Stories:

• Red Giant's Race
• An Exhalation of Butterflies
• A Mouse in the Walls of the Lesser Redoubt

You can divide the world up based on what people have read. So, let us try that exercise with "The Night Land". The vast majority of people have never heard of the book, or WHH. A few people bought the book up during the Golden Age of pulp reprints (about 25 years ago). Most of them were not too impressed by WHH's literary skills (many ran screaming from the room midway through the first chapter). A few hardy souls persisted, and were rewarded to discover one of the most colourful and inventive fictional worlds ever created.

There is no denying that WHH technically a poor writer, but his marvelous inventions - "The Great Redoubt", "The Thing that Nods", "The Road Where the Silent Ones Walk" to name a few - render such deficiencies (to an extent) if not irrelevant, then at least acceptable.

After seeing your call for fiction, I took my yellowing Sphere edition off the bookshelf and read the first few chapters. I was struck by the brief description of the Underground Country. Five minutes later I had the story worked out. Colour me stunned. That sort of inspiration is unlikely to visit again any time soon — it had never called before!