reams are such an intimate thing that perhaps I'm about to make a mistake in sharing the nature of mine with you. My nighttime theater is an important part of my daytime life. It always has been. It's like going to the movies in my head, a multiplex screening films that contain very personal messages—though sometimes they're ones that have to be puzzled out. As far back as I can remember, I've always had multiple dreams each night, and can usually still recall at least two or three of them the next morning.
In my final dream this morning, for example, I was wielding an ax while helping Clint Eastwood evade corrupt police who were after him for some reason I never knew—content brought on, I'm sure, as the result of staying up too late last night watching the Oscars and seeing the "Are you feeling lucky, punk?" actor/director take the stage multiple times to accept his awards.
Aside from just being entertaining, though, dreams have also helped me in my career. I've gotten ideas for stories from them, usually just the central conceit of a plot. Though I did once dream an entire story from start to finish. It wasn't the greatest story, I'll admit, but still, it ended up as a five-page short titled "Nobody Believes in Vampires Anymore!" in the DC Comics title Secrets of Haunted House. And I often wake in the middle of the night with an idea for an editorial or a SCI FI magazine feature that hadn't existed when my head first hit the pillow. My wife has been woken by the scratching of pen on paper far too many times ... which is perhaps more information than you need to know.
Sharing dreams, however, can make you vulnerable—can't it? Aren't they supposed to represent a glimpse into the subconscious, one that shouldn't be tossed out lightly into the ether? But I figure, what the heck—putting myself out in the public arena is already giving people access into my private places. After all, here and in the pages of SCI FI and the various other magazines I've edited over the years, I've written several hundred editorials (this is my 58th for Science Fiction Weekly alone), and if I haven't by now let slip a bit of personal information that I might not have wanted you to know, then I haven't been writing honestly enough.
Besides—sometimes a dream is not symbolic, it's just ... a dream. An entertainment to be enjoyed just like a film or an episode of your favorite TV show. The surface and the subtext can sometimes be the same, with no dread secrets to be decoded about one's sex life or childhood. So I'll admit to you—I just had yet another dream that took place at a science-fiction convention.
Conventional thinking
I've had such dreams for years, ever since I attended my first convention as a kid. And unlike the dreams concerned with the workplace or living arrangements—such as the ones in which I'm living in New York again and being chased by zombies or that I'm working at an old, particularly distasteful job and screaming at a boss I only suffered silently in life—these are overwhelmingly good dreams.
Though I sometimes find myself dreaming of wandering hotel halls in search of panels I can never find, or preparing to read a short story in front of an audience only to discover I can't make out the text—the equivilent of dreams in which you show up for school in your underwear or wake up (within the dream) to suddenly remember you'd forgotten you had a test that day—for the most part, my frequent dreams set at science-fiction conventions obviously represent comfort. They represent family. Somehow, from decades of attending them—and enjoying them—during my waking life, they've come to be a symbol of belonging and inclusion in my subconscious.
Sometimes I find myself walking through a loud convention center, the walls filled with colorful fliers, the halls filled with other attendees already having a good time. And then I realize that I'm on my way to meet with friends, where I will have a good time, too. If I happen to wake before I get there, I still wake in a good mood because of the potential good times. In other dreams, I am in a hotel bar, or at a party (as with the real-life Ellen Datlow, above, editor of SCI FICTION). Or I could be laughing it up on a panel, or presenting an award, or taking part in a writing workshop.
The thing I've come to realize from examining the evidence of these dreams is—they're never all about me. I'm not the star. (Well, sometimes I am.) But the warm feelings that come about are because I'm part of a greater whole. I'm just another bozo on the science-fiction bus. That's the lucky thing—for me, there is a bus. Many people never get to board one ... metaphorically speaking
And no, science fiction doesn't occupy all of my dreams. When you have half-a-dozen a night, there's plenty of room for other things, like discovering that the home you've lived in for years has secret rooms you didn't know about, or that someone famous you've never met in real life is actually a close friend, or that those flesh-eating zombies are coming for you again. But there are enough science-fiction conventions mixed in with these to tell me how important I find the field, and not just in a superficial way. (Considering that I've attended several hundred conventions over the years, I'd better like them.)
If you attend conventions, too, perhaps I'll see you in the screening room of my dreams. If so, don't forget to bring the popcorn.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science Fiction Weekly decades ago, when he began working as an assistant editor at Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. His most recent short story appears in the new anthology Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic.
