Jesse > Recent Status Updates

“The Storm”

Another alternate take, but I think that the “mainstream” version of this story / prose poem did a better of portraying the ocean as a monstrous, eldritch horror. It’s still loaded with a lot of poetic descriptors from Hodgson.

“Captain Gunbolt Charity and the Painted Lady”

I guess this started out here and then got adapted to a Captain Gault piece. It feels like it’s pretty much the same, but there may be something more in the philosophy of art as Hodgson expresses it, the struggle between art and artifice.

“An Adventure of the Deep Waters”

This is I suppose an alternate version of one of the Sargasso Sea stories, where a ship runs afoul of a giant octopus. It’s paced pretty well and the way that Hodgson builds to the reveal with the mist blowing away is pretty effective. It’s kind of fun returning to Sargasso after it was such a huge part of the first collection.

“The Dumpley Acrostics”

This is basically the ending of the one Carnacki tale about a book forgery, but just the climax so that it’s devoid of tension. I imagine that the general idea is that the plot twist was the most important aspect to copyright, which is why it’s generally what survives in these “copyright versions” and not the window dressing that makes reading so enjoyable.

“The Last Word in Mysteries”

The secret of this story is familiar but the main plot point, the MC’s fiance being kidnapped by smugglers, does not. Then again, I may have forgotten something from the second volume. It’s whatever; as short, two-page stories go, Bierce’s works carried more weight.

“Senator Sandy MacGhee”

This is a Captain Gault adventure, but it’s unrecognizable if it’s from the initial run. Gault is not the main character, here, but an accomplice of Senator Sandy MacGhee, who gets one over on the officials by leading them to fake jewelry in a broad feint, thus drawing attention off of everyone walking off the ship with the actual goods.

“The Dream of X”

I know that some people believe that cutting this 400 page novel down to 40 pages gives it a focus that it was lacking. The way in which it has been edited is frankly distracting, cutting out so much of the Hellscape that X (and Naani) traverses. BUT. The climax of this story still gave me goosebumps and brought tears to my eyes—and it wouldn’t have happened without those cut pages.

“Carnacki, the Ghost Finder”

Four briefly summarized stories previously featured in the second volume, basically featuring the climax of each piece. I get that this was for copyright reasons; they aren’t very satisfying as retellings and the meat of the Carnacki presentation is missing, which is essential to their design. Don’t read this; read the individual stories.

“The Ghost Pirates”

This heavily condensed version (for American copyright) is a tight piece in terms of action but lacks most of its character moments and suspense. There’s also a bit that was NOT excised referring to the in-universe explanation for the pirates, which makes little sense without all of Jessop’s inward musings about the presumed nature of the phenomena.

“Captain Dan Danblasten”

I thought, hey, I’ve read this before…because I have! This is a rewrite of “The Homecoming of Captain Dan”, featured in the second volume of this collection. I am not entirely sure what the differences may be, except maybe Dan’s speckling his speech with French sailing idioms. Pretty much every story beat is the exact same.

“Captain Dang: The Ship in the Lagoon”

This is a longer horror novella that is regrettably unfinished but whose framed tale bears more than a passing resemblance to Hodgson’s “The Habitants of Middle Islet”. This is surrounded by slice-of-life Hodgson wish fulfillment stuff as the MC is thankfully hired on as a second mate with a captain who is just as much of a fitness fetishist as himself.

“The Promise”

A Biercian short horror story where a young man promises to keep vigil over his dead brother’s body but falls asleep at some point and is taken away by the servants of the house. He makes his way back with a guilty conscience and, well, whether what he sees is real or not (he is completely convinced, of course), he is terrified just the same.

“The Room of Fear”

This is a sort of supernatural story centered around an 8 yr old boy who has just moved out of the nursery and into a room that is Hodgson’s sort of brand of haunted, bringing to mind Karnacki’s story of the haunted ring, but with a bit less menace and a bit more understanding of childhood terrors, the presumption being that children can see things that adults can’t.

“Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani”

This story is within the same framework as the Carnacki tales. A chemist has done a lot of work in the pursuit of proving the Darkness of Christ’s crucifixion. This compound, when it reacts, destabilizes the “aether”. If you’ve read all the Carnacki stories, then you know that this is a Very Bad Thing. The ensuing experiment ends about as well as I expected.

“Diamond Cut Diamond With a Vengeance”

Two chemists (they’re a couple and also engaged) figure out how to synthesize diamonds from “diamond powder” but their bankroller, an ethnic stereotype that’s insulting to Jewish people, is trying to swindle them by planning his own sort of heisty switcheroo. Also, he is really pushy in trying to get the woman, Nell, to marry him.

“Jem Binney and the Safe At Lockwood Hall”

This is a humorous heist story where the title character has established a cover story for himself by way of a phonograph recording of his cough. First I was pretty sure there was gonna be a twist with the gripsack, then I thought there wasn’t, and then there really was a twist but when it involves a second cosmic coincidence then it becomes a bit of a farce.

“How Sir Jerrold Treyn Dealt With the Dutch in Caunston Cove”

The Dutch are menacing the English coastline and the local Lord isn’t too put off… but his two teenage sons have a Plan. The English gentry, with some assistance, manage to put one over on the Dutch privateers, though it doesn’t dwell too much on the losses of life and property inflicted upon the townsfolk.

“What Happened in the Thunderbolt”

A nautical romance featuring, naturally, abusive officers, with the deckhand MC deciding to stay on when he encounters love at first sight between himself and the slightly impish Miss Vairne. This story shares some of the basic plot of “Jack Grey, Second Mate”, though without nearly as much of the latter’s thrilling desperation (and body count!).

“The Inn of the Black Crow”

This is a historical fiction detective story where a secret agent of the King is looking into a suspicious death in Erskine. He is posing as a man on vacation for health reasons (I think alluding to Tuberculosis) and the story delves into some of the devices that villainous innkeepers used to murder their customers. The postscript suggests that this story’s device actually existed.

“The Friendship of Monsieur Jeynois”

A sea story that has some of the format of “The Wild Man of the Sea” insofar as there being a natural, skilled sailor who is nonetheless othered by the crew, but not before making a connection with one of the younger lads, who is of course bullied by the other officers. This one is considerably more action-packed, with quite the last stand on Monsieur’s part.

“The Getting Even of “Parson” Guyles”

This is a heist story where a safecracker between jobs gets run out of his modest bookstore by the English equivalent of something like a Wal-Mart. He gets a few acquaintances who are in the trade and together they plot the robbery of a relatively advanced safe. This story leverages “Puritan blood” as a character trait, something I haven’t seen much of.

“How the Honourable Billy Darrell Raised the Wind”

This is another Hodgson wish-fulfillment story where a bankrupt writer (and noble!) agrees to stand-in at a boxing match in order to win the prize money and share of the gate so that he can settle his debts. One almost feels as though Hodgson is describing his own physique in pornographic detail when the fighters disrobe.

“The Sea Horses”

A child’s (Nebby) grandpa is a diver who has so enchanted him with stories of sea-horses that he carves and paints him a little go-horse for him to ride—partly because the boy has confused the land of the sea-horses with heaven, as Granfer has idly said that he has seen the children that Nebby knows have died in the land of the sea-horses. Something bad happens because of this fantasy.

“The Getting Even of Tommy Dodd”

This is a Hodgson “officers bullying the ‘prentices” story but more a comedy of subterfuge as the titular Tommy conspires with his beleaguered fellows to pose as a woman—specifically, his pretty and dainty cousin—and turn the skipper against his abusive officers before exacting his final revenge, an echo of the foot fetish sentiments of The Night Land.

“Judge Barclay’s Wife”

A meditation on the humanistic application of justice where a merciful Gold Rush Judge’s flint-hearted wife has a crisis of conscience when she bears witness to an impromptu hanging in progress, having seen the anguish of the condemned’s mother. This old lady steals a gun and holds the sheriff’s posse at gunpoint while the lad escapes! Badass!

“My House Shall Be Called a House of Prayer”

A more sedate domestic story about two men who go to call on an Irish priest who works with enormous humanism within his parrish. By some accounts, Hodgson was a bit of an iconoclast when it came to religion, but he did not begrudge individuals operating within their faith. The story’s Father Johnson orchestrates an act of charity that saves face for the bereaved.

“Dare 1965: Modern Warfare”

A futuristic political satire of war where the proposed solution to the barbarism of conflict involves statistically chosen numbers of men, based on past battles, literally butchering each other like cattle, with the winner getting to sell the meat harvested from the dead. I’ve already seen several people point out how prescient this reads given Hodgson’s own death in World War 1.

“The Valley of Lost Children”

A parable of faith after the loss of a child. Hodgson describes—first in the vision of someone who appears to be a priest and later in the twilight of the mother—a valley of shadow and a valley of light, the latter being an eternal paradise where those who are children in the eyes of God may frolic. The dialect makes it kind of hard to parse at first, but gives the piece weight.