To Sleep, Perchance To Dream...

NOTABLE DREAMS IN HISTORY

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein:
Shelley said she was inspired by a nightmare to write her famous novel, Frankenstein, which is considered a foundational work of science fiction.

Elias Howe's Sewing Machine:
Howe's dream of being captured by warriors wielding spears with holes near their tips led him to realize the needle should have the eye near the point, a key innovation for his sewing machine design.

Niels Bohr's Atomic Model:
Bohr's dream of the solar system with planets connected by strings helped him conceptualize the structure of the atom, with electrons orbiting the nucleus.

Paul McCartney's "Yesterday":
McCartney famously composed the melody for the song "Yesterday" entirely in a dream.

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity:
Einstein recounted a dream where he was sledding downhill at increasing speeds, which led him to contemplate how the appearance of stars would change at near light speed, ultimately contributing to his theory.

Srinivasa Ramanujan: The Man Who Knew Infinity:

Ramanujan said that, throughout his life, he repeatedly dreamed of a Hindu goddess known as Namakkal. She presented him with complex mathematical formulas over and over, which he could then test and verify upon waking. Once such example was the infinite series for Pi.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Dmitri Mendeleev's Periodic Table of the Elements:
Mendeleev, struggling to organize the elements, reportedly saw the periodic table in a dream, where elements fell into place based on their properties.

James Watson's Double Helix:
Watson, while working on the structure of DNA, dreamed of two snakes intertwined, which sparked his idea for the double helix structure of DNA.

Otto Loewi: Nerve Impulse Breakthrough:

In 1921, Loewi dreamed of an experiment that would prove once and for all that transmission of nerve impulses was chemical -- not electrical.  Twice, because he forgot the dream and couldn't read his midnight writing, so it repeated itself the next night!

Robert Altman:  Three Women

I've written about this one before - one of my favorite films.

Links:  Wikipedia and World of Lucid Dreaming

Now, I haven't had any dreams that are that important - except to me - but I have always dreamed in full color, often with full (if sometimes incoherent) plot, dialog, people, animals, you name it.  One dream I've never forgotten happened when I was somewhere around 6 or 7:  

I was walking in a jungle, in a cold, cold rain, with seven evil dwarves promising to get me out of the jungle.  An elephant came up to us and said, quite clearly in my mind, "They're liars," which I knew instantly was true,  and "Come with me." His trunk went around my waist - and I can still remember the feel of it under my hands, rough and wrinkled and firm - and lifted me up on his back and then he pushed through and past the dwarves and on out of the jungle...  There were a lot more adventures, which I'm not going to bore you with, but I still remember clearly, and the elephant made sure I stayed safe throughout.  Elephants are always good in my dreams...

I also had a dream where I was in a swimming pool, and everyone else could go through this passage down at the bottom and get out - whatever out was.  But I couldn't.  And then, in a sequence of dreams over a week or two, I was given gills, and then I could breathe underwater, and I finally went through that passage, and came out into a glorious sea, full of color and fish and creatures...  Ever since, the sea has been wild in my dreams, but a source of great happiness and freedom.  

I've also had precognition dreams, i.e., seeing the future.  These are rare, but when they come I know it.  Some are so trivial that it's like, WHAT????  

Example:  I dreamed that I walked into the church we were attending and looked at the cover of the latest new devotional, which had not yet arrived.  A week later, it arrived, and the cover was exactly what I had dreamed.

Example:  My husband and I were going on our first overseas trip to see his relatives in England and Ireland.  One night I dreamed that we were in Victoria Station, and I looked across the lobby and saw my former English professor.  Well, we did indeed arrive at Victoria Station, and we were looking for where to catch the bus, and across the room... you guessed it, my former English professor.  

Others aren't so trivial.  

Example:  About 35 years ago, we were going on vacation to Charleston, SC, with a couple we knew, and I dreamed that I looked up from packing, and saw my husband, outside, with someone attacking him, and the blood running down his face.  So I warned him to be careful while we were there.  Well, what happened was that my girlfriend and I got about a block ahead of the men, talking, and out of nowhere a car pulled up behind us, two guys jumped out of the car and came running towards us doing the drunk "Hey, baby, you're lookin' hot!" which is not the compliment men think it is.  Allan ran forward and got in between them and us, and one of them turned around and told him to piss off, he didn't and the guy punched him. But my husband can take a punch, and they got down to it, until the other guy dragged his pal away.  NOTE:  We called the cops, they found them, two drunk soldiers on leave, and arrested them.

Now something like that could obviously happen on vacation.  But this next one couldn't:

At one of my jobs I had to travel to other offices. The night before heading out, I dreamed that I ran into the wife [who I'd never met] of one of the employees, Joe [name's changed], who'd left Joe and their children for another man, and I was really pissed off about it, as was everyone else.  She kept saying, "But I couldn't help it! You don't understand!  He was so beautiful!"  Well, I woke up, and the next morning, I'm running around the office like a maniac, trying to get ready to go, when I got a call from the secretary. I snapped "I'm on my way!" And the secretary said, "No, no, no. I'm calling because I've got to tell you, Joe's wife died suddenly last night."  After I managed to get my breath back, I told her I was on my way, and told the people in my office what had happened, and asked (as casually as I could) what Joe's wife looked like. He described her, and it was indeed the woman I'd seen in my dream. Whew...  

NOTE 1:  I've had a lot of dreams where the dead have come to me, beginning when I was about six years old and my grandfather died.  I was by his graveside, and a big wind came up and swept everything away except a letter in my hand, which I read and learned by heart in that dream.  There were messages for my grandmother and mother, so when I woke up, I told them both what my grandfather had written to them.  I think it helped my grandmother; my mother freaked out, and I never told her my dreams again.  He also had a message for me, which turned out to be very, very true in my future life.  

NOTE 2:  Two things about precognition dreams.  (1) I always know one when I have one because I get what I call "spiritual vertigo" - at some point I realize what I'm watching is separated from where I am by a physically unbridgeable bottomless abyss, which makes me wake up dizzy and nauseated. (2) And they're very frustrating, because I can't change what happens. I see what I see, and it's going to happen.  Sigh...  In other words, they're not fun to have. 

And yes, I've also had dreams that sparked stories, including the Crow Woman & Dark that Rides stories, as well as "The Ghost of Eros" (Black Cat), "Blue Moon" (AHMM), and "Shut In" (BOULD Awards).  I'm still trying to write a story based on one dream; someday I'll get it.  

Still…

Beauty can stop the

sun and the sea, but dreams are

the language of time

— Eve Fisher