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Reader and Collector, v. 3, issue 3, June 1944

Page 11

11.
WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON
WRITER OF SUPERNATURAL HORROR
by
Fritz Leiber, Jr.

Creator of those loveable rogues Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser whose adventures with wizards and sorcerers in the lands of black magic and necromancy make a welcome addition to the bibliography of the weird tale. Contributor to numerous magazines devoted to fantasy. A recent motion picture, Weird Woman, was adapted from one of his stories.

William Hope Hodgson achieved his greatest success in a literary form which most masters of supernatural horror have avoided because of its exceptional difficulty----the weird story of book length. He did this without recourse to the stereotyped plot-elements of the Gothic novel (except for the love story which mars rather than embellishes "The Night Land") or to the adventure or detective settings that modern authors have used to provide sufficient action to space out an eerie concept over some 75,000 words.

Undoubtedly the chief reason for his success in this field is the extreme, even naive, seriousness with which he went to work. He never succumbed to, perhaps never felt, the temptation to add factious or whimsical touches in order to assure adult readers that he "did not really believe this stuff." Nor did he, for similar reasons, provide alternate scientific explanations or sophisticated psychological analyses of the spectral events he narrated. His novels are presented in the guise of actual documents, "found by so-and-so" or "as told to "so-and-so", and are written, at a white heat of inspiration, in the directest possible way. Note, for example, the abrupt opening of "The Boats of the Glen Carrig"--"Now we had been five days in the boats, and in all this time made no discovery of land."---or of "The Ghost Pirates"---"He began without any circumlocution. 'I joined the Mortzestus in 'Frisco.'" This outstanding ability of Hodgson, to plunge into a dream world and stay there for a book-length sojourne, fits with his seriousness and lends to his tales a straightforward, desperate convincingness. He is never apologetic, never inclined to provide cushioning explanations, no matter how bizarre the concepts he introduced. (Such as those magnificent black landscapes looking with mountain-beast-idols---the "Watchers" of "The Night Land" and "The House on the Borderland." It would be interesting to know the imaginative antecedents of those landscapes---perhaps an early interest in Egyptian and Babylonian, or Mayan, or Indian, architecture.

Hodgson shows as much freedom from traditional patterns and editorial demands in his choice of subject-matter as in his plot-structure. He wrote before science-fiction had become a separate and widely-explored field, and, for example, did not hesitate to introduce into "The House on the Borderland" that chilling vision of Earth's future, made possible by time-acceleration, which anticipates the impressive vistas of Olaf Stapledon. To achieve the effects he desired, he combined supernatural terror, mystical speculations, and science-fiction, in a way peculiarly his own.

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11. WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON WRITER OF SUPERNATURAL HORROR by Fritz Leiber, Jr. Creator of those loveable rogues Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser whose adventures with wizards and sorcerers in the lands of black magic and necromancy make a welcome addition to the bibliography of the weird tale. Contributor to numerous magazines devoted to fantasy. A recent motion picture, Weird Woman, was adapted from one of his stories. William Hope Hodgson achieved his greatest success in a literary form which most masters of supernatural horror have avoided because of its exceptional difficulty----the weird story of book length. He did this without recourse to the stereotyped plot-elements of the Gothic novel (except for the love story which mars rather than embellishes "The Night Land") or to the adventure or detective settings that modern authors have used to provide sufficient action to space out an eerie concept over some 75,000 words. Undoubtedly the chief reason for his success in this field is the extreme, even naive, seriousness with which he went to work. He never succumbed to, perhaps never felt, the temptation to add factious or whimsical touches in order to assure adult readers that he "did not really believe this stuff." Nor did he, for similar reasons, provide alternate scientific explanations or sophisticated psychological analyses of the spectral events he narrated. His novels are presented in the guise of actual documents, "found by so-and-so" or "as told to "so-and-so", and are written, at a white heat of inspiration, in the directest possible way. Note, for example, the abrupt opening of "The Boats of the Glen Carrig"--"Now we had been five days in the boats, and in all this time made no discovery of land."---or of "The Ghost Pirates"---"He began without any circumlocution. 'I joined the Mortzestus in 'Frisco.'" This outstanding ability of Hodgson, to plunge into a dream world and stay there for a book-length sojourne, fits with his seriousness and lends to his tales a straightforward, desperate convincingness. He is never apologetic, never inclined to provide cushioning explanations, no matter how bizarre the concepts he introduced. (Such as those magnificent black landscapes looking with mountain-beast-idols---the "Watchers" of "The Night Land" and "The House on the Borderland." It would be interesting to know the imaginative antecedents of those landscapes---perhaps an early interest in Egyptian and Babylonian, or Mayan, or Indian, architecture. Hodgson shows as much freedom from traditional patterns and editorial demands in his choice of subject-matter as in his plot-structure. He wrote before science-fiction had become a separate and widely-explored field, and, for example, did not hesitate to introduce into "The House on the Borderland" that chilling vision of Earth's future, made possible by time-acceleration, which anticipates the impressive vistas of Olaf Stapledon. To achieve the effects he desired, he combined supernatural terror, mystical speculations, and science-fiction, in a way peculiarly his own.