The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places: The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Volume 2 Paperback – 25 Jan. 2018

This strange novel really unnerved me - you never quite fathom what's going on or what is real or imagined. I highly recomment it.

I thought this was a great read, I'd never heard of the author before but had seen it included in a horror listmania on Amazon which I'd tried other books from and enjoyed.This edition is an Echo Library edition ([...]) and includes the authors introduction, the introduction and chapters themselves, a short poem called grief and endnotes. There is also a page about the echo library itself which are making sought after books available in a mass published format again, it is a slim volume and has a cheap and cheerful appearence, like a facsimile edition.The story itself is written in a great olde style, combining reflection and description brillantly and giving a clue to a time which is long vanished, including its norms and values (when menaced by strange creatures our protagonist doesnt seek to summon the authorities, he simply reaches for his amply stocked gun rack and gives fight, in a literal sense his home IS his castle).The main body of the book is a discovered and half destroyed journal recounting strange battle, unworldly or other dimensional travels and coming unstuck from time itself but the beginning and finish of the book are accounts of the discovery of the book itself in a strange ruin on a cliff above a big pit.Comparisons have been made with H. P. Lovecraft, which is perhaps fair, the style of a first person narrative contained in a discovered journal, of spooky unexplained placed bordering another unworldly place, scant explanation for fantastical experience or bewildering creatures are all present. However, the book is very much a story in a number of parts, he first in which the protagonist defends his home from invading pig creatures (which may be a figment of his imagination somehow) could be considered comparable to Matheson or Philip K. Dick, the incidence of the house and protagonist becoming unstuck from time itself are actually like HG Wells and along side the time machine are probably the best time travel narratives I've read.I'm not surprised that there are such mixed opinions give the different styles and story telling that are included in a single short volume but I felt there was a nice olde "take heart and have no fear" adventure styling all throughout. The ending was a little disappointing and I was ready for a much greater expansion of the tale into something else but I understood how it had to end as it did in order to fit with the discovery of journal and return to that point.

Until recently the name of William Hope Hodgson was completely unknown to me. It was only after seeing this and Hodgson's The Night Land top some lists of classic science fiction/fantasy stories that I became curious. If this guy was so good, then how come I'd never heard of him?Two friends holidaying in rural Ireland discover an old manuscript in the ruins of an eerily situated house. The manuscript turns out to be an account written by the former tenant describing a series of bizarre events that occurred there, as well as hinting ominously at the strange and terrible fate to which he ultimately fell victim.Apparently, H.P. Lovecraft was an admirer of Hodgson and, reading The House on the Borderland, it's easy to see why. All the tropes that we now associate with Lovecraft are here: the unreliable narrator who may be telling the truth but then again may just be completely insane; travel by astral projection to alien worlds; monstrous cosmic entities who appear to exist outside of space and time; an atmosphere of slowly creeping dread. But this is where it all started and it's testament to Hodgson's unique and daring vision that it still feels fresh and surprising more than a century after its original publication.At times it reads like a thrilling boys own adventure as the narrator does battle with a horde of swine-creatures laying siege to the house. Elsewhere, an expedition into a subterranean pit gives us clammy, claustrophobic horror. Most extraordinary of all is the mind-bending sequence in which the narrator is hurled billions of years into the future where he witnesses the death of the planet, travels to the centre of the universe, glimpses what might be Heaven and Hell, is reunited with his long dead love and (possibly) comes face to face with an utterly indifferent God.Given that so much modern fantasy seeks to ground itself in a kind of pseudo reality (normal teenage girls dealing with normal teenage problems who just happen to be dating vampires, werewolves, immortals etc.) it's refreshing to read an old school practitioner of the art who was happy to let his imagination run wild and didn't care how outrageous or perverse the final destination might turn out to be.I now plan to read everything Hodgson wrote and can only shake my head in wonder that he's not more widely known and appreciated.