The Country of the Worm: Excursions Beyond the Wall of Sleep

Not all of H. P. Lovecraft’s fantastic tales were set in Arkham or New England or even on the Earth. Not a few were set in a fabulous dreamworld that surrounds our own. In writing such tales, Lovecraft was following the lead of Lord Dunsany, one of his literary idols and also one of the most influential fantasists of all time. And Gary Myers, in The Country of the Worm, follows the lead of both. The Country of the Worm is Myers’s long-awaited follow-up to The House of the Worm. It includes that first book in a corrected edition. It also includes all the dreamworld stories Myers has written since, as well as three episodes from the Book of Eibon of Clark Ashton Smith. It concludes with an early novella, a gothic nightmare appearing here for the first time. Here are twenty-five excursions beyond the wall of sleep, into worlds poised between breathtaking beauty and paralyzing fear, where darkness is a palpable presence and reality can be as slippery as a shade.