickness as a major theme and expression was first broached in my internet novels THE HAWLER and KLAXON CITY (2005/6) - and then again in my internet novella WEIRDTONGUE (2007). These fictions are currently being dismantled within hyperspace as part of the dismantlement of the whole Weirdmonger Wheel. Dream Sickness now seems to be a prevalent theme besetting me, i.e. on TV, eg AMY'S CHOICE (the latest 'Dr Who' episode) and the remake of THE PRISONER on ITV (although I can't remember Dream Sickness being a theme in the original THE PRISONER of the sixties) .... and I'm currently reading 'MAN IN THE DARK' (2008) by Paul Auster where I believe Dream Sickness is an ingredient. But of course I could be wrong .... or dreaming. Two dreams in interface without understanding which is a dream and which is reality are known as vennidictions or vennisons. Maybe it is more difficult to dismantle dreams than is deemed possible. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.172.184.103 |
Please also see Matt Cardin's provocative Demon Muse blog linked and commented upon here:- http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=3961 | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.172.184.103 |
Not, vennisons, btw, but invennsions. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.143.129.15 |
It's prevalent with me, too, as you could probably tell. In fact too much; I feel empty of ideas at the minute, and don't want to be writing the same thing again and again so am having a break from writing (or trying to - I keep mentally striving for an idea, but none are coming...  ) It all ties in with my being adopted, apparently; my perpetually thinking of another life and world, an ongoing 'what if'. It explained Philip K Dick, too, his twin sister having died at birth, among others. At least I resisted saying my dreams were ok but my life wasn't... Oops! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.143.129.15 |
I've heard a very good write up of the new Prisoner, saying people haven't 'got it', and that this reviewer felt they had. They said it was quite cerebral. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.172.184.103 |
Tony, THE PRISONER remake is a TV classic. No mistake. I noted a Dream Sickness theme in the story I'm publishing of yours in NULL IMMORTALIS.  Another ingredient in what I said above about being beset.... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.172.184.103 |
In fact, Tony, a number of stories in NULL IMMORTALIS touch on the Dream Sickness theme as I envisaged it when using that phrase first in THE HAWLER. =============== From The Hawler: <<This is a Zoo extract from DF Lewis' novel 'The Hawler' (2005): "In a part of the city, there was a zoo. And it was known by the Authorities that any dream sickness affecting the rest of the city did not affect the zoo. There seemed to be individuals in charge of the city that the ordinary citizens failed to recognise or ever knew they existed at all. These Authorisers, so-called, had some mandate to keep parts of the city as reservations of clear sense where dream was clearly recognised as dream and real life as real life, and never the twain should overlap. Strangely, perhaps, the zoo grounds were one such reservation and those citizens suffering from the dream sickness often resorted there on their holidays just to be certain about themselves and about reality and, indeed, about the dreams that they still dreamed when at the zoo but they actually knew they were dreams, knew them for what they were. How they knew this fact was similar to going abroad to sunny climes for ones holiday away from the cold, dank, often dark city and believing it was for the sake of enjoyment and recreation, not the chore a holiday surely always was. Here, at the zoo, the citizens knew similarly that they were free of deceiving dreams and what they saw as they toured from cage to cage, enclosure to enclosure were real animals and creatures. Only when the citizens were asleep, at the zoo hotel, did they know they would be in danger of dreaming unlike in the surrounding city itself, where waking was no safeguard against surreptitious dreams taking over the minds: not day-dreams, but full-blooded dreams which one thought were real life when experiencing them. In the zoo grounds, however, such dreams were dreams, whilst waking was waking. The entrance to the zoo was not at all imposing and it could have served as the gates of a small factory, where people came and went after spending the rest of their time in terraced back-to-back two-up-two-downs in the less desirable parts of the city. And to be less desirable in this city would not be putting too strong a description on it. There was a turnstile just a cover to indicate that this was a place for which you needed admission, as most zoos in other cities would need. No money changed hands and when people had time off from work they came here all jolly and familified and entered the place that was hidden by tall grey walls which made them feel they were indeed going to work all over again on their holiday! The turnstile was unimpeded and they emerged into an area around the first enclosure. In the distance could be seen the starts of corridors between lines of cages, the contents of which could not yet be seen but their hubbub of loud meat could certainly be heard from this auditory vantage point just inside the turnstile. The first enclosure was empty, unlike the other enclosures beyond the cages, as visitors who had been here before could attest were full of living exhibits yet to meet the gaze of greenhorn visitors. Why an empty enclosure was the first exhibit often mystified initial visitors, but this was soon explained as the various themes panned out in interlocking concertinas of myth and logic and as the total exhibition of the zoo revealed itself to the unpaying customers filing past." >> | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.72 |
Des - actually, a kind of dream sickness is explored in the original Prisoner, 'A, B, and C. Not exactly along the lines you are talking about, but it's there in some sort of vague form. |