Art by Gary Myers for the 1970s fanzine “HPL”
Gary Myers is the very talented author/artist of some of my favorite Dreamlands and Cthulhu Mythos stories. I first encountered his work through references in the 1980s Call of Cthulhu Dreamlands supplement, which led me to a copy of Myers’ cult-famous 1975 anthology The House of the Worm. Myers’ short-short stories, which mix Lovecraft and Dunsany, have always inspired me (they are now available in the revised & expanded The Country of the Worm), and I also enjoy his later fiction influenced by Clark Ashton Smith and other writers. He most recently wrote a horror play, The Last Offering, which is available on Kindle and POD.
Myers’ stories have a unique mix of eerie wonder and creeping doom. I met Myers in person at NecronomiCon 2001 and later at the 2013 HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Los Angeles. When I emailed him to let him know I was working on a Dreamland roleplaying game, we talked a bit, eventually leading to him kindly sending this letter.
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I first encountered Jason Bradley Thompson at the Providence NecronomiCon in the memorable summer of 2001. I saw a poster on the wall in one of the event halls, inviting the public to a role-playing game based on Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, a role-playing game to be played that evening in a certain place and time. And since I had a long-standing interest in the subject of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, I decided to accept the invitation and see what the game was about. I had little knowledge of such games going in and about the same coming out. But I had come to observe and not to play. The actual participants clearly knew what they were doing, and they just as clearly enjoyed the process. And the leader in the process, the runner of the game, was our host, Jason Thompson.
I did not see Jason again until thirteen years later, when we were both guests of the Lovecraft Film Festival then being held in San Pedro, California. Of course by then we were no longer strangers. He had conducted a lengthy email interview with me, and I had acquired and admired some of his major works: the hardcover collection of his five-part comic book series adapting the whole of Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, and a frankly gorgeous colored map of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands and adjacent locales.
Now I learn that Jason has designed another Dreamlands game. I do not know if this is the same game he was running in Providence all those years ago, or if it is only distantly related to it as the flower is related to the seed. And since my knowledge of gaming is no better now than it was then, I certainly have no basis on which to judge it. But there is one thing I can judge. No one, not Lovecraft, not Lumley and certainly not Myers, has spent more time analyzing, depicting and loving Lovecraft’s Dreamlands than Jason Bradley Thompson. And if he cannot make a good game out of the subject, then no one in the Waking World can.
— Gary Myers
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I’m very grateful to Gary for this flattering endorsement, and I hope that when Dreamland comes out it lives up to his praise. If you haven’t read his stories, please check them out!
Well-earned praise, indeed!