The House on the Borderland

by Hodgson, William Hope; VanderMeer, Ann

• ISBN13: 9780712354646
• ISBN10: 0712354646
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-09-17
• Publisher: British Library Publishing

Summary

I had been staying just within the shadow of the exit of the great rift. Now, without volition on my part, I drifted out of the semi-darkness and began to move slowly—toward the House.

Amidst the din of roaring water, in a chasm where a house once stood in an isolated corner of Ireland, a manuscript is discovered entitled The House on the Borderland. Penned by the enigmatic Recluse, it tells of a revelatory descent into the uncanny. For the Recluse seems to have discovered another land and in it another House; a jade-green double of his own in a realm rife with beasts and cosmic beings without name, encroaching on the bounds of reality itself.

With a new introduction by Ann VanderMeer exploring why Hodgson’s tale is the ‘perfect embodiment of a weird novel’, this edition of the 1908 cult classic still thrums with the visionary energy which influenced countless writers including H. P. Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett.

Author Biography

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON (1877–1918) was a novelist and short-story writer whose pioneering works such as The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” (1907) and The Night Land (1912) are now regarded as foundation texts in the history of weird fiction.

Ann VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several years' best anthologies. She lives in Tallahassee.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Introduction 7
A Note from the Publisher 13

The House on the Borderland

Introduction to the Manuscript 19

I The Finding of the Manuscript 23
II The Plain of Silence 36
III The House in the Arena 43
IV The Earth 50
V The Thing in the Pit 54
VI The Swine-Things 62
VII The Attack 73
VIII After the Attack 80
IX In the Cellars 86
X The Time of Waiting 91
XI The Searching of the Gardens 95
XII The Subterranean Pit 103
XIII The Trap in the Great Cellar 115
XIV The Sea of Sleep 120
XV The Noise in the Night 125
XVI The Awakening 137
XVII The Slowing Rotation 143
XVIII The Green Star 150
XIX The End of the Solar System 158
XX The Celestial Globes 163
XXI The Dark Sun 167
XXII The Dark Nebula 173
XXIII Pepper 179
XXIV The Footsteps in the Garden 181
XXV The Thing from the Arena 186
XXVI The Luminous Speck 196
XXVII Conclusion 199