Don't Dream: The Collected Horror and Fantasy of Donald Wandrei

by Donald Wandrei

Book Overview

Book by Wandrei, Donald This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878252852
• ISBN13: 9781878252852
• Release Date: June 2017
• Publisher: Fedogan and Bremer Publishing LLC
• Length: 414 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Pseudo-Scientific Horror Fantasies

Donald Wandrei (1909- 1987) was a member of the famous "Lovecraft Circle"-- writers and amateurs who entered into lengthly correspondence with H.P.L. and who (at least in their early writing) tended to be highly imitative of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos fantasy tale. Wandrei later edited a three-volume edition of Lovecraft's letters (1965-1971). With August Derleth, Wandrei co-founded Arkham House books, though he later had a lentiginous falling out with that company. The lawsuit was a complicated affair that was eventually settled out of court. But some fault must be assigned to Wandrei, who reportedly became increasingly eccentric and combative as he got older Wandrei left behind some four volumes of poetry (still highly regarded by some critics), three novels of rather mixed quality, and two rather jumbo-sized short story collections: _Colossus_ (1987) and _Don't Dream_ (1997). The first selection is an assemblage of Wandrei's proto-science fiction. The second is a chronological arrangement of Wandrei's fantasy horror stories. The back cover of _Don't Dream_ sports a positive quotation by Fritz Leiber: "At the time that Lovecraft died, Donald Wandrei was the most natural successor to him that I could think of." Other critical experts on weird or supernatural fiction (like Mike Ashley, S.T. Joshi. and T.E.D. Klein) have expressed generally positive critiques of Wandrei. And yet, a number of tales in this collection repeat themselves. They involve a multitude of heroes who come to grisly ends, often with lots of italics. Here are some representative endings: "My God! They're coming-- they're crawling up my legs-- they're creeping up my face--my eyes-- God save me!-- and entering my brain!" ("The Shadow of a Nightmare," 17) "And as I stared in [Alfred Kramer's] direction, a frightful change took place. _His hands dropped from his wrists and thudded to the floor. His face suddenly went awry, slipped, melted away. The clothing squirmed, bulged, ripped off._" ("The Lives of Alfred Kramer," 74) "I wakened to see the lady in grey beside my bed... but these three things corrupted me from being: the fresh gardenia in her hands; her finger-nails of those dead and buried six months or more have ever grown; _and the dreadful way in which her hands were twirling the flower, while her black, liquescent eyes centered upon me!_" ("The Lady in Grey," 110) To be sure, there are a few characters who fare a bit better. The hero of "When the Fire Creatures Came," when teased by the heroine, "suddenly found other and more satisfying things to do than day-dream" (56). In "Don't Dream" (Wandrei's only story to be published in _Unknown_), the story ends with a comical exchange between the hero and a rather grumpy truck driver. But the average hero or central character in most of these tales by Wandrei is somebody who comes to a prettee stickee end. If he is not being slaughtered by a savage monster or a vicious crocodile, he is vegetating, rotting, being buried alive, diving out an apartment window, or being killed by a hurricane at sea. In an introduction in the book, Helen Mary Hughesdon (1997) notes that few of Wandrei's victims are villainous scoundrels who richly deserve their fate. They are usually sympathetic people who wander into territory where forces of nature spin out of control. In this respect, Wandrei's tales were unlike those of August Derleth or Robert E. Howard, who portrayed many a Bad Apple who gets his Just Desserts. There are 26 complete short stories in this collection, and 14 fragments, dream pieces, and essays by Wandrei. There are about eight stories that I would rank in the good-to-excellent range: "The Tree-Men of M'BWA" (_Weird Tales_, 1932); "The Lives of Alfred Kramer" (_Weird Tales_, 1932); "The lady in Grey" (_Weird Tales_, 1933); "A Scientist Divides" (_Astounding_, 1934); "The Witch-Makers" (_Argosy_, 1936); "The Painted Mirror" (_Esquire_, 1937); "Don't Dream" (_Unknown_, 1939); and "It Will Grow on