Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction - Anthologies, Anthologies (multiple authors), Fiction
ISBN: 9780883551578
Publisher: World Publishing
Published: 1968-01-15T23:15:12+00:00

The Blue Book Magazine

November, 1907

THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT

by William Hope Hodgson

IT MAY be said that a spark of interest in the works of a nearly forgotten British writer of science fiction and horror. William Hope Hodgson, was revived when The Voice in the Night was anthologized in They Walk Again, “an anthology of ghost stories,” edited by Colin de la Mare, son of Walter de la Mare (E. P. Dutton, 1931). The appearance of that story in company with such greats of the supernatural as Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, Edith Wharton, E. F. Benson, Oliver Onions, M. R. James, Walter de la Mare, J. Sheridan Ie Fanu, and W. W. Jacobs centered special attention upon it and led at least one reader to investigate the background of the author.

The Voice in the Night was certainly not a ghost story. Actually, it was science fiction. While its ultimate effect evoked horror, it was accomplished through a most sympathetic handling of the characters and their situation. The late Herman C. Koenig, an executive of an electrical testing laboratory in New York City and a collector and reader of science fiction, was intrigued by this story and began a campaign through the amateur press that eventually resulted in the republication of William Hope Hodgson’s four unique novels of science fiction and the supernatural under the title of The House on the Borderland and other Novels (Arkham House, 1946). The same publisher subsequently issued Carnacki, the Ghost Finder (1947), a collection of short stories concerning a detective who solves cases involving psychic phenomenon; and Deep Waters (1967), the cream of his shorter works of the fantastic.

During his lifetime, William Hope Hodgson was a pulpster. He contributed some of his finest short stories, including The Voice in the Night to America’s The Blue Book Magazine (November 1907); his fiction appeared in Adventure, Short Stories, All Around, People’s Favorite Magazine, and after his death, in Sea Stories and Argosy-all-story magazine. In England, he could be found in the equivalent of the American pulps, among them The Harmsworth Red Magazine and Grand Magazine.

There is no record that his novels were first serialized in magazines, but two of them, The Boats of the “Glen Carrig’“ (Chapman & Hall, 1907) and The House on the Borderland (Chapman & Hall, 1908), are such obvious cliff-hangers that it would not be surprising if they had been. He might quite understandably have been dismissed as a popular adventure story writer, with the emphasis in his work on tales of the sea, but this was not the case; his books received remarkable reviews from distinguished publications.

In speaking of his short fantastic stories of the sea, which include The Voice in the Night, the reviewer for The Bookman (England) said in November 1914: “They grip you, as Poe’s grim stories do, by their subtle artistry and sheer imaginative power. . . . We have read few stories equal. . .

Within the limited range of mounting and sustaining a peak of unrequited horror, William Hope Hodgson achieved heights of genius.

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