The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson (1908)
Mar 4, 2022 17:33:00 GMT -6
terje, flightcommander, and 3 more like this
Post by krusader74 on Mar 4, 2022 17:33:00 GMT -6
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson (1908)
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we can see the DNA of H. P. Lovecraft's entire work prefigured in William Hope Hodgson's 1908 novel, The House on the Borderland.
Here is H. P Lovecraft's own summary of the novel, excerpted from his 1927 essay, Supernatural Horror In Literature:
The book is out of copyright, so you can read it free on Project Gutenberg.
There is a great unabridged audiobook version of the book narrated by Ian Gordon on YouTube.
There is a solitaire board game based on the book. I purchased the print-and-play version of the game for $5. The 8-page game rules provide a great outline and summary of the major events in the book. The included map and counters could be put to alternative uses like a D&D skirmish or CoC adventure.
You can watch a tutorial and actual gameplay on YouTube.
There is a Vertigo comic book adaptation with amazing artwork by Richard Corben and an introduction by Alan Moore.
Some of the book's highlights for me include:
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we can see the DNA of H. P. Lovecraft's entire work prefigured in William Hope Hodgson's 1908 novel, The House on the Borderland.
Here is H. P Lovecraft's own summary of the novel, excerpted from his 1927 essay, Supernatural Horror In Literature:
The House on the Borderland (1908) -- perhaps the greatest of all Mr. Hodgson's works -- tells of a lonely and evilly regarded house in Ireland which forms a focus for hideous otherworld forces and sustains a siege by blasphemous hybrid anomalies from a hidden abyss below. The wanderings of the Narrator's spirit through limitless light-years of cosmic space and Kalpas of eternity, and its witnessing of the solar system's final destruction, constitute something almost unique in standard literature. And everywhere there is manifest the author's power to suggest vague, ambushed horrors in natural scenery. But for a few touches of commonplace sentimentality this book would be a classic of the first water.
The book is out of copyright, so you can read it free on Project Gutenberg.
There is a great unabridged audiobook version of the book narrated by Ian Gordon on YouTube.
There is a solitaire board game based on the book. I purchased the print-and-play version of the game for $5. The 8-page game rules provide a great outline and summary of the major events in the book. The included map and counters could be put to alternative uses like a D&D skirmish or CoC adventure.
You can watch a tutorial and actual gameplay on YouTube.
There is a Vertigo comic book adaptation with amazing artwork by Richard Corben and an introduction by Alan Moore.
Some of the book's highlights for me include:
- Cosmic horror.
- The "Sea of Sleep," comparable to HPL's Dreamlands.
- Time-travel and interdimensional travel, as in HPL's DWH.
- A subterranean underworld that connects the house's cellar to the "Pit" outside the house, filled with unimaginable horrors.
- "Swine-Things," reminiscent of D&D's pig faced orcs and the pig snouted hobgoblins on Jim Roslof's cover art for B2: The Keep on the Borderlands. Zenopus discusses the connection between Hodgson's HotB to Gygax's KotB in this thread.
- The "Luminous Speck," an otherworldly fungus that infects and corrupts the characters. The Color Out of Space and other weird tales by HPL use a similar concept.