THE DEEP ONES: "The Terror of the Water-Tank" by William Hope Hodgson

"The Terror of the Water-Tank" by William Hope Hodgson

Discussion begins July 15.



First published in the September 1907 issue of Blue Book.

ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.strangeark.com/cryptofiction/terror-water-tank.html
http://tinyurl.com/p98tdzr

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58908

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places
Weird Tales: The Magazine that Never Dies
Out of the Storm (Centaur Press)

MISCELLANY

http://alangullette.com/lit/hodgson/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hope_Hodgson
http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/hodgson.htm
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/hodgson_william_hope
http://tinyurl.com/p3nkalr

I'll be reading from my battered old Centaur Press edition of Out of the Storm.

I read this last week in The William Hope Hodgson Megapack (see first TinyURL link in >1 gwendetenebre: above).

Well, I was fooled. I was expecting a fresh water octopus.

Can't say this packed any frisson of horror, but after reading it I found I quite liked how Hodgson mashed the detective tale with the ghost story. There's actually quite a few scenes and encounters which could be thrilling, Hodgson simply chose to tell them in a way they weren't. I wonder if that was deliberate on his part, having fun with both genres: the detective tale in which the amateur sleuth bungles it all up and has to be rescued, not by the police but by an invalid physician; and a ghost story with all the horror drained from it.

How the good doctor managed to avoid shredding the constable while decapitating the creature with two shotgun blasts, though, is quite beyond me.

I found the geography a little murkier than necessary here. Presumably "the east coast" is the east coast of England. The currency references included both "half-a-crown" and "five dollars."

There doesn't seem to have been anything supernatural about the criminal cryptid. Its motives remained as obscure as its species, too. Why should it kill?

The "wheel of morality" ending was perhaps funnier than intended.

I actually liked this one; I thought the ending, in particular, was pretty suspenseful.

I would have liked a more detailed description of the monster, but I suppose that would have been at odds with the effect that Hodgson seems to have been going for.

I thought the doctor's illness was a bit of a red herring. I thought it was going to be revealed that it had something to do with the mysterious goings-on at the water-tank, but apparently I was mistaken. Now I'm wondering: was that put in there deliberately, or was it just sloppy writing?

>7 artturnerjr: Now I'm wondering: was that put in there deliberately, or was it just sloppy writing?

I took it as necessary for the plot: the narrator wouldn't have mucked things up so badly if the doctor had been around to consult and set him straight.

The story could have been written without it, but it would have been a different story and Hodgson seems to have chosen this deliberately, for whatever reason.

>6 paradoxosalpha:

I've seen other, undeniably English, works using "dollar" to refer to the local currency. I looked it up on Wikipedia this time - it's a colloquial term for a five shilling piece, or Crown (pre-decimalisation).

This story dates from before the Detective Club (Dorothy L. Sayers et al) laid down the rules that drove the supernatural out of detection and crime fiction. It's a shame, I think. The Hound of the Baskervilles loses quite a lot of its frisson if the reader does not entertain the possibility of a supernatural solution. And the occult detectives were put out to grass.

I haven't read all that much of Hodgson's work to date, but I read all the Carnacki stories in the early 1990s. I was struck then at the novelty (as it seemed) of not knowing if the villain of a particular tale was a human agency, or supernatural, or some sort of cryptozoological beast.

Which last, of course, is the solution of the puzzle in this story. S. T. Joshi has pointed out the "ambiguity of the ontological status of Hodgson's monsters - are they supernatural or natural?" in a number of his stories.

>9 housefulofpaper:

Oftentimes the sea monster in a Hodgson tale turns out to be an octopus or something mundane yet aggressive. I find it interesting that WHH seems to have done his best work at novel length (The House on the Borderland, The Ghost Pirates) despite all those short stories, Carnacki or otherwise.

The first story link up in >1 gwendetenebre: is something of a spoiler - it goes to a cryptozoological site called Strangeark.com!

>10 gwendetenebre:

I read from the Strange Ark site, but to my mind it wasn't a spoiler: effectively very little difference between a creature unknown to science (and which may require science to revise it's known laws, once it's acknowledged) and a supernatural one. But then, that goes to the core of why I read supernatural fiction, its anti-rational or arational outlook.

>10 gwendetenebre:

I read it from that site, but somehow failed to focus on the strapline at the top of the page, or the book covers down the side, and read on in blissful ignorance!

>10 gwendetenebre:

Interesting (albeit hardly surprising) to see so many favorite Deep Ones authors on that site's "Cryptofiction" list:

http://www.strangeark.com/czfiction.html

>5 elenchus: I also liked the almost-supernatural mashed with an amateur sleuth story.
I had decided the doctor dunnit after he mentioned how quickly he was on the scene after each murder.
This is the only story I've ever read in which a luster jug played a role. Also, the setting of a water tank was unusual. Maybe the author's time as a sailor influenced some points of the story.

>14 mstrust:

Welcome, @mstrust! Forgive me if you've been here awhile and I just hadn't noticed before now.

I hadn't known Hodgson had a sailor background, but it is an interesting and unusual setting for a water menace.

>9 housefulofpaper: This story dates from before the Detective Club (Dorothy L. Sayers et al) laid down the rules that drove the supernatural out of detection and crime fiction

I think that exaggerates the power of the Detective Club. It seems like popular demand for fantasy dropped after WWI and led readers away from fantasy admixtures in their fiction. There's also power in knowing what solutions are acceptable; for the doctor to have shot a halfling with a ring of levitation or ninja-vampire Dufirst who had to return to his native soil stored at the bottom of the tank would not be acceptable solutions to this audience.

If it's open season on supernatural, why do we find this answer acceptable? It's sort of a Fortean solution; how do we know it's not the pet (or appendage) of something darker or more powerful? How do we know it's not a magical or Satanic assemblage Dufirst made from his cell to cover himself? Stories depend on there being a shared acceptance, and mystery depends on that more, given that it's dependent on the end reveal. Adding in supernatural or super-scientific elements makes that a lot harder line to walk.

>16 prosfilaes:

I can't remember where I first read that about the Detection Club, but you're right. It's probably overstating the case, not least because one can see that there would be a sort of evolutionary pressure towards the kind of story where the reader would have that "fair chance" of working out the solution.

>15 elenchus: Thank you, elenchus! This is my first story comment, but I've been lurking and reading here and there, enjoying these short stories.

>18 mstrust:

Thanks for joining our discussion! We always encourage participation in our humble little group. :)

PS I see you're a Ramones fan. Gabba gabba hey!

>19 artturnerjr: Thanks! And an interesting group it is. I'm a huge Ramones fan, and can't help but follow your "gabba gabba hey" with "we accept her, we accept her, one of us!"

>20 mstrust:

As well you should. :)