Publisher's Synopsis
Dreams of a Cosmicist is Abdul Nakra's first publication despite the fact that he has been writing strange fiction since the age of five. Comprised of eleven stories from two collections, Nakra's creative vision is revealed to be an obscure, albeit bleak one. The first collection of stories, which deal primarily with dreams, the occult and other-dimensional planes in a manner not unlike such writers as Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft, were initially written in 2015 but never previously published. The second collection of stories were written at the very beginning of 2020 and, in a similar vain to Thomas Ligotti, depict a universe which is hostile, desolate and found to be entirely inhospitable. Exploring such diverse topics as parasitic obsession, astral plane drug dealers, remote viewers, sinister cults, mandatory euthanasia and mystical suicide, the short stories which comprise Dreams of a Cosmicist are a strange ride through an even stranger mind. Pessimism on both a local and cosmic scale is a theme often addressed in these works by Nakra, and particularly in those presented in the latter half of the book. That humanity is but a fleeting thing whose existence is pulled and prodded in directions dictated by unknown influences is likewise a common theme, as is the futility of such humanistic ideals as order, morality, ambition and civilization. Reading Nakra probably won't make you feel happy, for many of these stories are written with a sense of horrific existential dread, but he is boldly honest in a very cynical way that manages to be refreshing, if not thought-provoking. These works challenge us to come face to face with our own shadow, and in a mystic union to become at one with it so as to realize that the very things we fear most about existence are often the things we secretly desire in an absolute sense. He holds nothing back, and his truth, or rather multitude of truths, are ultimately revealed to be that of a decidedly misanthropic and post-modern attitude toward human existence and our cosmic ontology in general.
