William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land: A Love Story

A note: If you're going to read this, watch out that you don't get the abridged version. Although the latter half of the whole book is filled with a lot of crap, you'll still want to read the whole book.

There are few moments in your life where you're overawed by something you're seeing. In examples from my own life, standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looking out is one such moment. Another would be watching the fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin at the end of Star Wars: Episode III. Moments like that, you sit (or stand) there, and are at a complete loss for words to describe what you're seeing. It's not only overwhelming in scope, but in beauty, or madness, or any other attribute in such depth and intensity that it's impossible to grasp immediately. Rarely, very rarely, does such a moment occur when you're reading a book. Not that books don't have intense moments where you just can't quit reading. It's just that rarely are you overwhelmed by the imagery a book makes you see in your head. William Hope Hodgson's book The Night Land does that to you.

The setting of the book is some millions of years in the future. The Sun has gone dark, and emits little, if any heat (this book was written a while ago, and the science was current at the time). The only people known to be living on the planet are concentrated in the Last Redoubt, home to many millions, or perhaps billions. It is a great pyramid, built deep in a cavity of the Earth, perhaps in a rift on the bottom of what was formerly the Ocean. Yet even so deep the Earth provides little warmth, for it too is slowly dying. The people must live in the Last Redoubt because of the unnatural horrors that besiege it and which will kill any living thing that roams abroad. The inhabitants have found a solution for this, although only temporarily:

And, later, through hundreds and thousands of years, there grew up in the Outer Lands, beyond those which lay under the guard of the Redoubt, mighty and lost races of terrible creatures, half men and half beast, and evil and dreadful; and these made war upon the Redoubt; but were beaten off from that grim, metal mountain, with a vast slaughter. Yet, must there have been many such attacks, until the electric circle was put about the Pyramid, and lit from the Earth-Current. And the lowest half-mile of the Pyramid was sealed; and so at last there was a peace, and the beginnings of that Eternity of quiet watching for the day when the Earth-Current shall become exhausted.

So these are people living, but only waiting to die. They know that for them there is no future, no hope, only borrowed time until they finally succumb to the evils that wait outside and perish.

The main character is a man who is recalling this story in the present (the author's present, our past) as if it was a dream, yet a memory from his own future self. He is both men, and somehow gained awareness of the life of himself in the far future. The reason this is called a love story is that in the present, he finds his love, yet she is soon taken from him by death. In the future, he may find her again after a long, long separation. As his future self (who we never learn the name of) he one day hears a call (via telepathy of some sort) from far away, outside the redoubt. He somehow knows that it is the woman that he loved, and thus decides that he must undertake to find her and rescue her.

And I came at last unto the Great Gate; and behold the dear Master Monstruwacan did stand in full armour, and with the Diskos, to do me honour, with the Full Watch, as I went forth. And I looked at him, quietly, and he looked unto me, and I bent my head to show respect; and he made silent salute with the Diskos; and afterwards I went onwards towards the Great Gateway.

And they made dim the lights in the Great Causeway, that there should no glare go forth into the Land, when the Gate was opened; and behold, they opened not the lesser gate within the greater, for me; but did honour my journey, in that they swung wide the Great Gate itself, through which a monstrous army might pass. And there was an utter silence all about the Gate; and in the hushed light the two thousand that made the Full Watch, held up each the Diskos, silently, to make salute; and humbly, I held up the Diskos reversed, and went forward into the Dark.

For some readers, the language and its pseudo-archaicness is a real turn-off. But I think that it is more appropriate than trying to describe the visions he sees in a modern voice. The way he's telling the story, it's more like you're reading some old translation of an ancient classic. It lends it the air of a legend or myth, something you both believe and don't believe. You see, the author wasn't trying to write some kind of modern horror story, he was trying to write an epic. The choice is between Stephen King and Homer. If this story was written from the point of view of being contemporary, it would be King. The problem with that is that it would be unbelievable without the redeeming quality of being a myth. Surely no-one believs in Scylla and Charybdis or Circe or Polyphemus any more than they believe in Cujo or Carrie or the Crimson King. The reason to write them as different kinds of stories though is that King is writing stories relevant to us using thematic elements that modern Americans can relate to. Prom, for example, or the gunslinger who's no more than a Clint Eastwood character, whereas myths use elements that are archetypal and more general. Myths apply to all times and all peoples by using common factors. Witches and gods play more prominent roles in myths, both of which archetypes are shared by all the peoples of the Earth. Hodgson chose to write his story as epic because there was nothing in it that would be relevant in current times. For this reason, his book is just as readable now as it was 80 years ago. Of course I'll be reading King until I die, but in 50 (it's already 30) years Carrie is going to be completely anachronistic.

Anyone who has read the long version must fully acknowledge the weakness of many chapters after the main character rescues his love, where he says idiot things like "And the Maid walkt by my side, and wondrous silent; but yet very nigh to me, so that I knew she did be very full of love to me, and of that quaint and sweet humbleness that love doth breed odd whiles in a woman when she doth be with her man, if but that man be also her master."

There's more that's completely inane, but in truth, too much happens in the latter half of the book to just completely excise. I saw what they'd cut from the abridged version and it just ruined the book, so really, just read the full version. It's worth it. This book is really a forgotten classic, although it's not as forgotten as you might think. There is a continuing fan base that produces short fiction in the world of the Night Land, such as John C. Wright's Awake in the Night. You may remember John C. Wright from my last post about his series the Golden Age. This is definitely a must-read.

Night Land resources online.