The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson is not the kind of book you can recommend people rush out and buy. It is legendary for being difficult to read, and many consider it boring and tedious. However, The Night Land is one of those cult classics that have inspired a selective group of writers and readers. I had no trouble listening to an unabridged audiobook edition of the book that was just over eighteen hours long. I think hearing it rather than reading let me appreciate the archaic style Hodgson developed for telling his story. The Night Land is a tale told by an unnamed narrator who lived millions of years in the future on an Earth in the perpetual night after the sun dies. It’s all narrative, with no dialog.

Many scholars consider The Night Land the main inspiration for the Dying Earth subgenre of science fiction. One fascinating trait about science fictional themes and subgenres is the feeling from reading older works is that later writers think, “That’s cool! But I can do better.” I believe people still read The Night Land because it inspires new visions of the end of time. I can only recommend this book to readers who delight in reading obscure works. The Night Land is an impressive novel of the fantastic and William Hope Hodgson is quite ambitious in his literary effort. I think Joseph Campbell would have admired Hodgson’s novel since it feels like ancient mythology. Scholars of science fiction admire The Night Land because of its influence on the Dying Earth subgenre, and many science-fiction, fantasy, and horror writers cite it as inspiration for their strange stories.

Wikipedia has an excellent overview of the Dying Earth subgenre which I highly recommend reading. However, they only go back to the early 19th-century for the first influencers of the genre. I would say The Book of Revelations is an obvious precursor, and I’m sure any culture in prehistory that could imagine Earth having a beginning could also have imagined its end. Hodgson’s language reminds me of the Bible or The Epic of Gilgamesh. Many readers can’t get past this pseudo-ancient phrasing but I believe its essential to the story. Hodgson is telling us about people in the far future and they can’t sound like us or even make cultural references that we can easily identify. One way to pull this off is to make the narrative feel like the oldest narratives we have today.

The reason why I’m reading The Night Land is that it inspired H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and others. The Night Land is a significant novel from what some writers are now calling The Radium Age of Science Fiction (1904-1933). And it’s from a very special year, 1912, which gave us The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Scarlet Plague by Jack London, Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey, making it an epic year for influential genre novels.

How I Came to Read The Night Land

Normally I’d never read a book like The Night Land. I don’t like fantasy novels, and many consider The Night Land an epic fantasy novel. After reading this story, I would call it science fiction, probably inspired by Wells’ The Time Machine. I first heard about it when reading reviews of the beautiful Ballantine Adult Fantasy series edited by Lin Carter. These books attracted me because of their stunning covers, but I assumed their content to be pure fantasy fiction. And I especially avoided The Night Land after reviewers said it was long, hard to read, and most people found it impenetrable.

Over the years I’ve read how H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, and Robert E. Howard were influenced by Hodgson. I never read their stories but found essays about their literary cross-pollination of ideas fascinating. Then a couple years ago I saw the documentary Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams and became even more intrigued. It’s available to rent or buy at Amazon, Vimeo, and other outlets. I’ve known Lovecraft and Howard fans, and there’s a whole mythology surrounding those writers, which is ironic since they were obsessed with myths and myth telling. In a way, I avoided their stories because I was afraid I’d get sucked into a black hole of their worldbuilding.

Then recently I read a series about The Night Land at the blog MarzAat – Literary Recon into the Wilderness of Books. MarzAat called the series “Walking the Night Land” and began with the post “The Trip Begins.”

It was MarzAat’s second essay, “Awake in the Night Land” that made me finally want to read The Night Land. It reviews the 2014 book, Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright, a highly intellectual sequel to the original novel composed of a series of stories that take place after events in The Night Land. Wright blends in ideas from other fans of The Night Land and his own. I’m really looking forward to this book, but sadly there is no audiobook edition, and that’s very important to me.

MarzAat’s series hooked me and I bought the audiobook.

Finding the Right Edition

Evidently, the full edition of The Night Land is 200,000 words. Many editions, including the Ballantine a two-volume edition, abridge the work. Editors keep trying to make The Night Land more accessible. When the book was first published Hodgson created a 20,000-word version called The Dream of X to protect his American copyright.

I don’t think I could eye read The Night Land and enjoy it because of its intentionally stilted style. However, I listened to the Dreamscape audiobook edition read by Drew Ariana and had no trouble with Hodgson’s artificial archaic prose. In fact, I enjoyed it. I always looked forward to getting back to the story. Listening changed it from a boring, tedious read into an audio page-turner. At least for me. Sometimes I also follow along with the Prometheus Classic ebook version I got at Amazon. There are many ebook versions, and I picked this 99 cent edition because of its beautiful typeface and layout.

The Radium Age Science Fiction Series edition from HiLoBooks has an introduction by Erik Davis. That intro is available to read online and I highly recommend reading it before buying whatever edition you choose. Davis said that HiLoBooks trimmed the novel by a third to make it more accessible to modern readers. He also talked about why Lin Carter trimmed the Adult Fantasy two-volume version. And many fans of the book recommend that new readers don’t read the first chapter set in the 17th-century. My version had that chapter and I thought it essential to the story. I will admit that The Night Land could have used a skillful editor, but I’m not sure if Hodgson didn’t intend for us to be overwhelmed by the repetitive details to make us feel the length of the epic journey and its trials and tribulations.

The story can be damaged by spoilers so I’m not sure how much to recommend that people read about The Night Land before trying it. I had to read a fair amount about the book before I got enthused enough to try. And I admit I mainly enjoyed the story as a subject of literary study. You can have a quick tryout with Project Gutenberg. Reading the Wikipedia entry will give a nice overview of some of the interesting aspects of the story with only some slight obvious spoilers.

There are websites devoted to the book and to the author. Plus, once you start looking you can find endless articles about Hodgson’s influence. Here’s an excellent essay by Dungeons & Dragons fans. William Hope Hodgson is very famous to a very few, which is quite cool.

There is also a free audiobook edition you can try. The Dreamscape audiobook edition I listened to is available at Audible.com and Scribd.com. There are many free ebook editions around the web.

I’m glad I read The Night Land. It’s given me a sense of scholarly accomplishment. I’ve now read several books from the Radium Age of Science Fiction and it been very illuminating to the history of the genre. And I can honestly say I enjoyed this story. It does worry me that I’m now drawn to try reading H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and Jack Vance. MarzAat is still reviewing books and stories related to The Night Land weeks after his review of The Night Land. I’m not sure he’s going to find a place to stop.

James Wallace Harris, 12/25/19