The Hope

by James Lovegrove

Five miles long and one mile high, carrying a million passengers to a new and promised land, the good ship Hope was the fulfilment of a philanthropist's dream. Yet a generation later, land has not been sighted and rust cakes her gigantic hull. In the bowels, sinister creatures proliferate and her motley cargo dance, degenerate or die...

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Short Stories

321 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1990

About the author

James Lovegrove is the author of several acclaimed novels and books for children.

James was born on Christmas Eve 1965 and, having dabbled in writing at school, first took to it seriously while at university. A short story of his won a college competition. The prize was £15, and it had cost £18 to get the story professionally typed. This taught him a hard but necessary lesson in the harsh economic realities of a literary career.

Straight after graduating from Oxford with a degree in English Literature, James set himself the goal of getting a novel written and sold within two years. In the event, it took two months. The Hope was completed in six weeks and accepted by Macmillan a fortnight later. The seed for the idea for the novel — a world in microcosm on an ocean liner — was planted during a cross-Channel ferry journey.

James blew his modest advance for The Hope on a round-the-world trip which took him to, among other places, Thailand. His experiences there, particularly what he witnessed of the sex industry in Bangkok, provided much of the inspiration for The Foreigners.

Escardy Gap was co-written with Pete Crowther over a period of a year and a half, the two authors playing a game of creative tag, each completing a section in turn and leaving the other to carry the story on. The result has proved a cult favourite, and was voted by readers of SFX one of the top fifty SF/Fantasy novels of all time.

Days, a satire on consumerism, was shortlisted for the 1998 Arthur C. Clarke Award (losing to Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow). The book’s genesis most probably lies in the many visits James used to make as a child to the Oxford Street department store owned by his grandfather. It was written over a period of nine months while James was living in the north-west suburbs of Chicago.

Subsequent works have all been published to great acclaim. These include Untied Kingdom, Worldstorm, Provender Gleed, The Age Of Ra and the back-to-back double-novella Gig. James has also written for children. Wings, a short novel for reluctant readers, was short-listed for several awards, while his fantasy series for teens, The Clouded World, written under the pseudonym Jay Amory, has been translated into 7 other languages so far. A five-book series for reluctant readers, The 5 Lords Of Pain, is appearing at two-monthly intervals throughout 2010.

He also reviews fiction for the Financial Times, specialising in the Young Adult, children’s, science fiction, fantasy, horror and graphic novel genres.

Currently James resides in Eastbourne on the Sussex Coast, having moved there in August 2007 with his wife Lou, sons Monty and Theo, and cat Ozzy. He has a terrific view of the sea from his study window, which he doesn’t sit staring out at all day when he should be working. Honest.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 1 out of 5]

synopsis: a cross-section of humanity live out their squalid, horror-filled lives aboard the mega-ship The Hope.

ugh. I wonder if this novel was attempting to accomplish something along the lines of Ballard's excellent High-Rise; namely, offering up a stylized tableau of humanity placed within a theatrically artificial setting. all the better to contemplate the various downward spirals, I suppose. unfortunately this is less Ballard and more akin to the sour, complacent misanthropy of John Shirley's execrable Black Butterflies.

I think if an author is going to write about the human condition, they should actually be able to empathize with humans. this collection of interlocking stories features repulsive excoriations of things like young love and the obsessive tunnel vision that young love sometimes brings, a poverty stricken single mother, young toughs enacting a gang war, a librarian's solitary life, a vile preacher and his hypocritical organist, an insane person, a fellow who has to deal with bad neighbors, etc. the tone is relentlessly bleak; that relentlessness made the endeavor feel more pretentious than eye-opening. the lack of empathy from the author made me care less about what happened to his characters. I will give Lovegrove props for attempting one ray of light in the story of a young woman escaping her life; I'll give him more props for the one genuinely tense tale - a rather straightforward monster adventure featuring an excitingly horrible run-in with weird mutant beasties in the bowels of the ship. but neither story lifted this book out of its quagmire of juvenile nihilism.

I don't mind nihilism in my horror novels. Thomas Ligotti is perhaps the most nihilistic horror author around and he's amazing. but if you are going to be nihilistic, it is important to either have something new to say or to have the ability to get your nihilistic messages across in an interesting or challenging fashion. the only I challenge I experienced in The Hope was finishing the book.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think when publishers and such cannot figure a book's genre out, they deem it science fiction. The Hope is one of those oddballs that is really hard to categorize, but was republished by Gollancz as science fiction and I guess that will do. The Hope is the name of a massive cruise ship about 5 miles long and one mile high, built by an 'industrialist', which bankrupted him and he committed suicide just before it set off on its maiden voyage. It holds a million people and seeks to find the other side of the endless ocean. The story takes place 30 years or so after it departed.

This reminded me of a generation ship story, which is why perhaps Gollancz called it science fiction. As the ship sails on, new generations are born and the original passengers are slowly dying off. Each chapter is a short story featuring a character and their situation on the ship, but it quickly becomes apparent that many of the main characters become secondary figures in other stories, giving it some cohesiveness.

The Hope is a dark and gritty read, rough and ready (the author in the end note states he wrote it in 6 weeks and it shows), but incredibly visceral and existentialist. The first story concerns a woman with three children, a passenger, but one without any money. Her 'man' left one day and never returned, leaving her destitute. The theme of helplessness and foreboding is nicely established here and builds throughout the text. We meet a 'pawnbroker' who is present in many of the stories, some of the elites at the top of the ship, workers in the engine room, various gangs of young 'hoodlums' on the lower levels, and even the 'spirit' of the ship itself at one point.

Make no mistake, this is a dark and at times surreal read. I am not sure if Lovegrove planned this as a metaphor for current society or not (this was first published in 1990), but it can be read that way, and the various characters aimlessly pursue their meaningless lives fighting boredom and trying to find food to stay alive. Each story is an adventure, but none with heroes and such, only sad, desperate people trying to find if not meaning in life, at least enough to keep them going. Bleak and raw, but powerful. 4 rusty stars!

[Jody Mena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found it fascinating. Hypnotic and grotesque, this book is a magnificent metaphor for society, reality and the willfully blind human race that staggers haplessly through both. The poeple believe themselves in control of the ship carrying them to a better place, when in reality, it is the ship that carries them as it will, and they, a swarm of parasites within it's bulk, can only cling to it and continue to lie to themselves. Even when one learns the truth, he casts the evidence into the sea, a testiment to our collecitive desperate need for the illusion of control, especially where there is none. I really enjoyed this book.

[Marco · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Die Hoffnung" von James Lovegrove ist ein 1990 erschienener Roman von James Lovegrove.

Die Handlung spielt in der Zukunft. Ein Milliardär hat das gigantische Schiff "Hoffnung" konstruieren lassen. Kilometer groß und Platz für Tausende Menschen, ist das Schiff nach Jahren des endlos vor sich hin treibens fast ein Geisterschiff.
Lovegrove erzählt keine durchgängige Handlung sondern in Form von Kurzgeschichten über das Schiff.

Der Kolloss "Hoffnung" ist Dreh- und Angelpunkt des Buches. Jede Geschichte bringt eine andere Perspektive auf das Schiff.
Das Schiff bleibt immerzu mysteriös und hat viele Geheimnisse.
Lovegrove nimmt keine Rücksicht vor zarten Gemütern und erzählt düstere Geschichten.
Die Hoffnung ist mittlerweile nur noch dünn besiedelt und viele Bereiche funktionieren nicht mehr richtig. Das Schiff stirbt und mit ihm seine Besatzung.
Diese besteht nur noch aus Verbrechern, Kannibalen und Geisteskranken.
Auf dem Schiff gibt es Gerüchte von seltsamen Wesen im Maschinenraum.
Eine seltsame Gestalt genannt "der Regenmann" macht das Boot unsicher und vieles mehr.

Die Geschichten sind dabei sehr vielschichtig.
Allesamt sind düster geschrieben und obwohl es ein Unterhaltungsroman ist durchaus anspruchsvoll geschrieben.
Lovegrove bleibt dabei immer auch kryptisch und löst nicht alle Mysterien auf. Er nutzt fantastische Elemente, beschreibt aber auch das alltägliche Überleben der Menschen.

So entsteht in der Summe ein verstörendes Bild dieses fiktiven Schiffes.
Als Debütroman ist "die Hoffnung" großartig.
Wer anspruchsvolle und fantastische Literatur sucht mit Horrorelementen ist hier richtig.

[Ember Stone-pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing prose that takes your mind and shakes it around a bit before leaving you in the grips of the fantastical plot. One of my favourite books of all time.

[oddo · Rating 4 out of 5]

grimdark cruise ship horror anthology. gunky. reminds me of Brian McNaughton's Throne of Bones, though a lesser work.

[S. Wilson]

The Hope is a collection of dark short stories taking place on a rogue luxury liner that has been adrift in the ocean for thirty years, during which time the inhabitants have slowly formed their own fractured society as the original passengers slowly give way to a generation that has only known life on The Hope.

The idea of trapping a microcosm of society within a finite space and forcing it to create its own rules and social mores isn't entirely new, but Lovegrove handles it with a flair for focusing on the less-than-luxurious aspects of the human condition. Like Lord of the Flies, most 'cut-off-from-the-world' tales like this result in Dystopian nightmares, and Lovegrove's is no different. The passengers of The Hope evolve their own cultural framework around the ship, which offers up its own gods and mythology to the reluctant new civilization.

The irony inherent in the ship's name and book's title are readily apparent, and prospective readers would be foolish to expect anything less than a dismal foray into despair and pessimism. It is debatable whether Lovegrove's passengers are meant to cast a mirror on our own society, or if The Hope is just a great mutual setting for a series of dark sci-fi tales, but the end result is still a great collection of morbid and dreary stories that are bound to have an impact on you.

[Anna Kaling · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read The Hope in the early 2000s and it's stayed with me ever since. I was delighted to finally remember the title and be able to track it down now, in 2017.

I vividly remembered two of the most wrenching twists: Mary Shitshoes', and the final twist about the ship itself.

As a huge fan of short stories, particularly horror, the structure of the novel - which is really a series of intertwined short stories - doesn't bother me. As with any anthology, some of the stories are better than others. I particularly enjoyed the way Lovegrove plays with point of view, giving us two (or more) very different perspectives on the same character or situation.

I recommend this to fans of horror or dystopian stories - just don't go in expecting a traditional novel.

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1990 and obviously conceived as an allegory for a millennium stumbling towards its end, it now reads like the perfect metaphor for Brexit. A huge ship endlessly sails an unending ocean with little hope, despite its bitterly ironic name, of ever making landfall. On the upper decks, the moneyed classes amuse themselves in outmoded distractions when not stultifying in fin de siecle ennui, while those in the lower decks are left to sickness, destitution and in-fighting. Meanwhile the ship itself incubates repulsive aberrations. It’s bludgeoningly unsubtle and wears its Ballardian influences on its sleeve, but Lovegrove stages his set pieces for maximum savage effect.

[Andy Carter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very much a first novel, where the author is searching for his voice. Set aboard a truly gigantic ship (5 miles long etc) which has been at sea for a long time (will it ever reach its destination?) this a collection of stories about some of the passengers, some of whom feature in several stories. It’s clearly not to be taken at face value, as many of the things that occur are fantastical and grotesque. I found it fairly interesting, he can write well, but overall not a great read.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept of this novel is incredible. The execution, not so much. I feel that with the proper care and time, the setting and characters could have spawned an epic, but in the end it all feels a bit brief and skimmed over, and hurries to an unsatisfying ending as if there was some pressing rush to publish it.

[Nigel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can sum up this first novel of Lovegrove’s in one word – disappointment. I have enjoyed the Age of series (although later instalments where not at the level of the early ones) and his Sherlock Holmes & Redlaw series are thoroughly enjoyable. Hope on the other hand was for me not up to these standards. I struggle through the first third of the book searching vainly for something I could identify as the plot. It felt to me like a series of slightly connected pencil sketches of various passengers on the Hope (but the only connection I could spot was the Hope itself).

[Kasey Haught · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of stories set in the shared setting of a monumental ship on a voyage that's lasted generations, with no end in sight. Some of these stories depict ambiguous supernatural elements, while others are more mundanely psychological and taken together with the setting itself I'd categorize the genre as Weird Fiction with elements bordering on Cosmic Horror. Most of the stories are dark and grim, with a hopeful outlier or two, and while I didn't love them all I thought it was a worthwhile read overall.

[Andy Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a great and gripping book. Sadly this dystopian book is so close to the future that seems to lie in wait but it is also very well written and so difficult to put down. I have just had to buy more books by this author who I didn't previously know.