The Night Land

Two travelers find a diary in the ruins of a house in the west of Ireland, written by a recluse besieged by swine creatures from a pit and then swept to the death of the solar system. The cosmic horror novel H. P. Lovecraft praised above almost any other.

William Hope Hodgson

Shipwreck survivors drift in open boats past a land of weeping trees and into a weed-choked sea where something hunts them every night. Hodgson's first novel, told in the voice of an 18th-century sailor.

William Hope Hodgson

Jessop signs on to the Mortzestus and soon learns why the last crew deserted: shadowy figures climb out of the sea, and the ship seems caught between two worlds. A tense, relentless novel of horror at sea.

William Hope Hodgson

Hodgson cut The Night Land from 200,000 words to about 20,000 and framed it as fragments rescued from a fire, the story of a man who dreams himself into the far future. The quickest way into his dying-Earth vision.

William Hope Hodgson