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Authors and Artists

Andy Robertson

The late Mr. Robertson founded this website in 2001. Aside from editing the site, he wrote stories developing the Night Land, and essays explicating it. Alas, he died in 2014.

Stories:

Poetry and Vignettes

Essays:

Lovecraftian Material

  • Domain Science Letters

Artwork

  • Strange Lights in the Night — not that he ever titled it. The page background that persistently appears outside the content area of this site.

One other writer told us of vast psychic predators which ate human souls. A link between Hodgson and Cordwainer Smith may seem silly, but it works surprisingly well.

"Eater" is my essay at diagramming the inner life of a Monstruwacan: and my first ever attempt at writing fiction.

The story also reflects to some extent my rejection of Hodgson's treatment of women. I wanted to write about a thoroughly honorable and brave woman, and a true daughter of the Redoubt.

"Out" was my attempt to address Hodgson's cosmic eroticism directly. Good or bad, it says everything I can about the subject. It reflects some of my own beliefs about love, and a little of my own life experience, much transformed. It also introduced Scyrr, who emerged of his own accord and insisted on becoming the centre of that story and much else.

"Kiss" and "Marks" are pendant to "Out". The first story is an account of the destruction of the Heresy of Scyrr, later much expanded by Brett in ANIMA. The second is an eyewitness account of the healing process that followed, from one of the common people. The other stories stand alone, and may be taken on their own terms. My own favorite is "Slope," which is on one level an account of the foredoomed attempt to colonize the Land of Seas and Volcanoes, but on a deeper level a meditation on how the journey across the Land s like human life, with its unremembered paradisaical beginning in the womb and its terrible end.

The other reason why I write about The Night Land is very simple. I had in very truth a beautiful wife, who died young. You may call her Lynette. I am an old man now but I still dream of her, and it is in her memory that I write these stories.