The wife of Admiral Richard Deane dreamt how he died two days before the news arrived...
I was always the weakest magic-worker I knew. But when demons threatened my grandchild...
DREAM: Ants invite me to a picnic. But one of the dishes they serve is--other ants!
NEXT DAY: I'm invited to a picnic. And my friend, munching, says...
CAUTION: BUG-EAT-BUG WORLD
I find myself at a party in London observing two minutes of silence for the dead of World Wars One and Two. But then, in the park,
blowing across the grass like leaves, were people. The windows imploded. Surely, I thought, there should be a flash before the wind?
DREAM: to stop an idiotic bout of war-fever, I have to take on the power of the Goddess herself...
NEXT DAY: I stumble on a fantasy book, Ariel, full of details straight out of the dream...
THAT NIGHT: I sign the Unicorn Commitment, but personalize the magical contract...
CAUTION: DISSES REAGAN & SOUTHERN MASCULINITY
I was a reptilian archeologist, a million years from now.
What I dug up at the beach threatened my marriage...
An old actor tells me "I met Hitler when we were both babies.
I knew what was coming so I wanted to kill him, but then I'd BE him..."
Allied submarines attack the giant Nazi toddler who's hunting us with sonar, occupying my playroom...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE AND GUILT
In a corrupt world, a talisman called the Rai Dragon offers hope of real change--
IF it can be found, AND used by someone decent-hearted...
Augustus was ill, but a friend's dream prompted him to leave his tent before Brutus's assassins...
I'm a dance teacher, I'm King Kong, I'm a shell-shocked elf, I'm a wild bird flying...
CAUTION: GAY-POSITIVE ROLE MODELS, OH NO!
Night. Home alone. A huge bear breaks in! To defend myself, I have
a chainsaw. Curiously, an electric not a gas-powered chainsaw...
My son Billie, his Navy uniform soaking wet, cried "Oh, Mom--it's so terrible!"
and shrank into a baby again as I held him...
CAUTION: EXPLOSION
DREAM: Millions of birds were at war, tearing one another apart. It was out of control, thousands and thousands...
DAY: Pinochet's coup took Chile. Alerted by the dream, Painemal went into hiding and lived--unlike thousands...
CAUTION: EXTRAPOLATIVE OR PSYCHIC?
George Bush leads a hill-tribe raid against the hill-tribe led by Osama bin Laden... and I'm stuck between...
CAUTION: ANTI-HEROES, POLITICAL PREDICTION
The world's first all-bulemic band, Veronica and the Vomits, provokes a riot at our local punk club. So I go to
Anorexic Bootcamp where models learn self-defense under fire, as calories and fat jokes whiz by...
CAUTION: BARF, HORNY ANOREXIC, FOOD FIGHT
The gods of our cave-past and star-future fight over us--using us, of course. After I see the toll it's taking on a
bonobo buddy of mine, I decide to bring the war back home, and go gunning for God--BOTH of them...
CAUTION: APES AND EXPLOSIVES DON'T MIX
Tax-funded child prostitution ends war--sex calms men down from
mean chimps to nice bonobos. Rough on street kids, though...
CAUTION: SEXPLOITATION, SATIRE HARSH AS JONATHAN SWIFT. UNICORNS, TOO!
Mobilization, war, troop transport, slogans, marching bands and orgies, all in an apotheosis of dough...
CAUTION: ENDS IN SEX
Fighting an absolutist theocracy, my dragon-soul burns the
church's dragon-nursery. The cost is terrible: a black vortex...
CAUTION: ROMANTIC THREESOME GETS BURNED
A certain intensity marks some dreams as predictive, whether they foresee a death or a crisis averted;
but I keep quiet about them, writing them only in a locked diary. Once I spoke up, and was shunned...
CAUTION: DISTURBING ANALOGY WITH SEX-ORIENTATION CLOSET
I'd just gone off to college. I dream I'm back in my quarrelsome family's house--
as they start World War Three in the back yard! But our cat...
Humanity improves a river to death, so the river just disappears. Ominous since it’s the river of nature, time and God...
A guy smashes homes with a duckbilled train; gunmen shoot up shops near the tracks.
The ensuing civil war burns all. Years later, we live on hardscrabble farms. Global Texas!
CAUTION: GLOBAL TEXAS!
Clouds wake up. Maybe they were always aware, but now they're aware of us. And rage against us all.
Oh, humanity'll survive. But easy times are over...
CAUTION: PARTISAN INTERPRETATION
A crane came and spoke to me, reassuring me "I'll be back" even as a great fire burned it. It returned
as a white butterfly. Next morning, as we played hide and go seek, I shut my eyes and counted to...
CAUTION: CIVILIANS MASSACRED
I saw a man riding across the face of a lake. Bullets and arrows flew at him, but all missed.
He reached the shore. Men who looked like him rose from the ground, and pulled him down...
CAUTION: GENOCIDE DIRECT, GENOCIDE BY PROXY
In the far future, I relive Odysseus' tale. To save my life I must give up realistic hope, and focus on...
CAUTION: CANNIBAL MONSTERS
I'm in Lawrence, Kansas, watching a TV ad for hemorrhoid cream that won't solve your nuclear war problems...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE; ADVERTISING; HUMAN EXTINCTION
An endless parade of drowned sailors sing a dirge. The dreamer woke in tears. Then the news arrived.
1941. My dad and I are denounced to the SS. We're put in with monsters; I'm a snake or fish myself.
But the Nazis become a photo album, I go to a memorial, I cry, it's 1947, peace...
CAUTION: HOLOCAUST MEMORIES
A bomb's planted on our ship! But when a teen finds it, rather than fetch a responsible adult...
DREAM: On a farm, I meet two sexy shapeshifting sisters. But mushroom clouds rise on the horizon...
NEXT DAY: at SF-MOMA, Susan Marie Dopp's paintings: shapeshifting sisters, mushroom clouds...
CAUTION: NUDITY; ESP
Tony works as a courier in Sarajevo till he inadvertently delivers a bomb. Held by
a warlord for months, he dreams within the dream, and draws those dreams...
CAUTION: GRIM
Two kids I grew up with are dead. We carry their still-smoking corpses by the home of George Bush...
CAUTION: BURNT BODIES
I go back 3000 years to the Judgment of Paris, then at Babylon's height see King Nebuchadnezzar,
then the doomed lovers Antony & Cleopatra, then Triton and the Nereids celebrating a divine birth...
CAUTION: DENSE CLASSICAL REFERENCES
On my way to a wedding, I dream I'm in a war. I liberate a camp of prisoners. But one man's so injured
he can't be moved. We have to leave him behind. My rescue of his fellows has effectively killed him...
CAUTION: GUILT AND LIFE-QUESTIONING
Terse dreamlets quietly catch World War I's effect. Faith died in the trenches...
My only chance of life and freedom is to leap. He raises the gun and fires.
I'm flooded with a soundless explosion of light...
King Ethelfrid bribes Redwald to turn over his guest, Edwin. Edwin dreams an angel warns him, swearing to save him if
he'll convert. Redwald's wife tells him "Don't betray a guest." Once Edwin's king, that dream-angel demands his fealty...
CAUTION: SHODDY SPIRITUAL BARGAINING
Tubman woke ecstatic, unable to eat. "My people are free!" Her host said "My grandchildren may see it; but we will be gone."
"No! I tell you, sir, you'll see it, and you'll see it soon. My people are free! My people are free!" Three years later...
DREAM: Landsmen betray their mermaid lovers in a harbor full of towers that seem tilted and broken from under the sea.
NEXT MORNING: My boss asks me to track down a new translation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid.
AFTERNOON: I find a book on IQ tests that include spatial questions full of broken geometric shapes--familiar shapes...
CAUTION: MERMAID BREASTS
I'm condemned to die for fighting a regime that's killed my minority with impunity
for centuries. I have no regrets. They'll hesitate now, knowing they too can die...
The Europeans have another great war, killing off their men. Will that break the cycle of violence? Like a...
In prison, the midnight bell chimed. I dreamt I saw a cavalry column of men and horses skinned, gory, still marching.
Wagons of the dead passed for hours. As the guard changed, the gate crashed, waking me--just minutes after midnight!
CAUTION: PROVES NOT ALL DREAMS ARE REALTIME
As a child, landscape artist Paul Nash dreamed of flying over the countryside
of southern England. But he was threatened by the legendary Black Dog...
I can always fly in my dreams, so the military command asks me to levitate across war-torn Belgium as a courier...
Just north of the Firth of Forth in Scotland, a train fell from the track to a grassy park where small groups of people
wandered. I sensed it was one of those odd dreams of mine & tried to get the date--next spring. On April 14, 1914,
the "Flying Scotsman" jumped the parapet 15 miles north of the Forth Bridge and fell to the golf links below...
Three wind-gods are so revolted by humanity they want to kill us; the fourth says we'll kill ourselves soon enough...
Demons of fire invade the house, and the Voice of Truth says they can't be killed. What would you do?
I'm at a garden-party when They attack. I flee through a garden of swords, but a guard with a bayonet...
I dream it's after a great war; I hear the music I must write, and meet the girl I must marry...
Two days before 9/11, I dream I'm a child at ground zero, mourning the devastation--and witnessing rebirth.
Helicopter gunships invade. I repel bullets with pure willpower. But
they too have shields making guns useless. I duel two soldiers...
CAUTION: SURREAL VIOLENCE
Kat Hepburn burns inside, as fierce aliens take over our souls.
But these parasites forgot they're now bound to our bodies...
I built a Bavarian treehouse with a great view, hoping Hitler'd confiscate it.
He did! Now he's exposed to Allied spy planes--and assassination...
CAUTION: CHILD-MOLESTING THERAPIST
I'm a sniper in a desert battle of men against hobbits. Guilty for not fighting openly, but that'd be suicidal...
CAUTION: MATH AND WAR
I fight to save a nest of 50,000 eggs that'll hatch... psychics!
But my friends want to exterminate them! Who's wrong here?
In Japan, sick in bed, reading a book on radiation sickness, I dream of a restorative ritual for trees...
CAUTION: GRUESOME
Saigon, 1973. Lost in a fabric maze. I find, wearing Buddhist robes, the skeleton of a dog.
Years later I write of Buddhist monks burning themselves, and build an ominous maze...
CAUTION: SUICIDES BY FIRE
I love a girl who wants to settle in a radioactive jungle, a scar from an ancient war. Stay or go?
Fat Max eats with Heinrich the guard on Tuesdays. He talks too much. You and I are hungry. Tonight...
The poem appeared in the dream as it appears on the page--words, even punctuation...
CAUTION: DEATH CAMP, DEATH PLOT
Xerxes twice dreams a god orders him to attack Greece. So he asks his uncle to dream of the god to confirm...
A children's recital of "Where the Wild Things Are" turns into a riot-orgy. And it feels... political?
CAUTION: WILD THING ORGY
When warring Greek isles kill a peacemaker, her three best friends start a vendetta! But she wanted peace...
CAUTION: HATE NURSED TOO LONG
I'm in World War II, asking a reporter to keep quiet about our secret weapon.
But it's already gone off, melting and distorting the whole cartoon world. It's...
Jack was a parachutist on D-Day. His mom dreamt of the strafings, the ditch he hid in, the deaths of his comrades...
I saw a snake with a white-bearded man's head, and two younger heads alongside. Men attacked the
snake, cutting off the younger heads. The eldest looked at me, mournful, and they cut off his head too.
Soon after, I met John Brown; I knew it was him. But only on the day of Harper's Ferry did I understand...
Resistance fighter Josephus, cornered, took a hard look at his prophetic dreams and decided to make peace...
My home seemed antiquated but pleasant. I found a stair down to a darker, medieval floor.
A dark stair led down to a Roman cellar. A trapdoor led down to a cave with ancient skulls...
Jung was told in dreams and visions that Europe would soon drown in blood. But he just couldn't believe it...
A courtroom hostage-drama where I'm forced to commit... tracheotomy! And then the Gulf War begins...
CAUTION: CARTOON VIOLENCE
Sunset. Walking home from work. A smiling, creepy American offers a ride. I back away until I'm against a tree.
I don't give away the Arab hiding in its branches. I have a knife, and I know I will kill this American...
CAUTION: FIGHT TO THE DEATH BREWING
For years Martin's dreams were all set in a parallel world untouched by World War, until...
Layanasha foresaw the British would bring a great snake spanning Maasai territory, then a plague killing
half the tribe, a second plague killing nearly all the cattle, and finally huge birds flying over the veldt...
I dreamed of an explosion--a stabbing pain in my left thigh, right fore-arm, and left eye.
Two years later, in World War Two, a grenade...
I'm told "Your lives are not in order." The golden crown's too heavy. And
I win my lover's hand--only the hand. What are my dreams accusing me of?
CAUTION: SEVERED HAND, SUBTLE GUILT
Parkinson dreamed his new telephone device got added to an anti-aircraft gun. He told his dream;
guns with M9 units turned out to be so accurate it gave the British hope against the Luftwaffe...
Morocco. Horseback mercenaries attack a town. A boy says "Take their lifestyle, and you must remove their brains."
A protective Hand of Fatima dissolves, leaving a finger, a feather, a... vagina. "What a slit!" We burst into laughter...
Linda Evans of Dynasty survives a shapeshifters' war, though her mansion's wrecked.
She meets a caped superhero--and superdog, and supercat, squirrel, hamster, mouse!
These micro-heroes make me see I too have been minimizing my own bravery...
The Christian God vs Mahakala, Buddhist god of right anger! War in Middle Earth, as Pink Floyd sings...
War between a big conformist land and a small land devoted to quality. Big Land's rulers all die, but at last, sheer
numbers defeat the smaller land. Now their leader, beaten and starved, awaits the sword at the end of the hall...
CAUTION: POLITICAL? ACCORDING TO CARL JUNG!
by Jenny Badger Sultan; Jan-Feb 2003, painting of a dream-series
My dreams were troubled by war. So I painted them in concentric rings--lotus, fire, children, animals, and nightmares...
First, sf writer Heinlein advocates a strong army; then I see one in action--turned against the people...
I meet a shapeshifting mentor who warns of coming war (9/11?). Then a sentient book, "The Art of War," gets intimately involved...
CAUTION: ELECTRODES, LIBROPHILIA
Joost Merloo escaped the Nazis, but had two neurologically impaired brothers who couldn't flee.
On a troopship, he dreamed the Nazis burst into their ward...
I saw my mother standing on the tip of one wing of our plane. She was
dressed in white flowing robes and calling my name, warning me of danger...
We save a mouse from a man who claims he eats them. Later I dream I am the mouse...
I dream World War Two's begun. I always felt war was just rivalry between ruling elites, but now I find
I'll even back Imperial Britain against the Nazis. The next day, Hitler and Stalin announce a pact...
CAUTION: GRIM TIME FOR IDEALISTS
My mom and I road-duel an alien beetle, then investigate a deepspace Marie Celeste;
then I spy for the Angevin Empire to protect the Crown Jewels...
Erica dreams that during a protest she's caught in a radioactive flood...
Michael dreams a nuclear forcefield makes his fingertips explode and congeal into weird knobs...
Joanne dreams she meets nuclear mutants with curling black nails great for peeling potatoes...
Scott dreams the world goes silent and white, bleaching out. His hands dissolve...
Touring an underground maze, I meet a woman I like. But her brother bristles.
Then, from a height, I see the ventilation pits of the labyrinth laid out like a map.
The Japanese invade! Hide in the jungle. Women in rags butcher centipedes & mice...
CAUTION: UNHAPPY MEALS; OVER-JUNGIANISM
A man's stalking me and my friends. We try to escape but a circus is in the way.
My friends shrink to babies, so I pop them in a stroller and flee over steep hills,
bouncing down stone stairs! "OW!" the babies howl! Hey... why do I feel deja vu?
CAUTION: INTERPRETATION INSULTS BOTH RUSSIA AND NATO
Now the Evil Empire's dead. We're all safe, safe at last. And all the bombs are gone... right?
One tribe builds earth-magic pits that can teleport you or grant wishes.
But the other tribe's more powerful flow-state magic is harder to define...
CAUTION: SEX FANTASY GRANTED
A quarrel between psychic adepts heats up to a war,
thawing Pluto. What will the ice-tribes wish for?
Our son woke in the night crying "Poor Mrs Timms; poor Mrs Timms!" We knew no
such woman, but it turned out she lived nearby. That day, her son had died in France...
CAUTION: IMPLIES WE'RE TRAINED OUT OF A 6TH SENSE
I'm a Confederate officer. The only way to save my men is to end the war by
pulling the plug at the bottom of the lake! I dive in, fighting a Yankee, who...
A library book with a brutal attack & rape scene has pages stuck together. Why?
Some trollish reader masturbated all over it! Oh. Not an orgasm, a wargasm...
CAUTION: HARSH TOWARD PUTIN (AND HIS AMERICAN BRO)
I was on a steamer run amok, in a boiling yellow incredible sea out of which great pylons rose...
Marianna escaped her bossy dad, only to end up with a bossy countercultural boyfriend.
In these two dreams she makes the connection, and faces that she's picking Napoleons...
CAUTION: BLOODY BATTLE, BAD SEX
I'm a telepathic rabbit defending our world from space-laser attack. We do, but do we modernize too much?
CAUTION: IDEAS
My city's invaded and occupied. I become a gigantic Owl and fight with impossible stamina.
But in the end I'm dead, stuffed, on a museum wall. Can I let go NOW?
CAUTION: WAR
I'm a rebel leader released from prison only to find my people beaten down
and malnourished. I swear to eject our oppressors despite the price of war. ...
Nightmare: flying saucers attack, and I only have a squirt gun to fight back with!
Next day I see the Simpsons Halloween special. Lisa Simpson has a nightmare...
A friend scoffed at Biblical talk of the apocalypse, but as we spoke, the evening star came down and burned all our
cities. I knew it was no ordinary dream. Next day came the news: the Russians had burned the city of Sevastopol...
CAUTION: WAR CRIME
Jung and a little brown man shoot down Siegfried the German Hero, riding his chariot of bones. Wait... his what?
CAUTION: GRIM
As my friends & I walk in a marsh, we argue. They know humans can't fly--
so I levitate on the spot! But, oddly, they convince me I can't--while I am...
I'm a peace terrorist trapped in Squaw Valley, herded like a mare by a huge stallion made of snow...
And then the dream shifts. I blurt out the truth behind our idiotic waking world! And wake believing it...
CAUTION: MERMAID AND HORSE NUDITY
A great war shrinks to wrestling, then hopping from page to page! Once they were worlds to me, but now...
I'm a half-sphinx--human dad, sphinx mom--stuck in human form so far.
Will I ever learn to shift? I practice--sculpt my elegant feline future self...
CAUTION: SPHINX NUDITY
DREAM: I meet a woman with a bun hairdo, black skirt, black & white striped blouse. I think she's a spy!
TWO DAYS LATER: I meet that woman--bun, skirt, blouse. And all the hotel guests here say she's a spy...
I dreamed the Stealth Bomber wasn't a machine, but a gigantic Owl-god. And Stealth was worshiped...
CAUTION: CREEPING PACIFISM
I'm a married couple--the cook and laundress for an English observatory in 1948.
Why are we testifying to a Labor Party committee that we WANT to be servants? Well...
In a near-future dictatorship, Democrats are afraid to take any action. But in a suburban lot,
I find a burned-out tank. I need to find these rebels who can defeat military-grade repression...
CAUTION: GRIM
1: Three sisters flash me; one has a third eye in there! Clothed, it's blind. Was she just enlightening herself?
2: In the future, most cars self-drive. I'm the last driver using my own muscles and mind. Can I hold out?
3: A friend charts all of history's wars to prove: democracies don't fight each other. So to get peace...
CAUTION: NAKED EYE
DAY: At a party, this stranger keeps sniping at me. I see no gain for me in fighting him, and just leave.
DREAM: Aliens attack. They've wiped out other planets, so we fight all-out! Not just for us, for the next species...
The animal goddess of peace, stubbornly raising her sign, my sign, as you all slide into your nice holy war...
Dreams of my childhood--bootlegger dad, critical mom, gun-
happy uncles, slaughtered squirrels, slaughtered Jews...
I dream I play 7 and win three times at Monte Carlo. I wake and head for the casino with witnesses...
DAY: I hear Angela Duckworth (writer of Grit) talk on positive thinking. She thinks we're our own worst enemies.
DREAM: I test my grit an African savanna--and outbluff lions! Unfortunately, that Siberian tiger won't be bluffed...
CAUTION: TROUBLING ASSESSMENT OF... PUTIN? BULLIES IN GENERAL?
I'm a tiger from Planet Cat, visiting Earth to run in San Francisco's "Bay to Breakers" race.
I knew racial tensions were high, but why is William S. Burroughs out to kill me? Oh. Because...
I dreamed my husband's ship headed for India, but a 'tin fish'
sank it with just one casualty--him. I rushed down to the dock...
Hecuba dreams she gives birth, not to a child but a flaming torch! But she lets Paris live...
CAUTION: MORAL NO-WIN SITUATION
I'm a rabbit girl living in New Orleans. Humid summer. My roses all died;
a rot that needs to be disinfected. So I light a torch and burn them back...
CAUTION: HARSH POLITICAL INTERPRETATION
I was walking on an endless plain, upright and tense, walking beside you,
hurrying. What were we doing on the burning plain? What war...
A maneless lion-boy wins his people's respect. While training, he sees weird trespassers
who seem to be from someone else's dream... and ten years later, he finds that dreamer.
I'm on an alien world inside the minds of two women and a child struggling with moral choices in a civil war...
CAUTION: DEATH, LOSS
Yesterday, Hitler marched into town. I was born before the Industrial Revolution, and am now about 200 years old...
An assassination plot using two planes triggers an invasion of our kingdom. Flee? Fight?
I'm a peaceful hobbit who'd rather be playing Frisbee with the dryads...
As a boy I dreamt of a war; officers marked the landing-spot of an unexploded black sphere. Years later...
In a wood full of snipers, Martin has a hard moral choice: lead, leave or turn some possible spies...
When my grandmother was young her husband had a prosperous ranch. She dreamed some Indians attacked.
She convinced them to hide; the Utes killed or stole nearly all their sheep. But at least they were alive...
I wander a valley where unicorns love cyborgs but fear giant ants, who love unicorns but
fear cyborgs, who love ants but fear unicorns! And while the Three Tribes squabble, cave-monsters
sculpt them all. I set up peace talks between these four aspects of my tetrahedral soul...
CAUTION: SWEARING, DRUNK LIONS, CYBORG SURGERY, AND GOGGLE-BARFING
Junk in the attic? Treasures! The cat musicians shift from cartoons to life as I ascend,
til in the ultimate attic--the astral beach--I meet a cattaur made of pure (de)light...
CAUTION: SEX-CRAZED CATS, NEW AGE FINALE
There is a war between liberals and reactionaries, but the dream makes no
sense: friends claim to be hit, to be wounded, but I see no bodies, no blood...
CAUTION: ANTICIPATES THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
A TV documentary shows the history of war. Or does it? In what war did great clouds of flame
swallow sailing ships? Every scene they show is a natural disaster. Why are they lying?
War, monsters, plague and bombs are just thrills spicing up
this city rising from a tropical sea on an alien world...
Dodging between all your -isms, I feel like a bird on a battlefield...
George Washington faces sniper fire, kamikaze birds
and critics claiming the fight for freedom is doomed...
After a peace march in San Francisco, I saw us as deer, and Americans as dogs. Yet WE frighten THEM...
I dreamt I could clearly see the sun's corona, like a lion-mane of fire. But the
corona dwindled; then the very sun dimmed, shrank, and went out. I thought...
CAUTION: POLITICAL?
I'm nine years old again. But my mom acts like a child--crawls into a hole. I follow, scared,
and find my grandfather packing to leave the Old Country before the Nazis kill us all...
CAUTION: FEAR & PERSECUTION
I'm a Chinese kid fleeing the Japanese Occupation in 1938. As we near San Francisco,
I wake to find it's all my dad's dream. Wait--he's alive again? But he was never a refugee.
Is it a pastlife memory? If so, whose--his or mine?
I live in four consecutive bodies: I'm a Bose-Einstein condensate, a cloud of particles moving as one--
unless overheated. No, I'm Witch's Butter, a mob of amoeboid cells who unify into a quasi-slug--temporarily.
No, I'm a person, but soft and yellow as Witch's Butter. No, I'm firming up, but still entangled...
I was sure I'd be wounded, but dreaded being crippled. So I tried on injuries! I settled on a flesh wound in my left shoulder...
I was fatally wounded in a Star Wars battle, so I shot myself in the head.
For a solid minute, there was nothing but blackness...
I dream of three colonies in the deep future. We outlived the universe itself, but can we survive each other?
CAUTION: WAR, GENOCIDE, POLITICAL ALLEGORY