The Night Land, Awake and Otherwise

Ever since reading the Golden Age trilogy several years ago, I've been a fan of John C. Wright's work. Insofar as he keeps his sometimes repellent politics out of it, his writing is visionary, unique, and compelling. The worlds he imagines can be stunningly deep and nuanced; what he lacks in character development, he more than makes up with idea development, and that's no easy compliment for an old literature major to make.

Sketches for the final cover

When I approached his latest, Awake in the Night Land, I hoped for good things and was not disappointed. This series of four linked novellas set in the dark, far-future world of William Hope Hodgson's 1912 The Night Land is dark, yes, very dark-- Hodgson was one of H.P. Lovecraft's main influences-- but not at all despairing. As reviewer Jonathan Moeller states,

 In the world of the book, the sinister powers of the Night Land, led by the terrifying and enigmatic Silent Ones, rule the Earth, and indeed the entirety of the universe. Only the Last Redoubt stands free, and its inhabitants know it will inevitably fall and be consumed by the eternal darkness.And yet…If that was all there was to the book, I would not have finished it and would not be writing about it now.

Indeed. This old literature major is also sick of despair, ennui, and existential bleakness in writing, but it's tough to pull off hope and life affirmation without degenerating into nauseating sentimentality.

Hodgson's original does it, though, and Wright's tribute does it even better.

I recommend reading the original first, but please, for sanity's sake, read James Stoddard's excellent modernization instead of the original Hodgson, at least on the first pass. The original has some awesome illustrations but the style is unpleasantly like Lovecraft on drugs. The retelling is still one of the most beautiful love stories ever told.

"The Redoubt" by Les Edwards

For more Night Land mythos, here are two websites dedicated specifically to them.


The first, William Hope Hodgson by Sam Gafford, makes for some wonderful browsing. With Phillip Ellis, Gafford is working on a collection of Hodgson's poetry set to release in November of 2014.

The Northwest Watcher by Stephen Fabian

The second, The Night Land, is an eclectic multimedia site in the grand old net tradition. I love it. It was originally created by Andy Robertson, who passed away in April of this year.  Robertson was the first to publish John C. Wright's short stories based on the Night Lands mythos; here is a post from Wright's website about Robertson and his reviews. Now Robertson's colleague Brett Davidson has taken over the site.

Tinkelman Sketches

More drawings, all these by Murray Tinkelman...not sketches per se, like those in the last master drawings post, but still, drawings. Without the distractions of color or extra dimensionality, a good drawing has an essential quality unmatched in any other medium. 

"Drawing is the honesty of art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad." - Salvador Dali

The two illustrations above are from Tinkelman's Lovecraft covers, done for Ballantine in the '70s. Here's a good article on Today's Inspiration, based on an interview with Tinkelman.

The rest of these are from Tinkelman's 1970 Bestiary; here's the 50 Watts article in which I found the majority of the images. 

Games with Lovecraft

The hubby and I will soon be playing a round of Mansions of Madness with some of our board game group friends. We're also fans of other Lovecraft cardboard such as Arkham Horror and The Stars are Right. 


Mansions of Madness is an Ameritrash classic, with minis and murder and monsters and mayhem. Lovecraft's writing has inspired countless artists and designers of all stripes.

Seems like everyone wants to visit Lovecraft's world, if only for a few hours.

Above, illustrator Matt Buck depicts H. P. Lovecraft himself. The tentacle is everything. (I originally found this image on the Tor website, which has an entire page of Lovecraft artwork by contemporary fantasy artists.)
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Above is a depiction of the finale of The Dunwich Horror by Alberto Breccia. You can find the entire graphic adaptation in English translation on the Ragged Claws blog.

If you find yourself interested in Breccia's work, this link will take you to a downloadable version of the entire Los Mitos de Cthulhu. These are nine stories that Breccia and collaborator Norberto Buscaglia adapted in the 70's. The text is in Spanish, of course, but art is art.

Above is a gorgeous map of one of Lovecraft's other dimensions, The Dreamlands, created by Seattle-based artist Jason Thompson. 

And here we have a 1976 cover by illustrator Murray Tinkelman, found on the blog Too Much Horror Fiction, which has a nice collection of cover art. 

This is an illustration for Lovecraft's "The Temple" done by Stephen Hickman for Science Fiction Age magazine, which went sadly out of business in 2000.


But now, back to games....

The Stars Are Right is a Steve Jackson game in which you, for some reason, are attempting to summon various Old Ones. To do so, you have to make sure that certain constellations appear in the sky by collecting cards and making patterns of them.

The artwork is fun and the game is reasonably quick. It's only ranked at 1513 on Board Game Geek, but I like it, especially on a cold foggy night.

Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror is probably my favorite of them all. It's a long, long game with tons of fiddly bits and Byzantine rules. It's cooperative, and it's hard to win.

There are also countless role playing games based on the Lovecraft stories; Call of Cthulhu first appeared in the early 80's, and may be the original.

Yog-Sothoth is a website dedicated to the Call of Cthulhu rpgs and all their spinoffs.