Shameless self-promotion 1 of 4: Cthulhu

[Lomax]

William Hope Hodgson...

Moved by your championing of the man, I've just read a Hodgson collection, entitled The Ghost Pirates and Others. Twelve stories in all - mainly of a seafaring nature. One Carnacki story (The Searcher of the End House), which mixed supernatural and non-supernatural messily, with the latter part stretching credulity to breaking-point and beyond.

Overall rating C minus. Worth reading in an idle moment, but not really memorable. The Ghost Pirates itself was a mess structurally, and far from gripping. Of the other stories, The Sea Horses was moving, and The Shamraken Homeward-Bounder and The Voice in the Night were OK. Of the stories with no supernatural element, We Two and Bully Dunkan also had plot devices that were impossible to credit. And I loathed Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani.

I also went back to H P Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature. This is what he had to say about Hodgson -

"Of rather uneven stylistic quality, but vast occasional power in its suggestion of lurking worlds and beings behind the ordinary surface of life ... Mr Hodgson is perhaps second only to Algernon Blackwood in his serious treatment of unreality. Few can equal him in adumbrating the nearness of nameless forces and monstrous besieging entities through casual hints and insignificant details, or in conveying of the spectral and the abnormal in connection with regions or buildings."

Of The Boats of Glen Carrig he says, "The brooding menace of the earlier part of the book is impossible to surpass, though a letdown in the direction of ordinary romance and adventure occurs towards the end."

The House on the Borderland - "Perhaps the greatest of all Mr Hodgson's works ... Everywhere there is manifest the author's power to suggest vague, ambushed horrors in natural scenery. But for a few touches of commonplace sentimentality this book would be a classic of the first water."

The Ghost Pirates "At times reaches enviable peaks of power;" The Night Land "Is seriously marred by painful verboseness, repetitiousness, artificial and nauseously sickly romantic sentimentality..." and Carnacki the Ghost-Finder "In quality falls conspicuously below the level of the other books ... badly marred by an atmosphere of professional occultism."

So there you go. Nevertheless, thank-you for bringing Hodgson to my attention. It is always interesting to read works recommended by others.

[nachtjaeger]

My favorite Carnacki story is "The Whistling Room." In that one, he starts out trying to debunk the supposed haunting. "The Gateway of the Monster" is also a good one. I really like that Carnacki generally tries to debunk first, and only then accepts a paranormal explanation. I also like that he's not all-powerful; sometimes he gets his butt kicked by the spectral nasties. The Electric Pentacle is a cool idea; an artificial electromagnetic shield against the paranormal. And of course as soon as I read these (at a younger age) I wanted to get my hands on a copy of "The Sigsand manuscript" and learn the Saamaa ritual.

William Hope Hodgson...

Moved by your championing of the man, I've just read a Hodgson collection, entitled The Ghost Pirates and Others. Twelve stories in all - mainly of a seafaring nature. One Carnacki story (The Searcher of the End House), which mixed supernatural and non-supernatural messily, with the latter part stretching credulity to breaking-point and beyond.

Overall rating C minus. Worth reading in an idle moment, but not really memorable. The Ghost Pirates itself was a mess structurally, and far from gripping. Of the other stories, The Sea Horses was moving, and The Shamraken Homeward-Bounder and The Voice in the Night were OK. Of the stories with no supernatural element, We Two and Bully Dunkan also had plot devices that were impossible to credit. And I loathed Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani.

I also went back to H P Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature. This is what he had to say about Hodgson -

"Of rather uneven stylistic quality, but vast occasional power in its suggestion of lurking worlds and beings behind the ordinary surface of life ... Mr Hodgson is perhaps second only to Algernon Blackwood in his serious treatment of unreality. Few can equal him in adumbrating the nearness of nameless forces and monstrous besieging entities through casual hints and insignificant details, or in conveying of the spectral and the abnormal in connection with regions or buildings."

Of The Boats of Glen Carrig he says, "The brooding menace of the earlier part of the book is impossible to surpass, though a letdown in the direction of ordinary romance and adventure occurs towards the end."

The House on the Borderland - "Perhaps the greatest of all Mr Hodgson's works ... Everywhere there is manifest the author's power to suggest vague, ambushed horrors in natural scenery. But for a few touches of commonplace sentimentality this book would be a classic of the first water."

The Ghost Pirates "At times reaches enviable peaks of power;" The Night Land "Is seriously marred by painful verboseness, repetitiousness, artificial and nauseously sickly romantic sentimentality..." and Carnacki the Ghost-Finder "In quality falls conspicuously below the level of the other books ... badly marred by an atmosphere of professional occultism."

So there you go. Nevertheless, thank-you for bringing Hodgson to my attention. It is always interesting to read works recommended by others.

[Villein]

Is your editor Salome Jones any relation to William Jones by chance?

[Lomax]

Is your editor Salome Jones any relation to William Jones by chance?

Er, no idea. She comes from Minnesota or Michigan or Montana (one of the states that begin with M, anyway) but now lives in London - but I know nothing about her family.

Or William Jones, I'm afraid. I ran the name through Google and got a lot of hits - from the seventeenth century Welsh mathematician who championed the use of Pi as a mathematical symbol, to the first Archbishop of Cape Town. Oh, and one of the eleven VCs awarded after Rorke's Drift in 1879 went to Pte William Jones (who later joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, it seems).

Which William Jones did you have in mind?