William Hope Hodgson – författare

Och ser du, en natt drev det mig åter att planlöst ströva genom Kleinstadts tysta gator? Ingenstans i världen är det så hemskt som i denna stadsdel. Man viker in på en gata och ser endast ett dött mörker, då sticker ur en fönsterspringa en spöklik ljusstråle en plötsligt som en lång elak nål i pupillerna. Ur mörkret dyker ett hus upp -- med avbrutna skuldror och bakåtlutande panna och stirrande medvetslöst som ett slaktat djur ur tomma vindskupor upp mot natthimlen. Och går man över de ojämna gatstenarna och ser sig plötsligt om, skulle man kunna hålla vad om, att ett svampigt, likblekt ansikte stirrat efter en om hörnet -- inte i vanlig axelhöjd -- nej, långt nedanför, där endast stora hundar har huvudet. Här samlas nio sällsamma berättelser av både äldre och nutida författare. Klassiska namn som Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson och Gustav Meyrink har en plats i varje finsmakares bokhylla. Men dessutom ges stort utrymme åt svenska förmågor, bland dem våra kanske främsta författare av "weird tales" -- Johan Theorin och Sven Christer Swahn. En bok att läsa med öppet sinne och utan föreställningen att skräckfyllda berättelser måste vara blodiga och osubtila. Ty "varelserna som stapplar omkring i natten" är ju mest skrämmande så länge vi inte ser dem?

Vi satt kring sjuklingens bädd och såg den ohyggliga, pipande varelsen växa fram ur hans kropp, tills två vidriga, spindelbenssmala armar frigjorde sig. De diminutiva naglarna var perfekta, man kunde till och med urskilja de små halvmånarna vid nagelrötterna. Armarna gestikulerade och den högra handen famlade efter den döendes blonda skägg. -- Nej, jag står inte ut! skrek min vän och tog upp rakkniven... Från mörkrets mästare, en gedigen samling skräckhistorier som sällan eller aldrig bokpublicerats på svenska tidigare. Drypande djungelmysterier samsas med hemsökta herresäten, svinmonster från andra dimensioner och styggelser i urtida hålor under Gizas pyramider. Här finns också en bitterljuv spökhistoria om en blind kvinna, som i sin ensamhet fyller hemmet med spökande barn. Och därtill en essä där en av mästarna skildrar sina allt för livliga mardrömmar. Tretton skräckklassiker för finsmakaren, skrivna av H.P. Lovecraft, Gustav Meyrink, Rudyard Kipling med flera.

I den klassiska skräcklitteraturen är William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) ett av de märkligaste namnen. Hodgsons universum befinner sig i ständig upplösning, havet är en dyster värld där okända krafter härskar, mögel täcker övergivna skepp och öar, och utanför verklighetens gränser pockar gåtfull ondska på att bryta sig in. Atmosfären och styrkan i Hodgsons visioner undgår få läsare. Hans erfarenheter som sjöman letade sig också in i de flesta av hans romaner och noveller. Här presenteras några av författarens starkaste skräcknoveller, i första hand sjöhistorier men även en och annan ockult deckare.

A house seemingly disconnected in time and space becomes the setting for brutal conflict between the hapless homeowner and a collection of grotesque semi-human creatures in this landmark of fantasy and horror.The House on the Borderland is the account of a man, known only as the recluse, who moves into a remote and shunned house and unwittingly finds himself suspended between worlds, traveling through time, and fighting for his life against a siege of misshapen monstrosities. The author’s sweeping imagination evokes a wide variety of fantastical effects, from eerie intimations of the weird to vivid manifestations of supernatural horror, from fabulous glimpses of otherworldly landscapes to direct combat with non-human assailants of murderous intent. First published in 1908, the novel quickly acquired a reputation as a rare and visionary example of cosmic horror that would influence and draw praise from H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Olaf Stapleton and others. As gripping and surreal as a fever dream, The House on the Borderland remains one of the most transporting destinations in literature.With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The House on the Borderland is both modern and readable.

Penguin Weird Fiction: a celebration of the very best of the weird, a store of novels and tales that for generations have delighted and horrified.A manuscript is found. Filled with small, precise writing and smelling of pit-water, it tells the story of an old recluse and his strange home – and it’s even stranger, jade-green double, seen by that old man on an otherworldly plain where gigantic gods and monsters roam. Soon his earthly abode is no less terrible than this strange vision, as swine-like creatures boil from a cavern beneath the ground and besiege it. But a still greater horror will face the recluse, one more awful than any creature that can be fought or killed.The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson’s great masterpiece of cosmic fear, is an extraordinary novel that defied all accepted conventions of horror writing, forging in an instant a new, weird direction for the form.'Forget vampires and gore . . . this is where the screaming really starts, out in the void, with no one left to hear' Terry Pratchett

A splash of something huge resounds through the sea-fog. In the stillness of a dark room, some unspeakable evil is making its approach. This new selection offers the most chilling and unsettling of Hodgson's short fiction, from encounters with abominations at sea to fireside tales of otherworldly forces from his inventive `occult detective' character Carnacki, the ghost finder.A master of conjuring atmosphere, when the horror inevitably arrives it is delivered with breathtaking pace and the author's unique evocation of overwhelming panic.

'I had been staying just within the shadow of the exit of the great rift. Now, without volition on my part, I drifted out of the semi-darkness and began to move slowly-toward the House.'Amidst the din of roaring water, in a chasm where a house once stood in an isolated corner of Ireland, a manuscript is discovered entitled The House on the Borderland. Penned by the enigmatic Recluse, it tells of a revelatory descent into the uncanny. For the Recluse seems to have discovered another land and in it another House; a jade-green double of his own in a realm rife with beasts and cosmic beings without name, encroaching on the bounds of reality itself.With a new introduction by Ann VanderMeer exploring why Hodgson's tale is the 'perfect embodiment of a weird novel', this edition of the 1908 cult classic still thrums with the visionary energy which influenced countless writers including H. P. Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett.

Aeons in the future, Earth's surface faces perpetual night after the failing of the Sun. Humanity is entrenched within the Last Redoubt, a colossal metal pyramid. Beyond the safety of its structure lurk countless unknowable threats.William Hope Hodgson's strange, visionary novel of humanity's struggle for survival in the eternal darkness of the future was first published in 1912, and is widely acknowledged to be one of the foundation works of the 'Dying Earth' subgenre of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Written in a style composed of strange archaisms which fuel the weird sense of disorientation, this cult classic has won the admiration of writers from Brian Aldiss to C S Lewis, who wrote: 'The Night Land gives, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before.'

He looked up at the picture rail, and there was the hand holding on to a hook with three fingers, and slowly scratching the head of the parrot with the fourth.In 1919, W. F. Harvey published 'The Beast with Five Fingers', his quintessential tale of the disembodied hand with a murderous mind of its own, and its position as one of weird fiction's true classics was cemented by the 1946 film adaptation. Seeking to trace the origins of the haunted hand story back into the nineteenth century, and to showcase its influence on writers of weird fiction from the 1920s to the modern day, horror expert Brian J. Showers presents a new collection of classics from the well-thumbed oeuvres of Sheridan Le Fanu and Guy de Maupassant through to miniature masterpieces from the hands of Jean Ray, Mark Valentine and many more.Featuring ghostly hands, hands possessed by demons and unexplained hands where no hands should be, prepare to enter a world of nightmares run amok as the vice-grip of terror takes hold.