The Dreambook of Skyler Dread

The Dreambook of Skyler Dread is a storybook-tale set in India shortly after the death of Queen Victoria. Illustrated with vintage 1890s lithographs collaged with contemporary comicbook panels, this is the story of the alien conquest of the Earth. Skyler Dread is a mesmerist who tries to avert the Earth's destruction, and he fails in the end. Because - see it as one of those shoot-'em-up monster kinematoscope movies - an alien menace attacks from outer space. Sure, that's the plot. And there are nice special effects too. But it's a shoot-'em-up monster kinematoscope movie set in the early Edwardian era, in the scientific age of wonder and futility. Horses are still the primary mode of transportation, the internal combustion engine still isn't trusted. Our technology is no match for the alien technology. Face it, we lose. There are perhaps love stories, romances, but they don't last. Because how can they? The aliens win, the aliens attack with overwhelming technology. There's no hope for Skyler Dread or his sideburn'd scientific colleagues to withstand the aliens, no, not even if they're members of the Indian-Subcontinent Society of Amateur Scientists, men whose enthusiasms include theosophy, amateur theatricals, and flannel waistcoats. Scientists whose moustaches cover half their whole faces in the reigning style. No, and even with these moustaches they lose. No, the odds are insurmountable and the aliens win. Skyler Dread's experiments with dreams & mesmerism & his amber hookah full of potent hash fails to save the day, even though they were humanity's last hope.

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