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Essays

Criticism and apology for William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land and other weird fiction.

By H.P. Lovecraft

portrait of H.P. Lovecraft

Excerpted from various sources by Andrea Bonazzi, Adam Joffrain, and Sam Gafford.

Past and Future in H.G. Wells and W.H. Hodgson

By Andy Sawyer

portrain of H.G. Wells

If The House on the Borderland has forward-looking science fictional elements similar to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, it also looks backward to the Gothic. A response to Andy Robertson's "A Sequel to THE TIME MACHINE? The Science-Fictional Underpinnings of THE NIGHT LAND".

An Apology for the Romance of Femininity within THE NIGHT LAND

By John C. Wright

A woman depicted in blue and white.

[The Night Land] is not without its flaws. However, the treatment of the theme of romance, the handling of the female main character, has been criticized, in the opinion of the present writer, with undue severity.

By Michael Caton

beaten brass rings and a wrought iron spike spiralling down into the center of an orange vortex.

The horror these authors convey at the extinction of reason is at the core of dying Earth prose, more important I think than the used-up Earth or the cooling Sun, and it's this that strikes a chord of unease in many readers, children of the Enlightenment as we are.

An Assortment of Ideas

By Don Muchow

NASA satellite view of Earth's geological features

A combination of known planetary geology, climatology, evolution, etc. Conjectures range about 20-50 million years into the future.

By Zathras

A blonde woman trying to warm herself at a firepit.

Some ways the Night Land's ecosystems — physical and psychic — might work.

By Sandy Petersen

cover of the Call of Cthulhu gamebook

Thoughts by the well-known designer of Call of Cthulhu.

Andy Robertson's Night Land Essays

The late Andy Robertson wrote these.  The first three remain the best critical introduction to The Night Land.

The Science of the Night: Kate Coady's Essays

A series of essays by Kate Coady propounding the science, and occasionally the philosophy, behind the science-fictional parts of William Hope Hodgson's speculative fiction.

Nigel Brown's Night Land Essays

Among other things, Nigel Brown explains why he disagrees with some common assessments of The Night Land.