| Title | : | The House on the Borderland and Other Novels |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0575073721 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780575073722 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 656 |
| Publication | : | First published October 10, 2002 |
The House on the Borderland and Other Novels Reviews
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House on the Borderland by William Hope Hogson was actually recommended to me by the author Brian Keene. Forgive me for name-dropping but we got into a conversation on his blog not too long ago and Brian told me that this was the book that ultimately got him interested in wanting to be a horror writer. With a recommendation like that, how could I not read it right? The thing about this book that you also need to know going in is that it was written over 100 years ago (1908 to be specific). So the writing is very archaic and "old-english" if you will. This takes a bit of getting used to when you first immerse yourself in the story, but I found that like with the middle-earth books, once you familiarize yourself with the writing style and language, you do get acclimated to it fairly quickly. And now to the plot of the story. House on the Borderland takes place on a fishing holiday in rural Ireland. Two friends named Tonnison and Berreggnog (yes, that's really his name) embark on what they believe will be a relaxing stay in the Irish countryside spent fishing and enjoying the outdoors. However, this brief vacation is soon turned on its head as the friends stumble across the ruins of an old house in the middle of the dense woods. One of the friends is extremely reluctant to explore the house further; however, the other friend becomes obsessed with finding out who lived there and what secrets it might possibly contain. Upon further investigation of the strange dilapidated house, a diary is discovered written by what appears to be the original inhabitant, a person who identifies himself as "The Recluse". This is where the story really begins to become a Lovecraftian and twisted horror tale as the contents of the diary begin to get read. The diary written by The Recluse begins innocently enough, with the daily recording of his life, how he acquired the strange house, and musings about his sister and dog, who also reside there with him. Gradually though, The Recluse starts to record strange visions, possibly hallucinations, where he travels into what can only be described as another dimension. In this other dimension, strange beasts with pig-like faces act as though they can see him, but cannot communicate in any way. This goes on for pages and pages and with each diary entry, the visions become weirder and more aggressive in nature. Couple this with the fact that in this vision is a house that looks identical to the one that The Recluse has just moved into and you have a truly Gothic horror tale that you want to keep reading until the end to find out what the heck is going on. All I can say about this book is that it really surprised me in a good way. I thought that the fact that it was written such a long time ago would render it high on the cheese factor. That couldn't be further from the truth. I can see now why Brian Keene cited this as his inspiration because it truly is a masterwork of horror. Its brilliance also lies in the fact that it doesn't rely on gore to deliver the scares, but rather uses highly supernatural and some might even say science-fiction themes. I really loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone who loves horror, Lovecraft, and supernatural tales of all types. The book isn't very long either - weighing in at just under 200 pages, so it is a quick read. Pick it up and read it, you won't be disappointed.
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http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/houseontheborderland.htm[return][return]This volume gathers together all four of William Hope Hodgson's novels of the fantastic published in his lifetime (1877-1918): The Boats of the Glen Carrig, originally published in 1907; The House on the Borderland (1908); The Ghost Pirates (1909) and The Night Land (1912). It's in the usual attractive Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks package, with a very enthusiastic introduction from China Mi -
The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"
Only 100 pages long, this is a tale of mystery and danger on the high seas. After the sinking of the ship Glen Carrig, two boats carrying her surviving crew and passengers find themselves in dire straits. Attacked by monstrous devil-fish and unseen dangers lurking in the darkness, as well as the expected dangers of storms and running out of food and drinking water, they have only their own ingenuity and the experience of the cool-headed bo'sun to bring them to safety.
I liked it a lot, and my book contains four novels by this author so I have three more to look forward to.
The House on the Borderland
It was undoubtedly a portion of a ruined building; yet now I made out that it was not built upon the edge of the chasm itself, as I had first supposed; but perched almost at the extreme end of a huge spur of rock that jutted out some fifty or sixty feet over the abyss. In fact, the jagged mass of ruin was literally suspended in mid-air.
Two friends on a camping and fishing holiday in the West of Ireland find a battered notebook containing an unbelievable story in the ruins of a house suspended over a chasm, and pass it to William Hope Hodgson to edit and publish.
In the notebook, a past owner of the house describes mystical visions in which he travels vast distances through space and time. He also tells of encounters with the mysterious and possibly non-corporeal swine-creatures that attack his house, which seem to come from the bowels of the earth.
I found this an involving story, but not as exciting as his tales of the sea.
The Ghost Pirates
I joined the Mortzestus in 'Frisco. I heard before I signed on, that there were some funny yarns floating round about her; but I was pretty nearly on the beach, and too jolly anxious to get away, to worry about trifles. Besides, by all accounts, she was right enough so far as grub and treatment went. When I asked fellows to give it a name, they generally could not. All they could tell me, was that she was unlucky, and made thundering long passages, and had no more than a fair share of dirty weather. Also, that she had twice had the sticks blown out of her, and her cargo shifted. Besides all these, a heap of other things that might happen to any packet, and would not be comfortable to run into. Still, they were the ordinary things, and I was willing enough to risk thern, to get home. All the same, if I had been given the chance, I should have shipped in some other vessel as a matter of preference.
When the ship Mortzestus takes on a new crew at San Francisco, only one sailor remains from the previous voyage. His crew-mates left without their pay, but Williams is determined to stay long enough to get his pay-packet, even though he claims that the Mortzestus is an unlucky ship with too many shadows.
Jessop is the first of the new crew to notice anything odd, when he sees a shadowy figure climbing over the rails. Events build up slowly at first, and Jessop is not sure who else has noticed what is going on, but one terrifying night things escalate and half the crew, including the Second Mate and even the Skipper, end up climbing the rigging looking for a sailor who has disappeared up above, burning flares and blue-lights (whatever they may be) and hanging lanterns around the ship in an attempt to hold back the danger that lurks in the darkness.
William Hope Hodgson spent ten years at sea, and this story really rings true (except for the ghost pirates obviously). A scary, exciting and moving tale.
Edited 10/12/2015: I finally got round to Googling blue-lights, and according to Wikipedia "Blue light is an archaic signal, the progenitor of modern pyrotechnic flares. Blue light consists of a loose, chemical composition burned in an open, hand-held hemispherical wooden cup."
The Night Land
And thus, in a while were they watched by all the mighty multitudes of the Great Pyramid, through millions of spy-glasses; for each human had a spying-glass, as may be thought; and some were an hundred years old, and some, maybe ten thousand, and handed down through many generations; and some but newly made, and very strange. But all those people had some instrument by which they might spy out upon the wonder of the Night Land; for so had it been ever through all the eternity of darkness, and a great diversion and wonder of life was it to behold the monsters about their work; and to know that they plotted always to our destruction; yet were ever foiled.
The first three stories in my Fantasy Masterworks copy of "The House in the Borderland and Other Novels" are really novellas, being barely 100 pages long, but this final tale is much longer. Unfortunately the reason that "The Night Land" is so much longer is due to the unnecessarily convoluted olde worlde language, which makes it a slow and tortuous read, or rather "that which does thus render it both slow and tortuous to read thereof". Since this book was written by an Edwardian man, I might have expected that sexism would still be going strong at the end of the world, but the way the protagonist describes Mine Own (who apparently is demure and loving but also impertinent, perverse and in need of a good whipping) is still exceedingly annoying
However the
Night Land itself and the long journey of the protagonist through the landscape are mesmerising (while being tediously repetitive in parts) and even though it took about 10 times as long to read as a normal book of that length, I was never tempted to give up. The last remaining human beings on the dying earth live in impregnable pyramids in a hostile landscape, and are menaced by ab-humans and monstrous beings when they venture outside, and I just had to know whether the hero would manage to rescue the woman he loved and her companions from the Lesser Refuge and bring them back to the Great Redoubt.
And this thing did strike me very solemn, as I did lie; and I do trust that you conceive how that there was, in truth, afar above in the eternal and unknown night, the stupendous desolation of the dead world, and the eternal snow and starless dark. And, as I do think, a cold so bitter that it held death to all living that should come anigh to it. Yet, bethink you, if one had lived in that far height of the dead world, and come upon the edge of that mighty valley in which all life that was left of earth, did abide, they should have been like to look downward vaguely into so monstrous a deep that they had seen naught, mayhaps, save a dull and utter strange glowing far downward in the great night, in this place and in that. -
The House on the Borderland is easily among the best horror stories I ever read, standing there right beside Lovecraft's and CA Smith's best works. After reading Hodgson's Nightland many years ago, and ,having been quite disappointed by it, I somehow lost touch to that author. I'm more than glad that I found this novella mentioned somewhere, and highly praised. Yes, it is excellent, well-written, full of wildest fantastic ideas and concepts, and full of a creepy, dark mystery until the very end. With Halloween being tomorrow, I gotta say that it was a perfect read for this time of year.
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Gave it up, the last hour I have absolutely no idea what I’m reading and where it was going if anywhere.
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¡Me gustó muchísimo! Es lo más parecido a realizar un viaje astral.
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And so I fell to reading the books of William Hope Hodgson, the which I had not hitherto encountered, and in this wise passed many a long hour; for there are four novels in this mighty tome, all written in the prose of yesteryear.
The first, “The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” concerns brave sailors lost in a sea of thick weed populated with strange and terrible monsters. They make their way to an island and find that another ship has been trapped in the weed for months. There are girls on board! It’s a good story of the same ilk and era as Arthur Conan Doyle's “The Lost World.” Fun.
Presently, having made an end of the first novel I started the second. 'The House on the Borderland' is set in the west of Ireland. In the ruins of an old mansion, shunned by the locals, two friends discover the journal of an old man. It tells of his soul journeys to the far future where he sees many strange and wondrous things. Cosmic, man! And pretty cosmic it is too, for 1908. Lovecraft is generally known as the originator of this kind of thing, yet he was an admirer of Hodgson. Bob Heinlein once pointed out that Doc Smith’s stuff all seemed hackneyed now because everyone has spent thirty years copying it. Hodgson must be read with this in mind. That’s not an excuse. It doesn’t need an excuse. It’s good.
Of the three short novels, I most liked ‘The Ghost Pirates.’ Jessop, the narrator, joins the good ship Mortzestus in ‘Frisco, despite some strange rumours about it. At first, there are small incidents, odd events. No one will talk openly about them; no one wants to be thought a fool. Things get worse. Hodgson builds the tension slowly, with King-ly skill, in a genuinely suspenseful and sometimes scary tale.
And so to 'The Night Land', which is as long as the other three put together. In his introduction, China Mieville says: “If a committee had been set up to design an unreadable book they’d probably have come up with The Night Land.” I couldn’t agree more. Had I not been contractually obligated to finish the damn thing I would have given it up a hundred times. The world created is brilliant. The story is interesting. The writing is a cod-biblical nightmare.
Here is a sample sentence: “And there also to come presently a change and a seeming of thinness into the air; and the Maid to remark upon this, and likewise that the water powder now to be that it not to fizz so plentiful.”
There are about 180,000 words arranged in this fashion. There are also original and wonderful ideas. The first part of the book where the narrator and his True Love meet in our time, or rather Hodgson’s time, is a bit blah. Then we move to the far future where he dreams of this past life and lives in the Great Redoubt, a mighty fortress and sanctuary where millions exist on a dying Earth, surrounded by terrible forces. The history, culture and organization of this society are well defined. It’s real science fiction.
The narrator is a kind of telepath and becomes aware of another group of humans out somewhere in the Night Land. He sets off to find them. His outward journey is fairly gripping despite the awful prose. His return journey with the Maid, who is the reincarnation of his former Love just as he is the reincarnation of hers, is tedious beyond measure. I would like to recommend it to feminists, just to hear the sound of a million teeth grinding throughout the western world.
The book costs 699 pennies. The three short novels are worth 233 each and if you are ever on a very long journey with nothing to read – Earth to Alpha Centauri in a steamboat, say – you can tackle 'The Night Land'. Failing that wait for the film. Someone’s bound to make it one day. -
I found this book very alluring and extremely fascinating in some ways, but overall found that the plot did not hold up enough for me to give it a better rating. For a majority of the book I truly felt lost and unsure of what was happening, and felt very unsure of what actually happened overall (but not in a satisfying way).
The reason I gave this book 2 stars rather than 1 though is because the writing is really well done, I would almost say it's beautifully written. I think Hodgson has a tremendous way with words and I was quite captivated by that and this expanse idea of the Swine creatures / space and time travel, but due to the plot feeling all over the place I can't say I enjoyed this book. I felt his sisters character played no important role yet she was the only other person in the novel and there was so much time spent on describing what the MC was seeing and experiencing in his out of body experiences, and despite how well it was written, it just feel really flat for me in terms of a story that was enjoyable to read.
In the addition I read, there were also these beautiful illustrations that further brought the book to life and have inspired me in some ways. -
This author influenced Lovecraft, and this book is the one most recommended, but it’s just not good.
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I re-read the House on the Borderland this week after about fifteen years and I'd forgotten how... cosmic... it was. It reads like a cross between H.G.Wells' the Time Machine and Lovecraft's the Rats in the Walls, which is a good thing to my mind.
I hadn't realised it was written so long ago, and it holds up well with some eerie imagery. Definitely a classic of the weird fiction genre. -
A precursor to HP Lovecraft, all the stories are great fun and have an element of mystery and suspense. However, without a doubt, the novella The House on the Borderland is the best of the lot in my view. That is a particularly strange and brilliant story.
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Full review here:
http://apolloreborn.blogspot.com/2013... -
The Boats of the Glen Carrig read on July 30, 2004
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Still immensely awesome the fifth time round - although his over-use of commas and adverbs gets annoying. Lots to say. Just have to fine the right place to say it.
