The House on the Borderland

William Hope Hodgson

The House on the Borderland — The House on the Borderland is unique in several ways. The narrative has a double frame: a fictional editor introduces a manuscript entrusted to him, and two travellers on a fishing trip then relate how they discovered a recluse’s diary describing the cosmic haunting of his remote home. Additionally, the novel is one of the earliest examples of the departure of horror fiction from the Gothic style of supernatural, psychological hauntings, to science-fiction and cosmic horror themes. The recluse is, among other events, transported to a mysterious supra-universal plane populated by monsters and elder gods; and his house withstands assaults from legions of monsters as he travels across time and the solar system. The book was greatly admired by H. P. Lovecraft, who himself was famous for the cosmic horror themes in his work. The concept of an uncaring, and even evil, universe that Lovecraft found so disturbing is front and center in this supremely strange novel.