The Night Land
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Night Land | |
 cover of The Night Land |
|
| Author | William Hope Hodgson |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Eveleigh Nash |
| Publication date | 1912 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 584 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
The Night Land is a classic horror novel by William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1912. As a work of fantasy it belongs to the Dying Earth subgenre. Hodgson also published a much shorter version of the novel, entitled The Dream of X.
The importance of The Night Land was recognized by its later revival in paperback by Ballantine Books, which republished the work in two parts as the forty-ninth and fiftieth volumes of its celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in July, 1972.
H. P. Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" describes the novel as "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written". Clark Ashton Smith wrote of it that "In all literature, there are few works so sheerly remarkable, so purely creative, as The Night Land. Whatever faults this book may possess, however inordinate its length may seem, it impresses the reader as being the ultimate saga of a perishing cosmos, the last epic of a world beleaguered by eternal night and by the unvisageable spawn of darkness. Only a great poet could have conceived and written this story; and it is perhaps not illegitimate to wonder how much of actual prophecy may have been mingled with the poesy."
When the book was written, the nature of the energy source that powers stars was not known: Lord Kelvin had published calculations based on the hypothesis that the energy came from the gravitational collapse of the gas cloud that had formed the sun, and found that this mechanism gave the Sun a lifetime of only a few tens of million of years. Starting from this premise, Hodgson wrote a novel describing a time, millions of years in the future, when the Sun has gone dark.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The beginning of the book establishes the framework in which a 17th century gentleman, mourning the death of his beloved, is given a vision of a far-distant future where their souls will be re-united, and sees the world of that time through the eyes of a future incarnation. The language and style used are intended to resemble that of the 17th century, though the prose has features characteristic of no period whatsoever: the almost-complete lack of dialogue and proper names, for example.
Once into the book, the framing is more or less forgotten. The Sun has gone out: the Earth is lit only by the glow of residual vulcanism. The last few millions of the human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark. These are held back by a Circle of energy, known as the "air clog," powered from the Earth's internal energy. For millennia, vast living shapes - the Watchers - have waited in the darkness near the pyramid: it is thought they are waiting for the inevitable time when the Circle's power finally weakens and dies. Other living things have been seen in the darkness beyond, some of unknown origins, and others that may once have been human.
To leave the protection of the Circle means almost certain death, or worse, but as the story commences, the narrator establishes mind contact with an inhabitant of another, forgotten, Redoubt, and sets off into the darkness to find her.
Strangely, at the conclusion of the adventure the narrative does not return to the framework story, leaving open the possibility that the narrator has gone mad with grief and chosen to continue to exist within his vision of the future, or has literally been transported there.
[edit] Abhumans
The term "Abhuman" was used by Hodgson in The Night Land to name (apparently) several different species of intelligent beings evolved from humans who interbred with alien species or adapted to changed environmental conditions and were seen as decayed or malign by those living inside the Last Redoubt, who preserved artificially (to an unspecified extent) their human characteristics, though they were not fit for the new environmental conditions.
[edit] The Dream of X
The abridged version of the novel was first published in the United States in 1912 in chapbook form as Poems and a Dream of X (New York: R. H. Paget, 1912), in an extremely limited print run. In this edition, the 200,000 word novel was condensed to a 20,000 word novelette, originally for the purpose of establishing copyright; also included was a novelette entitled Mutiny, an abridged version of the story "'Prentices' Mutiny," and thirteen of Hodgson's poems, which were later included in his other posthumously published books of poetry. The abridgement by itself was republished in a limited 1977 edition under the title with an introduction by Sam Moskowitz and color illustrations by Stephen Fabian under the title The Dream of X (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1977).
[edit] Technologies of the Night Land
[edit] Telepathy
While the entire human population seems to have some capacity for telepathic communication (in the book called "The Night Hearing"), the main character has unusually strong abilities and is capable of communicating with his lost love using his "brain-elements." This seems to indicate a specialized organ in the brain, perhaps evolved or genetically engineered, or perhaps some kind of implant. Hodgson also introduces a kind of authentication known as the "master word." This is reminiscent of a modern public-key cryptography; humans can apparently generate a correct response, while the non-human monsters who attempt to lead them astray by intercepting and forging telepathic communications can't do so.
[edit] Powdered Water and Food Tablets
Hodgson's hero sets out into the Night Land carrying lightweight food tablets and a sealed tube full of "water-powder." When a small quantity of this powder is exposed to air, it absorbs water rapidly from the air, reacting rapidly and producing drinkable water. While lightweight dehydrated foods exist, water-powder is scientifically implausible (though see deliquescence), but together these serve to explain how the hero can carry enough food and drink to survive his journey in the inhospitable Night Land.
[edit] The Diskos
The diskos is a weapon featuring a razor-sharp spinning disk on a retractable handle. When deployed the disk shoots out sparks. This invention may have been inspired by a hand-held children's toy that shoots sparks when a button is pressed to rev up a small spinning disk. It is also indicated that the diskos develops a special affinity for its owner during training and should not be handled by anyone else.
[edit] The Redoubt
The vision of the Great Redoubt is fascinating, as the city-sized building is described to contain millions of people and feature vast farmlands underground, powered by the mysterious "earth-current." The upper levels of the redoubt are at so high an altitude that they must be pressurized, and the residents have developed enlarged lung capacity.
[edit] Pastiche, homages and sequels
Greg Bear's short story, The Way of All Ghosts, dedicated to William Hope Hodgson, is set in the Way, the artificial space-time structure featured in several of Bear's novels, beginning with Eon (1985). A recurring character from these novels, Ser Olmy, is given a mission to investigate an experiment which had gone horribly wrong. The experimenters had attempted to open a gate into a universe of pure order, and the survivors find themselves trapped in a region of the Way that has transformed to a chaotic state resembling the Night Land.
More recently, a fan named Andy W. Robertson has compiled two published collections of Night Land fan fiction, under the titles William Hope Hodgson's Night Lands: Eternal Love (2003) and William Hope Hodgson's Night Lands: Nightmares of the Fall (2007); with a third (to be titled The Days of Darkening) still in progress as of 2008. The first collection was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology by the British Fantasy Society in 2004, and both collections include stories by noted fantasy and hard-SF author John C. Wright.
[edit] External links
"The Night Land" on Wikisource.- E-text of The Night Land
- The Night Land, available at Project Gutenberg.
- Night Lands: by the editor of Eternal Love with artwork, and the text of the stories from that collection.
[edit] References
- Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers, 150.
