WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON'S NIGHT LANDS, Volume I, Eternal Love (Hardcover)

~ Andy W. Robertson (Editor), Nigel Atkinson (Contributor)

Editorial Reviews

Review

.. superbly written dying-earth fantasy of a very high order -- NICK GEVERS in LOCUS Jan 2004

... "Eternal Love" is a collection which will speak to anyone who has ever thrilled to "The Night Land" -- ANDY SAWYER in THE ALIEN ONLINE Jan 2004

Product Description

H P Lovecraft called THE NIGHT LAND "One of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written".

It is a very rich and strange book, set in a monster-haunted world where the remanents of humanity have retreated to a great arcology, the Last Redoubt. The sun has died, and not a star shines in the black heavens: the Days of Light are less than a legend.

Unfortunately, William Hope Hodgson wrote his masterpiece in a style that makes it almost impenetrable to the casual reader, and his book is almost unknown today. But we believe the vision and power of the original story deserves to be spread widely, and we have assembled this anthology of tales set in the Night Land for modern readers.

Notable contributors to this anthology include John C Wright (THE GOLDEN AGE) and James Stoddard (THE HIGH HOUSE)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Wildside Press (December 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592246788
• ISBN-13: 978-1592246786
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,274,757 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Conflicted Review, September 13, 2005

By	Joseph A. Bergeron (Binghamton, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If I were to rate this book solely on the basis of its stories, I would give it 4 or possibly 5 stars. The long John C. Wright story is probably the outstanding entry, though a few others, including editor Andy Robertson's concluding "The Eater", are also excellent. Part of what makes these two stories so effective is that they fully convey the dread of the nightmarish Night Land which surrounds the remaining members of Humanity many millions of years in the future. A few of the earlier stories in the book aren't so effective at this.

My complaints lie in the serious production problems which mar the book. It has THE worst copy editing I have ever seen in any professional publication. Almost every page is afflicted with multiple errors, usually missing words, duplicate words, inappropriate words, misplaced words or phrases, and other mistakes that don't show up in a pass through a spell checker. These hundreds of mistakes are very distracting. If I were one of the writers in this book I would be upset about the poor presentation of my stories. Robertson's own stories are less afflicted by these errors.

A lesser irritation is the book's page headers. The left hand ones give the title of the book, and the right hand ones identify the editor, on every single page. In every other anthology on my shelf, these headers are used to identity the title and often the author of the story I'm reading. I shouldn't have to refer to the contents to remember the title and author of whatever I'm reading.

I wish I could give this book the full praise the stories deserve. I am told that any future volumes in this series will be professionally copy edited.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a Terrific Collection, March 23, 2004

By A Customer

Do you like far future stories? Do you like Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance's time of the long shadows? Do you thrill to Smith's Zothique? Well then you've probably tried Hodgson's Nightland.
I suspect many who tried to read Hodgson's masterpiece have had the same reaction I did, "great idea, horrible execution". I never made it through the original and always wished someone would have taken his idea and cleaned up the archiac prose. Well my wish was granted! This is a spectacular collection that only makes me want to give Hodgson another go. After finishing the Robertson and Wright stories I promptly ordered everything I could find in print. John C. Wright also has a particularly moving paen to Hodgson directed to blockheads like myself who dismissed Nightland because of stylistics.

(If there are any John C. Wright fans out there, his contribution in the form of a novellete is breathtaking)

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wright story outstanding, September 4, 2004

By	J. Abbott "sci fi reader" (near Ithaca NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The story "Awake in the Night" by John C. Wright (alluded to in the above review) was included in the 2003 Year's Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois. It was probably my favorite piece in this 600+ page anthology. The world described in the "Night Lands" ouerve is fascinating. Based on this one work I was eager to read more and to seek out this particular book.