Previous SFF Author: P.C. Hodgell
(1877-1918)
William Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder. He died in World War I at the age of 40.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE BOOKS BY WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON.
The Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson
The conventional words of wisdom for any aspiring new author have long been “write what you know,” a bit of advice that English author William Hope Hodgson seemingly took to heart with his first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig. Before embarking on his writing career, Hodgson had spent eight years at sea, first as an apprentice for four years and then, after a two-year break, as a third mate for another long stretch.
Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | William Hope Hodgson | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
William Hope Hodgson‘s first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig (1907), is a tale of survival after a foundering at sea, replete with carnivorous trees, crab monsters, bipedal slugmen and giant octopi. In his now-classic second novel, The House on the Borderland, which was released the following year, Hodgson, remarkably, upped the ante, and the result is one of the first instances of “cosmic horror” in literature,
Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | William Hope Hodgson | Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Ghost Pirates by William Hope Hodgson
William Hope Hodgson‘s first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig (1907), is a story of survival after a disaster at sea, and of the monstrous plant and animal life-forms that the survivors encountered while trying to reach home. In his second book, the now-classic The House on the Borderland (1908), Hodgson described an old recluse’s battle against swine creatures from the bowels of the Earth, and the old man’s subsequent cosmic journey through both time and space.
Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | William Hope Hodgson | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson
William Hope Hodgson‘s epic novel The Night Land was chosen for inclusion in James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock‘s Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, and yet in this overview volume’s sister collection, Horror: 100 Best Books, Stephen Jones and Kim Newman surprisingly declare the novel to be “unreadable.” No less a critic than H.P.
Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | William Hope Hodgson | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Carnacki the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson
British author William Hope Hodgson‘s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder first saw the light of day in 1913. Consisting of six short stories, drawn from the pages of The Idler and The New Magazine, the collection was ultimately expanded to include nine stories, the last three being discovered after Hodgson’s early death at age 40 in April 1918. In this fascinating group of tales, we meet Thomas Carnacki,
Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | William Hope Hodgson | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Weird Tales: The Magazine that Never Dies edited by Marvin Kaye
Marvin Kaye’s Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies anthology from 1988 takes a slightly different tack than its earlier sister volume, Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors. Whereas the editors of that earlier collection chose to select one story from each year of the magazine’s celebrated 32-year run (1923-1954), Kaye has decided here to not just limit himself to the periodical’s classic era of 279 issues, but to also include tales from each of the four latter-day incarnations of “The Unique Magazine”
Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror edited by John Betancourt & Robert Weinberg
This is the seventh anthology that I have reviewed that has been drawn from the pages of Weird Tales, one of the most famous pulp magazines in publishing history. Each of the previous collections had employed its own modus operandi in presenting its gathered stories. Weird Tales (1964) and Worlds of Weird (1965) had been slim paperbacks featuring previously uncollected stories. The Best of Weird Tales: 1923 (1997) had spotlighted tales solely from WT’s very first year.
Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | Brian Lumley, C.L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, Eric Frank Russell, Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe, H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Kuttner, Manly Wade Wellman, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Nancy Springer, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, Ray Russell, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Robert Sheckley, Tanith Lee, William Hope Hodgson | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Previous SFF Author: P.C. Hodgell
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…
this sounds like a fun one