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The Night Land is a novel by William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1912. HP Lovecraft described it in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature as "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written"
When it was written, the nature of the energy source that powers stars was not known: Lord Kelvin had published calculations based on the hypothesis that the energy came from the gravitational collapse of the gas cloud that had formed the sun, and found that this mechanism only gave the Sun a lifetime of a few tens of million of years. Starting from this premise, Hodgson wrote a novel describing a time, millions of years in the future when the Sun had gone dark.
The beginning of the book establishes the framework. where a 17th century gentlemen, mourning the death of his beloved, is given a vision of a far-distant future where their souls will be re-united, and sees the world of that time through the eyes of a future incarnation. The language and style used is that of the 17th century, and has caused many would-be readers to give up within the first few chapters. Once into the book however, the framing is more or less forgotten, and one of the strangest visions ever published in science fiction or fantasy is presented. The Sun has gone out: the Earth is lit only by the glow of residual vulcanism.. The last few millions of the Human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark. These are held back by a Circle of energy powered from the Earth's internal energy. For millennia, vast living shapes -- the Watchers -- have waited in the darkness near the pyramid: it is thought they are waiting for the inevitable time when the Circle's power finally weakens and dies. Other living things have been seen in the darkness beyond, some of unknown origins, and others that may once have been human.
To leave the protection of the Circle means almost certain death, or worse, but as the story commences, the narrator establishes mind contact with an inhabitant of another, forgotten, Redoubt, and sets off into the darkness to find her...
Night Land Fiction
Greg Bear's short story, The Way of All Ghosts, dedicated to William Hope Hodgson, is set in the Way, the artificial space-time structure featured in several of Bear's novels, beginning with Eon. A recurring character from these novels, Ser Olmy, is given a mission to investigate an experiment which had gone horribly wrong. The experimenters had attempted to open a gate into a universe of pure order, and the survivors find themselves trapped in a region of the Way that has transformed to a chaotic state resembling the Night Land.
There appears to have been a resurgence of interest in TNL in recent years, and a book of stories set in the world of the Night Land has been published, William Hope Hodgson's Night Lands: Eternal Love (2003)
External Links
- etext of The Night Land (http://eserver.org/fiction/nightland/contents.html)
- Night Lands (http://home.clara.net/andywrobertson/nightmap.html): by the editor of Eternal Love with artwork, and the text of the stories from that collection.
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