The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions

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The Dream of X and

Other Fantastic Visions

Being The Fifth Volume of

The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson

Edited by Douglas A. Anderson

Night Shade Books
 
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San Francisco
 
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2009

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This edition of
The Dream of X and Other Fantastic Visions

© 2009 by Night Shade Books

Cover and interior artwork © 2005 by Jason Van Hollander

Layout and design by Jeremy Lassen

Introduction
© 2009 by Ross E. Lockhart

All rights reserved.

First Edition

ISBN 978-1-892389-43-5

E-ISBN: 9781597803717

Night Shade Books

 
Please visit us on the web at

   
http://www.nightshadebooks.com

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That Delicious Shiver

“It is pointless, though irresistible, to speculate upon what heights of Fantasy Hodgson might have scaled had the war not intervened.”
—James Cawthorn & Michael Moorcock,
Fantasy: The 100 Best Books

“A ghost story that is worth anything must be really thrilling. It must give us that delicious shiver down the spine, and it must possess mystery. Added to these qualities, it must cling to reality by some sort of explanation, however fantastic the story be, to be truly effective.”
—William Hope Hodgson,

“The Writers of Ghost Stories” (an unfinished or lost essay)

T
his fifth and final volume of the collected fiction of William Hope Hodgson is best if not, perhaps, considered as a mere 9¼ by 6¼ by 1½ blue and silver brick to fill in space on a shelf; nor should it be considered the ragged leftovers of the first four courses. Instead, I’d argue that we’ve saved the best for last; this is dessert, a sweet sampling of Hodgson’s best—and strangest—work, a literary crème brûlée to savor and enjoy.

We begin this volume of Hodgson’s fantastic visions with the evocative and heart-wrenching parable “The Valley of Lost Children,” which originally appeared in
Cornhill
in February 1906. Sentimental, certainly, but “The Valley of Lost Children” does not shirk from the harsh realities of its day in its depiction of a fantastic realm beyond death. This is followed by the Swiftian conceits of “Date 1965: Modern Warfare,” which imagines the battles of the future to be fought by knife-wielding butchers, with the flesh of the fallen quite literally going to feed the victors. Originally appearing in the December 24, 1908 issue of
New Age
, it presents a wry and winking examination of the soldier’s lot in life.

“My House Shall Be Called the House of Prayer” (
Cornhill
, May 1911) and “Judge Barclay’s Wife,” (
London Magazine
, July 1912) might be excused as Hodgson’s most devout explorations of Christian mercy. But to do so would be to ignore his gift for dialogue, and the intricate way in which he strives to capture the patterns of his protagonists’ speech.

The gender-bending “The Getting Even of Tommy Dodd,” which was later published as “The Apprentices’ Mutiny” in
Sea Stories
, originally appeared in
The Red Magazine
, August 15, 1912. While this is a story that can be read for its entertainment value alone, the success that young Tommy Dodd finds in posing as his pretty “cousin,” Jenny (“By George, youngster, you make a pretty girl!”), begs any number of questions about the shipboard world that Hodgson, a sailor and bodybuilder, spent much of his life in and out of.

“Sea Horses” from
London Magazine
, March 1913, is another tale of a doomed child in an uncaring world, but imbued with the same sort of hope and fancy (even while moored to the harsh ties of reality) exhibited in “The Valley of Lost Children.”

The next batch of adventure yarns all appeared in
The Red Magazine
, a common venue for Hodgson’s stories, including the D.C.O. Cargunka and Captain Jat tales. “How the Honourable Billy Darrell Raised the Wind” appeared in
The Red Magazine
, March 15, 1913. “The Getting Even of ‘Parson’ Guyles” appeared in the November 1914 issue. “The Friendship of Monsieur Jeynois” originally appeared in
The Red Magazine,
August 1, 1915. “The Inn of the Black Crow” originally appeared in
The Red Magazine
, October 1, 1915. “What Happened in the Thunderbolt” originally appeared in
The Red Magazine
, January 15, 1916.
 
“How Sir Jerrold Treyn Dealt with the Dutch in Caunston Cove” originally appeared in
The Red Magazine
, May 1, 1916. “Jem Binney and the Safe at Lockwood Hall” originally appeared in
The Red Magazine
, October 16, 1916. “Diamond Cut Diamond with a Vengeance” originally appeared in
The Red Magazine,
January 1, 1918.

The explosive “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani” originally appeared in
Nash’s Illustrated Weekly,
September 20, 1919.

“The Room of Fear,” much like “The Valley of Lost Children” and “Sea Horses,” deals with a child’s fate, as a young mother and her plucky son confront the dull thunder of childhood fears which may, of course, be more substantial than either one imagine. Suspected to be an early story, “The Room of Fear” was unpublished during Hodgson’s lifetime. Another early and unpublished story is “The Promise,” a supernatural tale of a sibling’s love and the miraculous promise of resurrection.
   

The novel fragment “Captain Dang” imports its title character from “The Sharks of the St. Elmo,” which appears in volume three of this series, but seems otherwise unconnected to it. Still, with lines like “There’s poetry in canvas, laddie, when the wind gets into it,” “Captain Dang” shows that even Hodgson’s cast-offs hold an evocative power that ranks among fiction’s best.

“Captain Dan Danblasten,” Hodgson’s tale of a lusty pirate’s retirement and the strange will he leaves to a childhood sweetheart and her seven daughters, appeared in the May 1918 issue of
The Red Magazine,
published the same week as
The Times
ran Hodgson’s obituary (April 19, 1918 is believed to be the date Hodgson was killed by a German shell).

From there, we move on to Hodgson’s copyright versions, stripped-down abridgements of his best-known works, written to secure American copyright protections. Many of these have a “Cliffs Notes” feeling to them, particularly “The Ghost Pirates” and “Carnacki, the Ghost Finder.” The title story, “The Dream of X,” however, distills Hodgson’s epic novel,
The Night Land
, down to its barest essentials, losing none of its power or poetry in the process. It is likely that these copyright versions were never intended by Hodgson to be seen by a reading audience, but “The Dream of X,” perhaps best known due to the 1977 Donald M. Grant publication, with its breathtaking Stephen A. Fabian illustrations, stands as a testament to the shame that would have been. Also in this section are the stories “Senator Sandy Mac Ghee,” “The Last Word in Mysteries,” and “The Dumpley Acrostics.”

Next, we present a spattering of alternate versions, including “An Adventure of the Deep Waters,” “Captain Gunbolt Charity and the Painted Lady,” “The Storm,” and “The Crew of the Lancing.” We’ll leave it to the reader to determine what might have been. We close this volume with a pair of counterfeits, “The Raft,” and “R.M.S. ‘Empress of Australia.’”

In his introduction to the first volume of this series, Night Shade Books’ Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Lassen makes the assertion “it goes without saying that William Hope Hodgson was one of the great fantasists of the 20
^th
century.” Regardless, Night Shade spent the next four volumes proving that point. Now, as we arrive at the final volume of the series, we believe we have fulfilled our goal, that in presenting our definitive edition of the collected fiction of William Hope Hodgson, we have ensured that Hodgson will be considered by the next generation of scholars, editors, publishers, authors, and readers. Considered, not just against the works of literary peers, from H. G. Wells to Bram Stoker to Wilfred Owen, but against those writers whose own works benefit from and build upon Hodgson’s masterful imagination, from Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith to Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Greg Bear, and China Miéville.

Ross E. Lockhart

Petaluma, California

200
8

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Fantastic Visions

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The Valley of Lost Children

I

T
he two of them stood together
and watched the boy, and he, a brave little fellow near upon his fourth birthday, having no knowledge that he was watched, hammered a big tom-cat with right lusty strokes, scolding it the while for having killed a “mices.” Presently the cat made its escape, followed by the boy, whose chubby little legs twinkled in the sunlight, and whose tossed head of golden tangle was as a star of hope to the watchers. As he vanished among the nearer bushes the woman pulled at the man’s sleeve.

“Our b’y,” she said in a low voice.

“Aye, Sus’n, thet’s so,” he replied, and laid a great arm about her neck in a manner which was not displeasing to her.

They were neither of them young, and marriage had come late in life; for fortune had dealt hardly with the man, so that he had been unable to take her to wife in the earlier days. Yet she had waited, and at last a sufficiency had been attained, so that in the end they had come together in the calm happiness of middle life. Then had come the boy, and with his coming a touch of something like passionate joy had crept into their lives.

It is true that there was a mortgage upon the farm, and the interest had to be paid before Abra’m could touch his profits; but what of that! He was strong, uncommonly so, and then there was the boy. Later he would be old enough to lend a hand; though Abra’m had a secret hope that before that time he would have the mortgage cleared off and be free of all his profits.

For a while longer they stood together, and so, in a little, the boy came running back out of the bushes. It was evident that he must have had a tumble, for the knees of his wee knickers were stained with clay-marks. He ran up to them and held out his left hand, into which a thorn was sticking, yet he made no movement to ask for sympathy, for was he not a man?—ay, every inch of his little four-year body! His intense manliness will be the better understood when I explain that upon that day he had been “breeked,” and four years old in breeks has a mighty savour of manliness.