Hodgson, whose writing career was regrettably brief-he died at age 40 in World War I-produced several books, many of them either collections of short stories or novels of the sort that are really separate tales strung together as episodes by a narrative device.
Chambers, Sheridan Le Fanu, Clive Barker, Shirley Jackson, and some others who may eventually land on these lists, is on the fuzzy boundary between the territory I patrol and what is usually called “horror fiction”, of which I say elsewhere on this site: “Horror fiction, to my mind, is qualitatively different from SF&F in that its first and dominating goal is-as the name suggests-to excite a feeling of horror in the reader.” The works by Hodgson and the others I have mentioned seem to me to have sufficient futher goals and successes to justify their inclusion on this site.) William Hope Hodgson’s books revolve about the eerie and the supernatural (or “the occult”) many of them also have the sea-of which he had much personal experience-as a focal point. My intent is no more than to give you a rough idea of what kinds of tales Hodgson tells, how those tales are usually told, and what makes them and Hodgson worthy in sum, to help you rank William Hope Hodgson (and the works by Hodgson listed here) on your personal literary “to do” list.Ī Few Words About William Hope Hodgson Generalities I don’t pretend that this discussion is a deep analysis. (In a very few cases, I have listed some books merely on the strength of my opinion of the author: all such books are clearly marked below, as throughout these lists, with a hash mark ( #) before the title so you know what’s what.) Just as with the author list itself, omission of a particular item may mean I didn’t think highly enough of the omitted item, or it may simply mean that I have not yet sufficient familiarity with it. This discussion and list does not necessarily include every book by Hodgson: it includes only those books that I both know and like. This is a brief discussion of William Hope Hodgson and, of course, of some speculative-fiction books by Hodgson.
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