Unreality, and the Borderlands
of Human Existance
Mr. Hodgson is perhaps second only to Algernon Blackwood in his serious
treatment of unreality – H. P. Lovecraft
Among those fiction writers who have elected to deal with the shadowlands
and borderlands of human existence, William Hope Hodgson surely merits a
place with the very few that inform their treatment of such themes with a sense
of authenticity. – Clark Ashton Smith
IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING that William Hope Hodgson is one of the great fantasists of the 20th century. The purpose of this introduction is not to sing the praises of William Hope Hodgson, nor to provide critical analysis of the success or failures of his fiction. Many have done so, far more eloquently, and insightfully than could be done in this limited forum. The purpose of this essay is to introduce the materials that make up this, the first volume of The Complete Fiction of William Hope Hodgson.
It was Hodgson’s nautical fiction that first captured his contemporary reader’s imaginations. His experiences of life at sea gave this nautical fiction a grounding in reality which, when combined with his weird and cosmic sensibilities, created balanced and remarkably effective narratives. Even his non-weird sea fiction benefited from this dynamic: His realistically detailed backgrounds served to make the overly dramatic flourishes of his adventure fiction seem less outlandish. His popular success encouraged editors to give him top billing in the popular fiction magazines of the day, and encouraged Hodgson to further develop his peculiar cosmic vision.
The opening novel in this book, The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” was Hodgson’s first published book, and is the cornerstone of his “Sargasso Sea” cycle of stories. This novel was first published in England by Chapman & Hall in 1907. A year earlier, Hodgson’s first Sargasso Sea story “From the Tideless Sea” was published in the April 1906 issue of America’s The Monthly Story. On Hodgson’s side of the Atlantic, the editors of The London Magazine made “From the Tideless Sea” their lead story in the May, 1907 issue. July of 1907 saw the publication of “The Mystery of the Derelict,” which was his second Sargasso Sea story. “More News From the Homebird,” (a sequel to
“From the Tideless Sea) was published in August of 1907. This initial flurry of Sargasso Sea stories almost certainly helped stir interest in The Boats of the “Glen Carrig”, which was released to unanimous praise in October of 1907.
Immediately following these publications, Hodgson would write some of his most well-known weird sea fiction, but he would not return to the Sargasso Sea until 1912, when “The Thing in the Weeds” was published. Just over a year later, “The Finding of the Graiken” was printed, and would be the last Sargasso Sea story published during Hodgson’s lifetime.
During the year’s following his death, Hodgson’s wife worked tirelessly to keep her husband’s work in print, and to find homes for his unpublished stories. In November of 1920, The Premier published “The Voice in the Dawn”, which was William Hope Hodgson’s final Sargasso Sea story. Arkham House reprinted this story in Deep Waters in 1947, under the title “The Call In the Dawn.”
One of William Hope Hodgson’s most commercially successful creations was the series of stories featuring the British smuggler, Captain Gault. These stories were written during 1914 and 1915, prior to his commission in England’s Royal Field Artillery. All but one were published between 1914 and 1917, in The London Magazine. In September of 1917, Eveleigh Nash published ten of these stories in the collection Captain Gault. “The Painted Lady” was probably omitted from this collection because it had been published in his earlier Eveleigh Nash collection The Luck of the Strong, (in a slightly different form) as “Captain Gumbolt Charity and the Painted Lady.” “Trading With the Enemy” appeared in the October 1917 issue of The London Magazine, which was too late to allow its inclusion in the Eveliegh Nash collection. “The Plans of the Reefing Bi-Plane” was a rejected Captain Gault story that was not published until 1996, in Terrors From the Sea. This volume brings together for the first time all thirteen Captain Gault stories.
Hodgson’s earlier commercial successes with his supernatural detective Carnaki may have encouraged him to create a serial adventure character: Captain Jat was the first such creation. Though not as commercially successful as Captain Gault, the two Captain Jat stories that were written are excellent combinations of humor and horror, and feature a classic Hodgson-stand-in character, Pibby Tawles… A cabin boy who always manages to end up better off than his Captain. This image of an apprentice getting his revenge upon, or tricking his abusive superiors is a re-occurring theme in his fiction that reflected Hodgson’s own love/hate relationship with life at sea. Both
Captain Jat stories were published in The Red Magazine in 1912, and reprinted in his collection, The Luck of the Strong.
The DCO Cargunka stories are another example of Hodgson’s search for a commercially viable series character. The Cargunka stories were published in The Red Magazine, in 1914 and 1915 – the same venue that had earlier published his Captain Jat stories. “The Bells of Laughing Sally,” and an abridgment of “The Adventures with the Claim Jumpers” were printed in Cargunka and Poems and Anecdotes (Harold and Paget, New York, 1914). This extremely odd publication contained abridgments of several Captain Gault stories and abridged versions of his well known sea fiction, as well as summaries of several of his stories that were not published until after his death(“The Sharks of the St. Elmo,” and “Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabachthani”, among others.). This odd collection of summaries and abridgments is mixed together with Hodgson’s verse in an almost stream consciousness style. Complete versions of both Cargunka stories were reprinted in The Luck of the Strong.
The stories in this first volume of Collected Fiction are the kinds of stories that helped Hodgson achieve commercial success. These stories were often published in the highest paying fiction markets of his day, and demonstrate his wide-ranging narrative talents: from the weird and fantastic, to the humorous, to straight adventure stories. Today’s readers of Hodgson may be more familiar with his stunningly original novels of cosmic vision, like The House on the Borderlands, or The Night Land, but it is the narratives of the sea that first captured the attention of the reading public. Most importantly, however, it was in that weed chocked Sargasso Sea where he first began to explore unreality, and the borderlands of human existence.
Jeremy Lassen
San Francisco,
Februrary, 2003