The Silver Key is our introduction to Randolph Carter, a Rhode Island based amateur novelist and expert dreamer (do we need any more evidence that this is a Lovecraft self-insert?).

Carter is an avid dreamer who finds that, as he reaches his “middle age” (I feel very called out that 30 is middle-aged), he finds it harder and eventually impossible to dream. He finds that he has fallen under the influence of the values of the waking world, who undervalue dreams and overvalue the “real world”.

Looking to make the most out of his loss of dreams, Carter invests himself in the philosophies of the modern time, from empiricism employed in the scientific method, to spiritualism and occultism. While he finds scientists to simply be obsessed with a fantasy of their own - speculating on the void between atoms and the dimensions of outer space - he is even less impressed by the spiritualists and occultists whose fantasies he disregards as not even being based upon fact and evidence.

He reads ancient manuscripts and seeks adventure with other thrill-seekers. Here we see mention to another short story, The Statement of Randolph Carter. Eventually he recalls a family heirloom, mentioned by his grandfather. In the attic of the Carter family manor, secreted away in some fearsomely carved dark wooden box, is an ornate silver key, featuring arabesques which our narrator speculates may contain answers to deeper secrets. In a confusing flash of memory, Carter finds himself falling back through time until he finds himself in his ten year old body. He is being called in for it is past his curfew. Reaching for his spyglass to read the nearby clocktower, he finds the silver key in his pocket.

The silver key is an artifact that has belonged to the Carters for centuries. It was last used over 2 centuries ago by a Carter sorcerer who was a master of dream.

The tale ends with a shift in narrative, revealing that another person in the fiction who is dictating to the reader the story of Randolph Carter. This person eagerly awaits Randolph using the key and their eventual meeting.

This is some of my favourite Lovecraft fiction. Time travel is seen in some of his other stories, such as being employed by the Yithians. I love the idea that the Dreamlands, via use of the silver key, can hold the secret to passing between periods in time in the waking world. It hints at an even greater influence and connectivity between the Dreamlands and the Waking World. Are the two spaces in fact merely subspaces of some larger superspace? Through my mathematical eye I view it as some smooth manifold representing all of existence. Within this manifold we have two open subsets, which in fact intersect at many points. These intersections could be physical intersections allowing for travel, or they could be intersections in some time-like dimension that somehow link two times together.