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The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, by Neil Gaiman


What if my dreams came true?

It is a scary thought. I don't think I would survive it. My dreams have a pattern running through them, recurring themes that I can't shake off: love, guilt, fear... and if what I dreamed were real, I would go mad.

For that reason, Preludes and Nocturnes is a scary book. In his afterward, Gaiman describes the stories in this series:

"The Sleep of the Just" was intended to be a classical English horror story; "Imperfect Hosts" plays with some of the conventions of the old DC and EC horror comics (and the hosts thereof); "Dream a Little Dream of Me" is a slightly more contemporary British horror story; "A Hope in Hell" harks back to the kind of dark fantasy found in Unknown in the 1940s; "Passengers" was my (perhaps misguided) attempt to try to mix super-heroes into the SANDMAN world; "24 hours" is an essay on stories and authors, and also one of the very few genuinely horrific tales I've written; "Sound and Fury" wrapped up the storyline; and "The Sound of Her Wings" was the epilogue and the first story in the sequence I felt was truly mine, and in which I knew I was beginning to find my own voice.
Did you notice how many times the word "horror"appears?

I had a weird thought. There is a very thin line separating fantasy from theology. The characters of fantasy are heaven and hell, demons and angels, death and salvation, mortals and gods—well, it is the same with theology. (Theology would quibble about the plural used in "gods" but it does have father, son and holy spirit after all.)

I think I'm out of my depth here, so forget about that last paragraph.

I wonder what I'll dream about tonight.

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