The Boats of the "Glen Carrig": William Hope Hodgson
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Celebrating the month of Octo-ber.
William Hope Hodgson was one of the most important and prolific fantasists of the early twentieth century. His nautical fiction was very popular during his lifetime, informed by his professional experience as a merchant mariner. But today his dark and disturbing stories are most remembered for their influence on writers like H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" (1907) takes the form of a saga of survival narrated by John Winterstraw to his son in the year 1757. It describes the fate of the survivors of the sunken ship "Glen Carrig," as they drift to a remote island infested by strange monsters.
In a 2009 essay, China Miéville traces the origin of "the tentacle" as an object of horror to Hodgson's novel.
The Boats of the "Glen Carrig":
Supplemental:
Extracts:
- "A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach." (Moby-Dick, 59)
This meetup is part in a series on Muses and Monsters.