THE DEEP ONES: "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson

"The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson

Discussion begins July 4.

First published in the November 1907 issue of Blue Book Magazine



PRINT VERSIONS

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58911

The Dracula Book of Great Horror Stories
The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea: The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Volume 3
Dying of Fright: Masterpieces of the Macabre
Great Weird Tales

ONLINE VERSIONS

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hodgson/william_hope/voice/
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/voicenig.htm

MISCELLANY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Voice_in_the_Night
http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nightmap.html
http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nighthpl.html
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/nonfiction/6
http://tinyurl.com/7xfvz5z
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQcGQhRp0VY

Gosh, that cover art is an outlier around here.

>2 paradoxosalpha:

Don't worry, she has gills.

I'll be reading it from the Night Shade Books Ghost Pirates volume.

Also in Horrors from the Haunted Seas, which doesn't seem to exist on LT yet. I'll be reading it from this one, assuming the book has the decency to arrive at the date promised!

And—
http://www.amazon.com/Adrift-The-Haunted-Seas-Stories/dp/1593600496/ref=pd_sim_s...

A very solid collection of his horrors-at-sea.

I'll be reading mine out of H.P. Lovecraft's Book of the Supernatural: Classic Tales of the Macabre edited by Stephen Jones.

Doesn't look like it's available in any of the anthologies at my local public library, so I'll be reading it online.

I'm reading it in Dark Company.

Now this is a work of horror! Hodgson definitely goes for the gross-out, and he succeeds admirably. A delightfully uncomfortable read. The fungus might be a harbinger of diseases to come at the dawn of the twentieth century.

As soon as the first re-growth of fungus on the ship, I could sort of see where this was going. But the quasi-cannibalism took me by surprise somehow. The whole thing was terrifyingly believable, actually.

Hodgson seems awfully fond of the em-dash to show hesitation in speakers. He gave it to the rowboat visitor and the narrator both. The latter in the closing sentences of the story: "My gaze flashed back to the -- (guess I gotta call it a) -- head. ... and the -- (damned if I can call it a man) -- the thing went nodding into the mist."

As soon as the first re-growth of fungus on the ship, I could sort of see where this was going. But the quasi-cannibalism took me by surprise somehow.

Similar here.

Which gets me thinking — (em-dash!) how old is this theme of one's body being taken over by a foreign growth? Was it new(ish) when Hodgson wrote?

Happy 4th of July to everyone here in the States.

***

Really liked this one. Brought to mind a couple of early Stephen King tales ("Gray Matter" and "Weeds" - the latter was adapted into the "Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" segment of George A. Romero's film Creepshow) in which a character's body is absorbed by either plant matter or a fungal growth. Obviously Hodgson beat him to the punch by a few decades, though.

>11 AndreasJ:

This particular trope may be new to Hodgson, although Arthur Machen deals with a similar idea in the "Novel of the White Powder" segment of his novel The Three Impostors (1895). "White Powder" also influenced Lovecraft's "Cool Air", so if it inspired Hodgson as well, it is even more of a cornerstone weird tale than I had previously thought.

As soon as the first re-growth of fungus on the ship, I could sort of see where this was going. But the quasi-cannibalism took me by surprise somehow.

Similar here.

And here as well. If this was a modern tale I'd be sure that we are supposed to see the general idea coming. When reading older tales I often wonder if the author expected readers to be surprised by such an ending. Intentional or not, I think that the inevitability of the couple's fate makes the horror and tragedy more intense.

The part where I said to myself, "Uh-oh; this is gonna be really bad":

"Could we not send a boat for her?" asked Will at this point.

"No!" said the voice, with extraordinary emphasis. "My God! No!"

>13 lucien:

I don't think Hodgson meant for there to be a big shocking reveal at he end, for the final image of the doomed, deformed soul rowing away is as bleak as it is poetic. It recalls the final sentence of Frankenstein, "He was soon bourne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance."

>12 artturnerjr:

Yeah - Happy 4th! Don't lose any fingers. I was reminded of those other squishy stories, too. Have to re-read "The Novel of the White Powder" soon.

>10 paradoxosalpha:

The act of eating the fungus itself is strong stuff, and just adds to the pile of steadily mounting horrors. The cannibalistic nature of the act remains truly shocking. I'd say that Hodgson's tale was very much cutting edge for 1907. It still works.

I enjoyed the slow, relentless pace of the story. Doom is in the air. It is only a matter of time. I strongly recommend the original Japanese film MATANGO, directed by Godzilla's own Inoshiro Honda (link to trailer is in >1 gwendetenebre: above). It does a really good job of capturing the feel of the story, although it is updated to a 1960's Japan worldview. Beware of the truncated, badly dubbed US version retitled ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE. Unless you are in an... altered state.

What I found particularly disturbing in regards to the quasi-cannibalism is the narcotic effect it would have on the man and his wife. Very dangerous, since it would be a form of escapism from their predicament. Then there was that other "man" on the island that was pretty much an animate mushroom who's mere touch would bring a psychadelic ecstacy. Imagine being in this wonderful ideallic paradise never knowing you're actually a highly infectious fungi. Talk about a hellish prison to be in.

Does this story even qualify as supernatural horror?

There's something of "The Colour Out of Space" about it, in the way it describes the effects of an exotic, infectious pathology. But Hodgson's fungus is credibly natural.

ETA, HPL from SHiL:

Of rather uneven stylistic quality, but vast occasional power in its suggestion of lurking worlds and beings behind the ordinary surface of life, is the work of William Hope Hodgson, known today far less than it deserves to be. Despite a tendency toward conventionally sentimental conceptions of the universe, and of man's relation to it and to his fellows, Mr. Hodgson is perhaps second only to Algernon Blackwood in his serious treatment of unreality. Few can equal him in adumbrating the nearness of nameless forces and monstrous besieging entities through casual hints and insignificant details, or in conveying feelings of the spectral and the abnormal in connection with regions or buildings.

>16 lammassu:,17

I'd agree that the fungus seems more natural than supernatural. More like a disease that wants to replicate than something with truly sinister intent. "There was a sweetish taste upon my lips where the thing had touched me. I licked them, and was immediately filled with an inhuman desire." What is meant by "desire"? Definitely eating more fungus, but is something sexual being intimated here? The stuff is reproducing, after all. And while a kind of physical transmigration occurs, is a "psychedelic" ecstasy truly involved, perhaps indicating an initiation into a group-mind, or does consumption merely create a kind of fungus-perpetuating gluttony in the afflicted? It's definitely weird, whatever the case.

Hodgson creates a great mental image of the derelict ship, covered with fungus, with those towering stacks of it growing here and there. I'm reminded a bit of growing crystals in water as a kid.

I read this story out of a early-twentieth century collection of short stories I grabbed from my local university. It's quite a beautiful old book. As a forward to Hodgson's piece, the editor wrote this:

"'The Voice in the Night' is probably the weirdest of short thrillers. After reading it, one is not surprised to find that almost nothing can be discovered about the author: no publisher or agent can tell whence he came and where he went. No 'Who's Who,' encyclopedia, or almanac knows anything about him. Perhaps the destruction of records in wartime London is possible. But his unforgettable story speaks for itself."

Adequately creepy, I thought. My collection is from 1947.

>19 Necrovolver:

Plenty is known about Hodgson now. Maybe not so much in 1947, however. What's the title of your university-owned volume?

ETA

Avon Fantasy Reader perhaps?

>17 paradoxosalpha:

Yeah, it's definitely on the science fiction side of non-mimetic horror fiction.

>19 Necrovolver:

That's actually really fascinating. As Kenton indicated in #20, Hodgson scholarship has acclerated rapidly since then. Coincidentally, I was just reading on weird fiction scholar S.T. Joshi's blog (http://www.stjoshi.org/news.html) that the first-ever doctoral dissertation was written on Hodgson in the UK in 2009.

>20 gwendetenebre:

It's A Treasury of Short Stories, edited by Bernadine Kielty, published by Simon and Schuster.

I finished the remaining contents of Dark Company that I hadn't previously read, and posted my review.

>22 Necrovolver:

A Treasury of Short Stories - an interesting place for ”Voice” to show up! Includes Hodgson right up there with Thurber, Hemingway, Balzac, etc.. Nice collection, from what I can find out about it online.

This is the third time I've read this story, and I still don't, apart from a bit of frisson at the end with the "great, grey-nodding sponge" rowing away, find it that horrifying.

I did have a couple of other new reactions this time around. First, I the significance of the "sand" as alien struck. It is the one thing on the island resistant to the fungus when nothing else earthly is. It seems from the same world, perhaps an accidental companion, a signifier of another alien ecosystem, brought with the fungus. Or, alternately, the fungus is of this world and the sand is alien.

The second reaction is that this strikes me as kind of a weird takeoff on the Garden of Eden story. This was mostly brought to mind with the wife tasting the fungus first, sort of tempting, by putting the idea in the man's head, him of eating the fungus. This follows Eve tasting the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil before Adam and suggesting that he take a taste. The idea of the deadly fruit of a tree was furthered by the image of the "branch-like arms" which attack the man. After tasting the fungus, the man says he added "intolerable knowledge" to his mind. The material prospects of the couple worsen. In the Eden story, eating the fruit is followed by a list of God's curses on man which make his life harder. Finally, at the end, we get the explicit description of the two marooned people as "a couple of poor outcast souls" which brings to mind the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

>25 RandyStafford:

The second reaction is that this strikes me as kind of a weird takeoff on the Garden of Eden story.

Good one, Randy! Hadn't thought of that.

>25 RandyStafford:

I was thinking that the ”sand” might be the inedible leftovers from the victims. Ground bones? That would indicate a lot of victims, but who can say how long the fungus has been there?

In a very interesting round-table discussion of the original DARK SHADOWS in Video Watchdog #169, Kim Newman mentions that "The Voice in the Night" was adapted for a 1950's TV-show called SUSPICION, starring Patrick Macnee and James Coburn! I'm not sure if that show/episode is available anywhere...

> 25

True that the woman went first and then the man was persuaded. But there is no moral dimension to it: nobody warned them it was a sin to do.

So this is still a tale of Cosmic Indifferentism. The fungus is not evil: if it can be said to want anything at all, it just wants to live and propagate. If it makes humans feel desires that they don't want, well too bad for them.

As for 'outcast souls', the image is there as in Genesis, but they were outcast by choice. No archangel with flaming sword drove them out.

Happy birthday, William Hope Hodgson.