The Night Land, Volume I

by William Hope Hodgson

"THE NIGHT LAND is a tale of the remote future - billions of years after the death of the sun. It is one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written... there is a sense of cosmic alienage, breathless mystery, and terrifying expectancy unrivalled in the whole range of literature."
- H.P. Lovecraft

(Source: back cover)

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Classics

244 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

William Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction, and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder. Hodgson served with the British Army durng World War One. He died, at age 40, at Ypres, killed by German artillery fire.

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a proto-Vance story, kinda sorta. Jack Vance ackcnowledged tNL as an influence on his "Tales of the Dying Earth". I liked it, sorta kinda, many years ago. Weak 3 stars?

Note that I read the abridged Ballantine Adult Fantasy reprint, which is just the first half of the full work. Apparently only diehard Hodgson fans went on to read Part 2. Not me!

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review is under the second volume of this two-volume set.

[Oscar Lilley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just slogging through it. Archaic language, mundane and tedious details, it says 244 pages but feels like 2000+ pages. A story with no end. How did I get wrapped up into this?

[P · Rating 3 out of 5]

A million bonus points for having a weirder, more original premise than most of the last 100 years of sci-fi while being one of the originating texts of the genre.

Minus a million points for the interminable over-explanation of basic and obvious motivations for actions or opinions like I've never seen outside of 19th century Russian novelists. This book could have been 30% as long as it would if the author would trust us to understand why a guy might move slow and sneaky around a literal "Whore of Babylon riding a beast Dragon on the Horizon with seven heads and upon each head was worn seven crowns" A+ level Apocalypse - and then trust us to remember that explanation the next eleven times he thinks it's necessary to explain those delays due to slow sneaking are why the protagonist ate more nutrient pills than usual. Also, if he felt it unnecessary to account for how many nutrient pills the protagonist eats for a meal and how often, and then update us on his consumption of said pills in real time at each meal, during a journey that takes by my estimation several months.

In the Foreword, the contemporary author building him up as one of the forgotten greats mentions that the second half is even more so, and literally essentially advises the reader *against* purchasing Volume 2 of this publisher's run.

Plus 2 points for being written for Victorian English people while using language so convoluted and rule breaking as to blow holes in any ignorant, racist grammar pedant's assumption that there is a 'right' way to speak English. Plus one point for using a bunch of obsolete terms from turn of the century English dialects for me to hold in my brain and never have an appropriate chance to use. But if I ever fall into a timehole to 1890's cornwall, I'll be able to describe my calluses in a way that will make people feel like I'm one of the goodolboys.

So three points. Points are stars. Three stars this book gets. From me.

[Samuel · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a feat of imagination this book is wonderful, let me get that out of the way right at the very beginning. It's beautifully imaginative, and considering its conception in 1912: arguably an early piece of science-fiction writing, amongst fantasy and horror. Millions of years after the present day, when the sun has died and the world is hidden in perpetual darkness, the story is set - a story which, in the night, is populated by really fantastic things: Four Great Watchers, The House of Silence, The Road Where the Silent Ones Walk, The Country Whence Comes the Great Laughter, and even the eight-mile-high pyramid of The Great Redoubt. Here, though, the positives end. The setting is wonderful; the story is dull, and gets progressively more repetitive and tedious; the writing is abominable. Perhaps you've read The House on the Borderlands, another fantastic imagining, but subtitled: "How Do Commas Work?" - well, here we have The Night Land, or, "How Do Semi-Colons Work?". The underlying theme is amateurism: the writing of a man who is not a writer. Open the book, flick to any page and count the paragraphs that start with the word "And", or to a lesser degree, "Now": there's a lot, aren't there? Tenses are continually confused and the descriptive language is simply shoddy. It's frustrating, and arguably, not worth the effort - stick with Lovecraft; attempt The Night Land only if you're trying to complete your set of early 1900's supernatural horror writers, otherwise, nope.

[Yve · Rating 1 out of 5]

For every interesting creature or landscape in The Night Land there is at least 5 unnecessary pages of the narrator enumerating how many hours he slept, how many hours he went between eating, how many food tablets he ate, and then justifying to the reader how he ate too many food tablets but it's really okay because he skipped his last meal. It's like the world's most boring Man vs. Wild which makes no sense seeing as it's set in a preternatural land of darkness and fire pits and giant monsters. Boats of the Glen Carrig has some of the same issues, but they feel more in place firstly because the character is concerned with the mechanics of ship life and secondly because that is a far far shorter work. But here my eyes continually glazed over - and this version is abridged! I have Volume II and I will read it because I am an incorrigible completist but I don't think I'll like it.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 2 out of 5]

review of
William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land (in 2 volumes)
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 10, 2018

This is just the beginning of my review. You will be forever consumed by Monsters in The Night Land if you don't read the full thing here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

Volume I:

This was possibly the 2nd most tedious bk I've ever read. The 1ST most tedious one is Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans, a bk I find inexcusably horrible (see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/4... ). I don't think anyone will ever top that Stein bk in the tedium dept. One of the things that saves The Night Land from the #1 spot is that it is written w/ imagination, there are interesting things about it for me. I'll get to those as I ramble along.

Lin Carter introduces the bk by saying: "For much of his forty-three years of life, William Hope Hodgson had sailed the seas. From the texture of his experiences he wrought stories of the sea and its mysteries which are without parallel in all of our literature. Not Joseph Conrad—not even Herman Melville—has captured with such depth and insight the strangeness and beauty and haunting terror of the mighty oceans." (pp vii-viii) That's high praise. I STILL haven't read Conrad yet & the only Melville story I've read isn't a sea story so I have no personal experience w/ wch to challenge Carter's claim. I've read Hodgson's The House on the Borderland, wch isn't a sea story (you can read my review of that here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ), & I don't have such high praise for it or for The Night Land — I'm curious to read Hodgson's sailor writing.

It's interesting to see what publishers do to make their product more saleable:

"It is a very long novel. It must be close to two hundred thousand words in length; far too long to appear in one volume at our standard price. So we are dividing it in half and bring it to you in two volumes, as we did a year earlier with William Morris's The Well at the World's End." - p viii

Calling it "two hundred thousand words in length" sure does make it seem BIG doesn't it? But that's about 500pp in a small paperback size, not really so big in contrast to many famous novels. It seems like there's at least a little psychology at play: the hero braves the dangers of The Night Land in the 1st pt in search of his soulmate. The 1st pt ends w/o his finding her but the reader knows he's close. After all the tedium of the 1st bk, who's going to be able to withstand the 'need' to move on to the 2nd one & finally get the 'reward'?

Carter informs the reader that "The Arkham House volume appeared in a limited printing of only three thousand copies, destined for collectors. But this printing of The Night Land is in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand copies". - p x

First of all, 3,000 copies is 7 times bigger than the largest edition of any of my bks. 2ndly, "a hundred thousand copies" is mind-boggling for this. I mean, I'm glad they did it but when it comes down to it I don't really think it's that good. It does, sortof, fit into a genre & can be sold as such & it has some strong points but.. "a hundred thousand copies"?! Wow, that really seems like a gamble. Carter further informs the reader that:

"C. S. Lewis, another admirer of this remarkable novel, noted that it bore certain flaws—the maudlin love-dialogue scenes, for example. These scenes only occur in the second half of this very long novel, but they are Victorian sentimentality at its nadir of taste and, in the opinion of many readers (myself among them), they severely injure the cumulative power and movement of the story. My publishers have judiciously trimmed these scenes of their most excruciating emotional excesses. I have closely compared the edited version of these few scenes with the original version, and in my honest opinion Hodgson is improved by a little pruning. Only the most rabid literary purist is likely to object to our tampering with the author's text." - p xii

Ok, I object & I'm NOT "rabid". Still, that objection aside, given that The Night Land is a post-apocalyptic romance novel & that it's already so heavy-handed that it's hard to imagine it getting any worse, it IS hard to imagine it getting any worse & that makes me curious about the deleted parts. The language, wch is faux archaic, is supposedly "Victorian" (or pseudo-Victorian) but, hey!, I read Victorian porn & it ain't nuthin' like this! Nonetheless, even tho the language is almost insufferably contrived for an effect that I don't think quite comes off, I think its persistence is one of the things that makes The Night Land interesting:

"Yet, until that time, I had never met her; for I had been oft and long abroad; and so much given to my Studies and my Exercises when at home, that I had no further knowledge of her than Rumour gave to me odd time; and for the rest, I was well content; for as I have given hint, my books held me, and likewise my Exercises; for I was always an athlete, and never met the man so quick or so strong as I did be; save in some fiction of a tale or in the mouth of a boaster." - p 4

&, yes, this is very romantic, the pre-apocalyptic soulmates share a 'dreamworld':

"And one evening, that I ever remember, as we wandered in the park-lands, she began to say—half unthinking—that it was truly an elves-night. And she stopped herself immediately; as though she thought I should have no understanding; but, indeed, I was upon mine own familiar ground of inward delight; and I replied in a quiet and usual voice, that the Towers of Sleep would grow that night, and I felt in my bones that it was a night to find the Giant's Tomb, or the Tree with the Great Painted Head, or— And surely I stopped very sudden; for she gripped me in that moment" - p 7

This couple seem to live both in the preapocalyptic present (past) & in the postapocalyptic present (future). The male is doing the telling & he's explaining this curious state of being to those in the preapocalyptic times by describing the postapocalyptic ones:

"And so back to my telling. To my right, which was to the North, there stood, very far away, the House of Silence, upon a low hill. And in that House were many lights and no sounds. And so it had been through an uncountable Eternity of Years. Always those steady lights, and no whisper of sound—not even such as our distance-microphones could have discovered. And the danger of this House was accounted the greatest danger of all those Lands." - p 28

Touches like the "House of Silence" interest me & characterize what's best about the bk for me. The extravagant time scale is interesting too & similar to that of The House on the Borderland:

"And so to tell more about the South Watcher. A million years gone, as I have told, it came out from the blackness of the South, and grew steadily nearer through twenty thousand years; but so slow that in no one year could a man perceive that it had moved.

"Yet it had movement, and had come thus far upon its road to the Redoubt, when the Glowing Dome rose out of the ground before it—growing slowly. And this had stayed the way of the Monster; so that through an eternity it had looked towards the Pyramid across the pale glare of the Dome, and seeming to have no power to advance nearer." - p 31

Much of the bk is fanciful & its author seems only minimally concerned w/ any sort of scientific believability. The likelihood of there even being a record of the "South Watcher"'s mvmt for 20,000 yrs seems small — let alone a million yrs. Another example being that in the Night Land there's no light from extraterrestrial sources b/c the sun has died — uh, but what about stars?! Then there's the little problem of how anyone on the surface can endure the low temperatures:

"And, presently, was I clad with the grey armour; and below the armour a close-knit suit of special shaping and texture, to have the shape of the armour, and that I mgiht not die by the cold of the Night Land." - p 99

That's all well & good but there're plenty of naked or near naked humans running around & even the main character takes off his armour to bathe. FREQUENTLY. The author has no qualms about repeating such scenes. OVER & OVER. &, frankly (or frankfurterly), the common volcanoes really aren't enuf to account for a survivable surface temperature. But, HEY!, everything doesn't have to be scientifically believable.

"And when the humans had built the great Pyramid, it had one thousand three hundred and twenty floors; and the thickness of each floor was according to the strength of its need. And the whole height of this pyramid exceeded seven miles, by near a mile, and above it was a tower from which the Watchmen looked (these being called the Monstruwacans)." - pp 32-33

"Now, oft had I heard tell, not only in that great city which occupied the thousandth floor, but in others of the one thousand, three hundred and twenty cities of the Pyramid, that there was somewhere out in the desolation of the Night Lands a second Place of Refuge, where had gathered, in another part of this dead world, some millions of the human race, to fight until the end." - p 38

In The House on the Borderland there's a post-mortem romance (& I don't mean necrophilia) & there's one in The Night Land too. The male gets married to the female in the past & she dies young & then they reunite in the future, initially thru some sort of telepathy:

"But often would I say with my brain-elements "Mirdath!" "Mirdath!"—sending the name out into the darkness; and sometimes would I seem to hear the faint thrilling of the aether around me; as though one answered; but weakly, as it were with a weakened spirit, or by an instrument that lacked of its earth-force." - p 45

"And I called:—"Mirdath! Mirdath," with my brain-elements, into the night; and lo! the far, faint voice spoke again to my spirit through all the darkness of eternity, saying again those words. Yet, though the voice was that of Mirdath the Beautiful it was also the voice of Naani; and I knew in all my heart that this thing was in verity; and that it had been given to me to be birthed once more into this world in the living time of the Only One, with whom my spirit and essence hath mated in all ages through the everlasting." - p 57

I don't know much about the author's life but it's easy to imagine that someone he loved might've died young & that he might've been a devotedly romantic lover.

"Yet, in a while I gathered that all the peoples of the Lesser Redoubt were in very deadly trouble; for that the Earth-Current had failed suddenly and mightily; and they had called her from her sleep, that she might listen whether we answered their callings by the Instrument; but, indeed, no calling had come to us.

"And they who had been of late so joyful, were now grown old with sorrow in but an hour or two" - p 63

Romantics are so sensitive. So everybody in the great Pyramid has a bad hair day b/c after having just discovered that there were other human beings survived upon the Earth they then learn that their fellow humans were now endangered & possibly facing extinction so a rescue force goes forth against all odds, risking the evils of the Night Land. Our hero is not amongst them, being too wise to think there was any chance of survival.

"And my heart stood quiet with fear, and the utter terror of this Monster, which I knew to be surely one of the Great Forces of Evil of that Land, and had power, without doubt, to destroy the spirit. And the Master Monstruwacan leapt towards the Home-Call, and sent the great Sound down to the Ten-thousand, that they might attend, and immediately, he signalled to them to Beware. Yet, already I perceived that they knew of this Utter Danger that was upon them; for I saw them slay the Youths quickly, that their spirits might not be lost; for they were Unprepared. But the men, being Prepared, had the Capsule, and would die swiftly in the last moment." - p 80

Just for pukes & snickers, let's alter the technique of the above a tad to produce this:

"And my heart stood quiet With fear, and the utter terror Of this monster, Which I knew to be surely one of the great forces Of evil Of That land, and Had power, without doubt, To destroy the spirit. And the master monstruwacan leapt towards the home-call, and sent the great sound down To the ten-thousand, That they might attend, and immediately, he signalled To them To beware. Yet, already I perceived That they knew Of this utter danger That was upon them; for I saw them slay the youths quickly, That their spirits might not be lost; For they were unprepared. But the men, being prepared, Had the capsule, and would die swiftly in the last moment."

Ok, I admit that wasn't really that fun but an evil force made me do it. SO, after reading that,

"they went back unto their Cities; and lived there mayhaps an hundred thousand years; and grew wise and cunning in all matters; and their Wise People did make dealings and had experiment with those Forces which are Distasteful and Harmful unto Life; but they did this in Ignorance; for all they had much wisdom; thinking only to Experiment, that they come to greater knowings. But they did open a way for those Forces; and much harm and Pity did come thereby. And then had all People to have Regret; yet too late." - p 110

Really? All that b/c of my little language experiment? The power is tempting me. I think I'll write part of this review only using words that have heretofore been capitalized & see what forces are unleashed:

1st, the vocabulary:

√A
√After
√All
√Always
√Americans
√And
√Arkham

√Beautiful
√Beware
√BIG
√Borderland
√But

√C.
√Calling
√Capsule
√Carter
√Carter's
√Cities
√Conrad

√Danger
√Distasteful
√Dome

√Earth
√Earth-Current
√End
√Eternity
√Evil
√Exercises
√Experiment

√First
√For
√Forces
√FREQUENTLY
√From

√Gertrude
√Giant's
√Glowing
√Great

√Had
√Harmful
√Head
√Herman
√HEY
√Hodgson
√Hodgson's
√Home-Call
√Hope
√House

√I
√I'll
√I'm
√In
√IS
√It
√It's
√I've

√Joseph
√Just

√Land
√Lands
√Lesser
√Lewis
√Life
√Lin

√Making
√Master
√May
√Melville
√Mirdath
√Monster
√Monstruwacan
√Monstruwacans
√Morris's
√Much

√Naani
√Night
√Nonetheless
√North
√Not
√NOT
√Now

√Of
√Ok
√One
√Only
√Our
√OVER

√Painted
√People
√Pity
√Place
√Prepared
√Pyramid

√Really
√Redoubt
√Refuge
√Regret
√Romantics
√Rumour

√S.
√Silence
√Sleep
√So
√SO
√Sound
√South
√Stein
√Still
√STILL
√Studies

√Ten-thousand
√That
√That's
√The
√This
√To
√Tomb
√Touches
√Towers
√Tree

√Unprepared
√Utter

√Victorian

√Watcher
√Watchmen
√Well
√Which
√William
√Wise
√With
√World's
√Wow

√Years
√Yet
√Youths

A Beautiful BIG Victorian Experiment For Forces, A Glowing Giant's Wise (Yet Unprepared) Touches That Ten-thousand Romantics Regret. Naani, A Hope To End Evil And Distasteful Exercises With Which Youths Wow People To Sleep. Naani, The World's Watcher, IS Really In The South And The North. Not Now, Monster, Watchmen Utter Prepared Rumour, Stein STILL Studies Silence, Sound Painted Morris's Night, Hodgson's Joseph Just Lands in Hodgson's Head. Years Stlll Pity Carter's Place, A Pyramid Of Monstruwacans With Which William Towers SO That Refuge And Our Only Ok House And Home-Call Had Great Earth-Current. Much Lesser Life May Master It But I'll Beware Of Danger From Harmful Lewis Lin And Herman Hodgson Borderland Arkham Cities. After All, Americans Always Land The Eternity Capsule So That's OVER. NOT. Gertrude Calling Carter, Gertrude Calling Melville, Gertrude Calling Mirdath. Conrad Touches The Tree. Well? Earth Dome C. IS A Tomb. I'm Making S., I've Frequently Had One Hope: First I Utter This "Redoubt" That Monstruwacan Touches. HEY!, It's Great Nonetheless. Nonetheless,

"Now, it may be thought that I did act with a strange valiance, in that I composed my body so properly to slumber, and with but a little trouble of the heart concerning the coming of monsters. And in truth this has seemed somewhat so to me, thinking since that time; but I do but set the thing that is truth; and make not to labour to an illusion of truth; and so must tell much that doth seem improper to the Reality. Yet must all bear with me, and have understanding of the hardness of setting forth with true seeming the honesty of Truth, which, in verity, is better served oft times by timely and cunning lies. And so shall you understand this matter so well as I." - p 128

Did I say that this writing isn't like Victorian porn? "the coming of monsters": I take that back. See how nicely I clomb out of that one?

"and I clomb out of that place of rest. Yet before I did come rightly up into the open, I peered about, and made some surety that no evil Brute was anigh. And then I gat me out" - pp 128-129

Gats ready for the Brute.

[Tom B · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spoilers ahead:

This work is heralded as an iconic, groundbreaking work of fiction, and while it may have been so at the time of publication, in this day and age, it’s utterly unreadable. The writing style is so incredibly verbose, redundant, and archaic that no-one in their right mind would enjoy it.

The plot basically centers around an unnamed man who, after losing his wife in childbirth, conjures up a dream world where is a 17-year-old guy in a version of the Earth a million years in the future. The sun has long since died, and the world is shrouded in darkness with monsters of all sorts roaming around. This is the titular Night Land. What follows is the MC’s quest to find the location of Naani, the reincarnation of his dead wife, who speaks to him telepathically.

He stumbles about in the dark for several weeks, kills four monsters along the way, and eventually reaches the deserted pyramid where Naani was supposed to be. Here volume one ends.

The plot is thin enough to complain about, but it’s the writing that makes this one of the worst books I’ve ever read.

Mind-numbingly repetitive: page after page we read how he walks for x hours, then eats his tablets, drinks some water, and thinks about his “Maid” before sleeping for x hours. In between, we get descriptions of the scenery, and an occasional monster sighting. Over. And. Over.

Atrocious writing style: For some reason, the author chose to use this Romantic, medieval narration voice. It’s all 1st POV with literally zero dialogue. Every other sentence starts with “And”, and all past tense verbs are used like this: did see, did go, did know, and even did be. The words Master-Word, brain elements, and mosh bushes appear on every page. And then there are these sort of inane bits scattered throughout:

“And this thing shall be plain unto you, though no thought be put to the matter; for it is of an evident verity that doth not need argument to expound.”

and

“And I do hope that you have understanding with me in this matter; for it was truly as I have told, and there is no contrariness of telling in this matter.”

WHY WOULD ANYONE WRITE LIKE THIS??

Now, I’m going to torture myself by reading volume 2.

[Dominick · Rating 2 out of 5]

This ostensible classic (or half-classic, technically, since this edition splits it across two volumes) is a huge letdown. It begins in some undefined past before the protagonist/narrator somehow is reincarnated/transported (it's not really clear) to a vastly far future in which the sun is dead (how any life continues on Earth is somewhat of a mystery) and humans are on the way out, mostly living in a giant pyramid and surrounded by a night world with Watchers and the House of Silence and other portentously-named forces, as well a smore garden-variety monsters (it's a given that anything that isn't human is at least monstrous if not actively evil). He narrates his adventures form a third, not clearly defined time, since he seems somehow to have been transferred back in time after the adventures he recounts. These adventures perhaps could and should be exciting, given the very alien setting and the number of dangerous things he encounters on his quest to find what is apparently the only other remaining human outpost, to rescue his beloved (also apparently reincarnated from the past-they communicate telepathically using the "brain-element" and the "Master Word"), but they are actually quite dull. Hodgson writes in what I assume he thinks is a quasi-medieval style, but mostly the result is just tedious and eccentric prose. It also tends to be repetitive (e. g. the narrator seems to think he needs to tell us every time he eats or makes water--by which I mean, he literally manufactures water out of some sort of powder and air: yes, instant water!). Every now and then as he wanders the night land--which, admittedly, is occasionally imaged in effectively evocative terms--he encounters something that tries to kill him, such as weird monsters or quasi-human figures. I found myself occasionally thinking of things like Conan the Barbarian during these bits, though Hodgson predates Howard. Unfortunately, these action sequences are just not that engaging. In short, the book seems to get nowhere excruciatingly slowly--and since it's less than 250 pages long, that's something. I am seriously considering not bothering with the second volume.

[The Usual · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had William Hope Hodgson not completed The Night Land – had he suffered a freak lawn-mowing accident or been taken by aliens about a third of the way through – I suspect I’d be talking about an unfinished masterpiece of lurking evil. I’d be saying what a pity it was he never finished it.

As it is, I suspect I’ll end up thinking what a pity it is that he did finish it. The first third is a superb evocation of a dark and demon-haunted landscape filled with creatures of subtle and not-so-subtle malice, written in murky and archaic prose. Unfortunately, to my mind, that quality of brooding terror drops of markedly in the last (this is only half the book) third of this volume, and we’re left with something that looks a little like it was culled from Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
It looks like he may have been a master of setting nightmares down on paper, but to have had little idea of what to do with them once he had.

Hopefully part two will prove me wrong.

[Cody Smiglewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holy smokes, this was a slog. However, this is a groundbreaking piece of SciFi/Fantasy, and many parts were very enjoyable! Fair warning though: if you’re adverse to hearing how often somebody stopped to eat and drink, you’ll find many skippable passages.

[Loren Law · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise and early chapters are 5 stars, but as soon as our hero starts his adventure into the Night, a lot of nothing starts to happen and Hodgson makes sure we know about all about it.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review for The Night Land will be in Volume 2.

[Julio Belmonte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Telepathy, prescience, and astral projection are present in abundance along with steampunk battle axes, art deco armor, and space-age camping gear.