Sargasso #2 Read online

  *

  “The channel is secure,” said Fintrar. “You may speak.”

  “You were correct, sir. The crew of the Lady Bug was compromised. Additionally the crew of the Cicada. I had to take extreme action.”

  “All dead?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I see. What was the nature of the compromise?”

  “A fungal infection, a mind-altering parasite.” Briefly Tazim outlined what little she knew.

  “So there’s a danger that you’re infected?”

  “That possibility can’t be discounted, sir. Although it may be that physical contact with the mother fungus is needed for infection.”

  “You will remain in the valley for six months under quarantine condition. Then we will examine you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I will destroy the fungus fields in the Five Cities. I will investigate this mother fungus. This matter is not to be discussed, Hari. As far as the public are concerned, the crew of the Lady Bug and the Cicada died as heroes.”

  “In my opinion, that interpretation is valid, sir.”

  “And they didn’t suspect you?”

  “No, your plan of making me reluctant to board the Lady Bug was an effective ruse.”

  Fintrar smiled. “The reluctant spy. You must have played your part well.”

  “What made you suspect them, sir? Close to the Five Cities they appeared normal. It was only when they approached the mother fungus that their behavior changed.”

  “I suspect everyone, Hari. That is the burden of war.” He sighed. “But you have done well. A new driver of the Cicada will be needed. There will be a position for you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have done well, Hari. You have done your duty.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Tazim signed off. She opened the turret hatch and looked out into the land. The valley was a hard place, hostile to human life. Any home they found here would be hard fought.

  “I have done my duty,” she said quietly, the words snatched by the relentless wind. She felt stripped, under the red light of the ascomycotan sky. Duty had diminished her. And the land had changed her. She lifted her face to the touch of the eventide wind. She had done her duty, a solider alone, low under the red ascomycotan sky.

  So be it.

  Come, Dream of the Ocean

  By Phillip A. Ellis

  Come, my beloved,

  and dream of the ocean

  whose gardens of coral

  are ever adored.

  Fishes of colours

  shall swim midst the corals,

  as you, my beloved,

  are ever adored.

  Ocean Rain

  By Phillip A. Ellis

  The hiss of water striking water,

  the drumming of its fingers as against silk

  taut and tightened, is drowned by the waves.

  Down on the ocean, ocean rain turns

  at least two of the elements to grey, clouds

  above air, the air, and waves below.

  Perhaps, before it had started, when

  everything was grey alone, a child had turned

  towards the mist, said, “Here comes the rain.”

  It does not matter which is colder,

  rain or ocean, water from above, water

  below, that striking, or that that’s struck.

  GALLERY

  Sebastian Cabrol

  Sebastian Cabrol

  Chris Farman

  Chris Farman

  Alex WeiB

  Herve Scott Flament

  Herve Scott Flament

  The Devil Mists, What Do They Hide?

  Charles Lovecraft

  (Remembering William Hope’s ocean tales)

  The sea mists round the cape strange devils keep

  And minister a doom unwary borne

  To freighted hopes of man, a chaos torn,

  Unleashed, unhinged, that even when in sleep

  In eve the tides their urgent unctions roar

  And seaweed monsters rise in stealthy might,

  Assail pale craft and drag them down in fright

  Too real, not near imagination’s shore.

  But devil mists, what do they hide from us?

  The weird Sargassos and their plight the years

  Cannot forget, nor rivulets of sand tears

  Their blasting memory take ageless ruse,

  The rising-slumping of the face of seas,

  Turret cliff crowned, and slung with charnel breeze.

  Contemporary Views:

  Pieces on William Hope Hodgson

  from the Idler and the Bookman

  Phillip A. Ellis

  There are benefits to having access to original appearances of material both by and about William Hope Hodgson. One of these benefits is that it helps shed light on both his times and the reception of his writing by others. Some of his readers might, like myself, be happy had he written and published more poetry. Others might be happy had he written more novels, or more shorter weird fiction, or whatever. We cannot begin to understand why Hodgson chose to write what he wrote until we begin to see how his contemporaries read and responded to him. This brings me to the following two enclosed items.

  I have access to a number of databases that contain material both by and about Hodgson; one of these indexes and presents items from a number of British magazines up until 1930. As a result of a recent search, I came across two items not in Sam Gafford’s online bibliography; I have transcribed and discussed them below. What they reveal to me is that there is a potential for more finds of critical and other articles than we may already know of (I have yet to see if these are indexed in the forthcoming bibliography). They also reveal to me something of his readers’ responses to his work, and of the circumstances in which it first appeared, from which it was soon to fade to obscurity.

  First, I present the two items, one from the Idler (which also published a number of his Carnacki stories), and one from the Bookman; of the two, the latter was posthumous, but it addresses the critical reception of his poetry, one of the aspects of Hodgson studies that I am interested in.

  The first item comes from Robert Barr’s column, “The Idler’s Club,” in the Idler. This particular item has the subtitle “Ghosts, and That Sort of Thing.” Barr (321–22) discusses The Ghost Pirates in the last section of this column, under the further subheading “A Creepy Ghost Book.” It is as follows:

  I happened the other day upon a recently-published book which seems to have gained certain favourable notices. It is written by William Hope Hodgson, and issued by Stanley Paul and Co. My attention was drawn to the book because it possesses a frontispiece by that greatest of the world’s weird artists, Sidney H. Sime. I know of no other artist so capable of illustrating a creepy ghost story as Sime, and if this book should ever become “popular,” I hope the publisher will be enterprising enough to issue an edition de luxe with pictures galore by Sime. Such a volume would be a unique possession.

  “The Ghost Pirates” is its title, and I see by the preface that this book is the last of three, all of which, I take it, deal with the supernatural. I must confess that I have not yet seen the first two books, which are called respectively “The Boats of Glen Carrig,” and “The House on the Borderland.” I intend to read these two, and then, perhaps, I shall be sufficiently equipped to express an opinion upon the last one, for although I have read it from beginning to end, I admit I don’t know what to say about it.

  It is a rather ignorant sailor who tells the story, so the somewhat commonplace diction with which it begins should not be held against the author. This sailor joins a ship at San Francisco and sails away. Gradually you gain the impression that there is something indefinably wrong with the ship; tantalising shadows flit about, and one is exasperated that nothing tangible happens. I began to come to the conclusion that this was a most commonplace book; the sailors appeared to be an uninteresting lot; also it seems unnecessarily profane
here and there, but I am told that sailors at sea are not very choice with their language.

  By-and-bye, however, I was compelled to admit that the characters were pretty well differentiated; the second mate particularly began to stand out, although his name was never mentioned, so far as I can remember.

  Trouble begins after a fortnight out, and it happens during the watch between eight and twelve at night:—

  “It was nothing less than the form of a man stepping inboard over the starboard rail, a little abaft the main rigging. I stood up, and caught at the handrail, and stared.

  “The thing, whatever it was, had disappeared into the shadows at the lee side of the deck.”

  I will not attempt to tell the story, but these slimy, Sime-y things, sometimes visible to one and not to the rest, began to permeate the ship, and get into the rigging, with the result that death in various forms picked off one member after another of the crew. Just imagine a dark night, and the upper rigging of a ship cluttered with mucilaginous beings, evolved out of the fearsome inner consciousness of Sidney H. Sime: objects that editors shudder at, and dare not print, and you begin to have some idea of the state of things on board the ship that left ’Frisco.

  The book repelled me continually, yet I continued reading it, and at night, when I went to sleep, I experienced the worst nightmare I have had since I was a boy. These creatures of cold glue stuck to me, and I could not shake them off. I think “The Ghost Pirates” is a horrible book, and I don’t know whether to recommend it to the gentle reader or not; neither can I make up my mind whether or not it is a notable piece of work. I hope to come to a conclusion when I have read the other two volumes.

  The second item is part of a portmandeau review by Francis Bickley in the Bookman. Under the title “Magic, Symbol and Philosophy,” it includes a single paragraph on The Voice of the Ocean; the relevant passage (96) reads:

  With Mr. Hope Hodgson we are in another world, the serious Victorian world of philosophical problems stated in verse. He reminds one of Tennyson and John Davidson. In “The Voice of the Ocean” the sea holds converse, with various souls in trouble, and has much to say on the large questions of God, life and death. The poem does not escape banality, and once or twice comes perilously near the ludicrous, but it has dignity and an intention which merits respect.

  It may well be that these reviews do not substantially add to our knowledge of the reception of William Hope Hodgson’s work. The piece on The Ghost Pirates reinforces our knowledge that he was known for his weird fiction, and the piece on The Voice of the Ocean reinforces later perceptions of the style and nature of Hodgson’s poetry. In these senses they are not revelatory.

  In another sense, they do demonstrate aspects of his reception that add to our knowledge. Take the review of The Ghost Pirates. One of the telling words is “horrible,” suggesting that the book is one of horrors, and that it is also “horrible” (to a degree) in the later sense of the word. This is an ambiguity that reminds us not only that our language changes in meaning, but that these changes need to be accounted for when discussing Hodgson’s critical reception. It is important to remember that not only was Hodgson firmly rooted in the time he was writing in, but so were his readers and his critics. It also reminds us of the importance for using reader-response theory when discussing his works; it might well change how we see the reception of The Night Land, particularly when it comes to discussing both its language and its style.

  There is a further point that I wish to make about this particular review. The last paragraph discusses the creation of “the worst nightmare [the reviewer has] had since [he] was a boy.” This brings me to consider the way we speak of weird fiction and of horror fiction in particular. The trope of a work causing sleeplessness or nightmares is a familiar one from reviews of this genre; it is very much a cliché of the field. Though this example is by no means unique, it does demonstrate that the critical reception of Hodgson’s work was mediated by prior familiarity with similarly weird (and other) writing. His initial readers did not come to him without knowing what he was doing; they came to him with prior expectations, prior examples against which to judge him, and this should color our understanding of how we view them and their responses.

  The review of The Voice of the Ocean, while it does not dramatically add to our reading of his poetry or affect the wider paucity of critical material about it, does illustrate something of the occasion in which the two volumes fell still-born from the press. Briefly, by the 1920s the development of Modernist poetics had produced to a point where postwar audiences were reacting against Victorianism in literature. This was a period when regard for the novels of Dickens was at an ebb; it would largely be the advocacy of Arthur Machen that would create the impetus to a reappraisal of his works.

  This is why the discussion of the poetry in terms of Victorianism is important. It is largely this disdain for what was by then an outmoded genre of poetry that, after the publication of The Calling of the Sea and The Voice of the Ocean, there was to be no new collection of Hodgson’s poetry until the late twentieth century (and even then the first item consisted largely of reprints of previously published material). The poetry of William Hope Hodgson had by that time become an anachronism, irrelevant. Since then there has been a renewal in interest in Victorian and Georgian poetry, and this is in part why I am so interested in discussing it. I am also interested in it because a significant proportion of it, approached according its own criteria, succeeds.

  So here is a hypothesis that I hope will stimulate some thought: the neglect of William Hope Hodgson as an author stems more from reactions to the pre-war world and its literature than from anything else. The Great War became a watershed, breaking off one period of thought, art, and life from the later, postwar world of the High Modernist and Postmodernist periods. Yet this break was never complete (the stream-of-consciousness technique of Virginia Woolf and others was a development of the Symbolist novel, for one thing), and there was a degree of continuity and canon-building during the postwar periods. We can see this in the resurrection of Dickens and the importance of Lovecraft for the resurrection of Hodgson’s literary fortunes. But this break accounts for the neglect of Hodgson as an author, and may also have a bearing on the ghettoization of popular and other genre writing, until the development of Postmodernism.

  I hope that quoting both reviews, and briefly discussing them, has helped illuminate how Hodgson’s writing was received by its contemporaries. Though I have concluded with a more general hypothesis regarding the origin of his critical neglect from the end of the Great War, I wish to present at least a couple of interesting responses to his work, responses that may be unknown to the majority of his readers and critics. Depending upon this piece’s reception, I may well essay in forthcoming numbers of Sargasso similar presentations and discussions of critical material by Hodgson’s contemporaries. In doing so, I will ideally have the chance to add to a critical mass of Hodgson studies, and I hope that I shall also be advancing our understanding of both his works and the ambience in which they were initially created, read and received.

  Works Cited

  Barr, Robert. “The Idler’s Club: Ghosts, and That Sort of Thing.” Idler 36 (December 1909): 317–22.

  Bickley, Francis. “Magic, Symbol and Philosophy.” Bookman 62 (May 1922): 95–96.

  Hodgson, William Hope. The Calling of the Sea. London: Selwyn & Blount, 1920.

  ———. The Ghost Pirates. London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1909.

  ———. The Voice of the Ocean. London: Selwyn & Blount, 1921.

  A Home on the Borderland:

  William Hope Hodgson and Borth

  Mark Valentine

  If William Hope Hodgson ever had a home, it was in Borth. His curate father moved around a great deal during Hodgson’s childhood, so that he had lived in seven different places by the time he was thirteen. This could hardly have been a very settling influence. Then Hodgson ran away to sea as a young man and was on board ships or at naval
training for around nine years, another peripatetic existence. He returned in 1900 to the family home in Blackburn, Lancashire, and it is true that Hodgson seems to have played a lively part in the affairs of the town. But the gym he tried to start there did not prosper, and the townsfolk did not take his side in his tussle with Houdini at the local theatre. It was probably not with any great regret that Hodgson abandoned the Lancashire town to go to live in Borth.

  This coastal settlement in mid-Wales, on Cardigan Bay, consists mostly of one long high street all along the shoreline, with a mixture of picturesque houses on either side of the street. Some are low and compact bungalows; others are narrow and squeezed-together shacks or cabins; and some are larger villas. The houses on the western side have their backs to the sea, with the gray pebbles of the shore immediately below them and wide views of the curving bay beyond. This bay has its own secrets, for it is the legendary site of the lost cantref (county) of Gwaelod, once a prosperous domain, but inundated by the sea when dykes and embankments failed. Thomas Love Peacock’s The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829) tells the story with humorous gusto and blames the drowning of the lands upon Seithenyn, “one of the immortal drunkards in the history of the world,” who let the sea defenses fall into ruin. Beyond the one main street lie marshes, so that Borth survives in its own borderland, on a brink between two natural forces, the encroaching sea and the peat marshes, which recently caught fire. The town was also assailed by severe storms early in 2014, and signs of hasty defenses—sandbags, barriers, shutters—are still much in evidence.