The Night Land - William Hope Hodgson

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, intro by Ann VanderMeer / From the British Library's "Tales of the Weird" series / ISBN 9780712355759 / 511-page paperback

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Aeons in the future, Earth’s surface faces perpetual night after the failing of the Sun. Humanity is entrenched within the Last Redoubt, a colossal metal pyramid. Beyond the safety of its structure lurk countless unknowable threats.

William Hope Hodgson’s strange, visionary novel of humanity’s struggle for survival in the eternal darkness of the future was first published in 1912, and is widely acknowledged to be one of the foundation works of the ‘Dying Earth’ subgenre of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Written in a style composed of strange archaisms which fuel the weird sense of disorientation, this cult classic has won the admiration of writers from Brian Aldiss to C S Lewis, who wrote: ‘The Night Land gives, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before.’

William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was a key figure in British weird fiction, renowned for tales of horror and adventure at sea as well as his post-apocalyptic fantasy novel The Night Land. Following his death near Ypres during World War I, his stories continued to be published posthumously throughout the 20th century.