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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 3, September 1944
Page 45
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 45 the powers of evil have grown so potent, so aggressive, so so almost all-conquering that the survivors of the human race are gathered for self-defence into one enormous pyramid, building their city tier above tier within it, and on every hand all around this Last Redoubt stretches the Night Land, inhabited by primeval, material giants and loathsome monsters and sinister dreadful immaterial beings of the spirit world that have power over the souls of mortals. Here, in this place of refuge, that man of two hundred years ago is continually sending his eager thoughts out across the grim wastes of the Night Land in search of the woman he loved and lost; and a time comes when out of the vast and unknown darkness her thoughts answer him, and after some broken fashion they are able to communicate with each other. Suddenly this communication fails; he tries in vain to renew it; and fearful that she may have set out across that fiend-haunted dayless wilderness to find him, he takes all due precautions, arms and fits himself for his enterprise, quits the shelter of the Pyramid and begins to make his way in the direction whence he believes she may be coming. From this point onwards the story grows rapidly in power and interest. Whatever Mr. Hodgson lacks it is not imagination, and his description of that fearsome journey by trackless ways and through perils undreamt of before, and of the meeting of the two lovers, and the adventures, by turns grim, terrible, charmingly idyllic, through which they passed together give him scope for painting some of the most eerie, wildly horrible and pleasantly dainty pictures that have ever come from his pen. We shall not attempt to give any full outline of Mr. Hodgson's romance; it runs to nearly six hundred pages and is crowded with incident and alive with inner significance and undercurrents of meaning. You may read it as a cloudy and elusive allegory, if you have a liking for that form of literature, but in its allegorical aspect it is not simple enough, it needs too much explaining, and you will do better perhaps to read it simply as a daring imaginative love story, and as such you will find it a very original and sufficiently remarkable book. This, then, is indicative of the reception The Night Land met with on its publication. A brief glance at the literary scene of the time shows that in no sense could an imaginative story of the future be lauded on the basis of its theme alone; H. G. Wells had produced The Sleeper Awakes just before the turn of the century, and had, in fact, publishing it anew in a revised version but a year before (1911). Nor was Wells, of course, the sole exponent of the novel of the future---many works upon such a theme had already appeared before that master had set his hand to it. Still, reviewers still remembered his works, and stories of the future were frequently compared with The Sleeper Awakes, A Story of the Days to Come and The Time Machine, as well as Bellamy's Looking Backward and a few other lesser-known excursions into futurity. Again it is seen that Hodgson must have possessed something more than an active imagination to impress leading literary periodicals of his day. In 1913 Hodgson for the first time presented the book-reading public with a selection of his short stories. Carnacki the Ghost-Finder was its title, and it proved popular enough to be reprinted within a year. The author had laid
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 45 the powers of evil have grown so potent, so aggressive, so so almost all-conquering that the survivors of the human race are gathered for self-defence into one enormous pyramid, building their city tier above tier within it, and on every hand all around this Last Redoubt stretches the Night Land, inhabited by primeval, material giants and loathsome monsters and sinister dreadful immaterial beings of the spirit world that have power over the souls of mortals. Here, in this place of refuge, that man of two hundred years ago is continually sending his eager thoughts out across the grim wastes of the Night Land in search of the woman he loved and lost; and a time comes when out of the vast and unknown darkness her thoughts answer him, and after some broken fashion they are able to communicate with each other. Suddenly this communication fails; he tries in vain to renew it; and fearful that she may have set out across that fiend-haunted dayless wilderness to find him, he takes all due precautions, arms and fits himself for his enterprise, quits the shelter of the Pyramid and begins to make his way in the direction whence he believes she may be coming. From this point onwards the story grows rapidly in power and interest. Whatever Mr. Hodgson lacks it is not imagination, and his description of that fearsome journey by trackless ways and through perils undreamt of before, and of the meeting of the two lovers, and the adventures, by turns grim, terrible, charmingly idyllic, through which they passed together give him scope for painting some of the most eerie, wildly horrible and pleasantly dainty pictures that have ever come from his pen. We shall not attempt to give any full outline of Mr. Hodgson's romance; it runs to nearly six hundred pages and is crowded with incident and alive with inner significance and undercurrents of meaning. You may read it as a cloudy and elusive allegory, if you have a liking for that form of literature, but in its allegorical aspect it is not simple enough, it needs too much explaining, and you will do better perhaps to read it simply as a daring imaginative love story, and as such you will find it a very original and sufficiently remarkable book. This, then, is indicative of the reception The Night Land met with on its publication. A brief glance at the literary scene of the time shows that in no sense could an imaginative story of the future be lauded on the basis of its theme alone; H. G. Wells had produced The Sleeper Awakes just before the turn of the century, and had, in fact, publishing it anew in a revised version but a year before (1911). Nor was Wells, of course, the sole exponent of the novel of the future---many works upon such a theme had already appeared before that master had set his hand to it. Still, reviewers still remembered his works, and stories of the future were frequently compared with The Sleeper Awakes, A Story of the Days to Come and The Time Machine, as well as Bellamy's Looking Backward and a few other lesser-known excursions into futurity. Again it is seen that Hodgson must have possessed something more than an active imagination to impress leading literary periodicals of his day. In 1913 Hodgson for the first time presented the book-reading public with a selection of his short stories. Carnacki the Ghost-Finder was its title, and it proved popular enough to be reprinted within a year. The author had laid
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