Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American writer, poet, literary critic and essayist, recognized as one of the greatest writers of horror literature together with Edgar Allan Poe and considered by many to be one of the precursors of Anglo-American science fiction. His works, a contamination between horror, soft science fiction, dark fantasy and low fantasy, have often been described, even by himself, with the term weird fiction (where weird stands for "strange"), being recognized among the main origins of the modern literary genre of the new weird.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep, written in 1919, is one of H.P. Lovecraft's earlier works of cosmic horror and scientific inquiry.
The story is narrated by a former medical intern at a state psychopathic institution. He introduces the central theme by reflecting on the profound, often titanic significance of dreams, suggesting that the world of sleep might, in fact, be a truer, less material existence than our waking life.
