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The Function of Dream Sleep

Fantasy short story by Harlan Ellison

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 5, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

"The Function of Dream Sleep" is a fantasy short story by American writer Harlan Ellison, first published in his 1988 anthology Angry Candy. Ellison stated that it was inspired by an actual dream.

Editorial summary

“The Function of Dream Sleep” enters the record as fantasy short story by Harlan Ellison. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Function, Dream and Sleep can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1988—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Function, Dream and Sleep.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Function of Dream Sleep” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Function, Dream and Sleep provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1988.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Function of Dream Sleep”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Function of Dream Sleep primary sources, The Function of Dream Sleep archive and Function research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Function of Dream Sleep”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Function of Dream Sleep” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.