Another substantial and intriguing anthology is the William Hope Hodgson
tribute anthology, William Hope Hodgson's Night Lands Volume II, Nightmares
of the Fall (Utter Tower), edited by Andy W. Robertson, a follow-up to the
original Hodgson tribute anthology from 2003. (Some commentators are listing
this as an original anthology since the individual stories have never appeared
in print before, but since they've all been available at the Night Lands
website (www.nightland.co.uk) for several years, I've decided to treat it as a
reprint anthology. There is frequently interesting new content up on the
website, though, including at the moment a new novella by John C. Wright, so
you should check it out.) As with the previous anthology, all the stories here
are written as homages set in the milieu of William Hope Hodgson's strange
and eccentric masterpiece The Night Land- one of the probable inspirations
for later works such as Jack Vance's The Dying Earth and Gene Wolfe's The
Book of the New Sun - and also as with much of the previous anthology, not
all of the previous authors handle this stylistically tricky material with the
same authority. As was true of the previous anthology, the best stories here
are two long Novellas by John C. Wright, who, in his mannered, Victorian,
slightly faustian prose, seems to be born to write this sort of thing, but
there is also good work from Gerard Houarnet, Brett Davidson, and Andy
Robertson himself.
Dozois, Gardner (ed.). __The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual
Collection.__ New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2008. xxxvi_xxxvii.
tribute anthology, William Hope Hodgson's Night Lands Volume II, Nightmares
of the Fall (Utter Tower), edited by Andy W. Robertson, a follow-up to the
original Hodgson tribute anthology from 2003. (Some commentators are listing
this as an original anthology since the individual stories have never appeared
in print before, but since they've all been available at the Night Lands
website (www.nightland.co.uk) for several years, I've decided to treat it as a
reprint anthology. There is frequently interesting new content up on the
website, though, including at the moment a new novella by John C. Wright, so
you should check it out.) As with the previous anthology, all the stories here
are written as homages set in the milieu of William Hope Hodgson's strange
and eccentric masterpiece The Night Land- one of the probable inspirations
for later works such as Jack Vance's The Dying Earth and Gene Wolfe's The
Book of the New Sun - and also as with much of the previous anthology, not
all of the previous authors handle this stylistically tricky material with the
same authority. As was true of the previous anthology, the best stories here
are two long Novellas by John C. Wright, who, in his mannered, Victorian,
slightly faustian prose, seems to be born to write this sort of thing, but
there is also good work from Gerard Houarnet, Brett Davidson, and Andy
Robertson himself.
Dozois, Gardner (ed.). __The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual
Collection.__ New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2008. xxxvi_xxxvii.
