Do you want to be an award-winning published author? Do you want to get paid for it, as well? You do? Well, you’re in luck. Here’s an exclusive no-win no-fee guide, which has worked EVERY TIME for our major client group. Yes, ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of John Linwood Grants have succeeded in selling their writing using this tried and trusted method.
And here is what you need to do:
STEP ONE: Write large, complex drafts of novels which no one but you will ever understand. Don’t even send most of them anywhere.
STEP TWO: If anyone does show interest, plead having to earn a living as an excuse not to do anything further about it. Lose most of the manuscripts.
STEP THREE: Realise that you’re fifty eight years old, falling apart, and that the first two steps didn’t really help.
STEP FOUR: Write short stories, novelettes and novellas instead.
STEP FIVE: Decide in advance that exposure doesn’t pay for dog food, so hurl the stories at paying markets instead, and wait. Rinse and repeat.
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But those are just the usual whingers. What they won’t tell you, because they’re shy, unassuming authors, is that they have been published, have produced a tolerable body of work by sticking to our advice, and have more in the pipeline. What do they expect – a living wage?
the author contemplates his vast wealth
Because nobody ever believes us, here’s a presentation which shows graphically what YOU can achieve with only a couple of years of mind-numbing hard work. It would have been in PowerPoint, but that’s too expensive, so we did a list instead.
A VAGUE BIBLIOGRAPHY
Due to the complex, quantum-encoded nature of Mr Linwood Grant’s record-keeping, this list is not complete, but it is at least in roughly the right order.
The Last Edwardian Cycle – Late Victorian to the 1940s
Tales of murder, madness and often the supernatural, inhabiting the same timeline in one way or another, and occasionally interconnecting. Includes non-occult stories of Sherlock Holmes and Mr Edwin Dry, as well as out-and-out weird tales of psychics, horrors and Mamma Lucy, the 1920s hoodoo-woman.
A Study in Grey (novella),18thWall Productions 2016
The Meeting, in Carnacki: The Lost Cases, Ulthar Press 2016
The Dark Trade, in Carnacki: The Lost Cases, Ulthar Press 2016
Grey Dog, in Carnacki: The Lost Cases, Ulthar Press 2016
The Jessamine Garden, in Beneath the Surface, Parsec Ink 2016
The Dragoman’s Son, in Holmes away from Home, Belanger 2016
The Jessamine Touch, in His Seed, Lethe Press 2017
A Persistence of Geraniums, in collection of the same name, Electric Pentacle 2017
His Heart Shall Speak No More, in Geraniums, Electric Pentacle 2017
A Word with Mr Dry, in Geraniums, Electric Pentacle 2017
The Workman & His Hire, in Geraniums, Electric Pentacle 2017
The Intrusion, in Geraniums, Electric Pentacle 2017
A Loss of Angels, in Geraniums, Electric Pentacle 2017
On Ullins Bank, in Fearful Fathoms, Scarlet Galleon 2017
Hoodoo-man, in Speakeasies & Spiritualists, 18thWall 2017
The Witch of Pender, in Weirdbook: Witches, Weird Book 2017
Affair of the Red Opium, in Holmes in theRealms of H G Wells, Belanger 2017
The Second Life of Jabez Salt, in Eliminate the Impossible, MX Publishing 2017
Where All is Night, and Starless, in Chthonic, Martian Migraine 2018
Mr Aloysius Clay, in March Hare-Raisers, 2018
The Musgrave Burden, coming in Holmes: Canonical Sequels, Belanger 2018
Death Among the Marigolds, coming in Silver Screen Sleuths, 18thWall 2018
The Assassin’s Coin (novel), coming from IDF Publishing 2018
Songs of the Burning Men, coming from 18thWall 2018
Whiskey, Beans & Dust, tba, 2018
Strange Tales from the 1970s to the Future
Everything from contemporary dark weird and Lovecraftian fiction to tongue in cheek folk horror such as St Botolph-in-the-Wolds.
Hungery, in Giants & Ogres, Cbaybooks 2016
Messages, in Cthulhusattva, Martian Migraine Press 2016
Something Annoying This Way Comes, on greydogtales.com 2016
The St Valentine’s Day Mascarpone, on greydogtales.com 2016
The Horse Road, in Lackington’s Magazine, 2016
Preacher, in Ravenwood Magazine, Electric Pentacle Press 2016
A Midwinter Night’s Carol on greydogtales.com 2016
The Age of Reason, in The Stars at My Door, April Moon Books 2017
With the Dark & Storm, in Equal Opportunities Madness, Otter Libris 2017
Cinnamon and Magic, in The Monster in Your Closet, Cbaybooks 2017
Cinderella and the Seven Penguins, on greydogtales.com 2017
Horseplay, on greydogtales.com 2018
On Abydos, Dreaming, coming in Survivors, Lethe Press 2018
Hour of the Pale Dog, coming in Skelos Magazine 2018
Those Who Stay, comingin Voices in the Darkness, Ulthar Press 2018
Sanctuary, coming in Weirdbook 2018
Finally, as a taster, here’s an extract from the start of ‘Where All is Night, and Starless’, published this year by Martian Migraine Press in their anthology Chthonic.
The agent tells me that the house is built on solid bedrock. It has three rooms, with bare stone walls forming a kitchen, a bedroom and a parlour. A failed farmhouse for a failed farm. The last owner died in the war, childless, and his wife soon after, in 1918. The agent has no record of how or why. He has a florid, anxious face – a Lowland Scot, desperate to please and yet ill-informed about the Western Isles. I have neighbours on the other side of the island, a handful of crofters, but he knows little about them. A boat brings supplies once a week.
“Nae so fine a place for a lassie.” He shakes his head, a sudden burst of conscience, perhaps. “And if your faither takes bad…”
I take out my cheque book, and let my pen speak for us. He swallows his doubts.
“Aye, well, there’s nae a snib on the isle, I’ll wager.”
I stare until he realises.
“No locks, Miss Allen. So I dinna have a key to gae ye.”
Our business done, he trudges to the small jetty. The sky is turning dark with promised rain, and he’s eager to be away. My father sits in his wheelchair, waiting for me.
“Inside, then,” I say. There is grass, wiry grass, under the wheels of his chair, but the soil is thin. I make him comfortable in the parlour, which will be his.
“Soon,” my father mutters.
I have waited almost two years, and seen him through four hospitals and recuperation homes. The urgent need I once had has been mellowed, and now I can wait. I can feel that his story is coming, the words which have been trapped inside him since the blast which shook the spires of half of Europe.
We settle, and for a week I let him inspect our new home. He pronounces that we are on granitic gneiss, which seems to reassure him. The term means little to me, but I notice a change in him. He walks, only a few steps, but it is heartening.
Lieutenant Robert Allen, thirty nine years old, of the 183rd Tunnelling Company in Belgium. A tall, slim figure, easily missed in a crowd – except for the way his head cocks at any unexpected noise. Like a dog, a dog which cannot settle.
When they dragged him from the remains of a tunnel-mouth, they did not know what they had. He was recovered alone and in a state of exhaustion, raving, covered in blood. Those fingernails which he retained were ragged and torn. They had no explanation for me.
His commanding officer wrote a letter which betrayed more than I think he intended. “In the finest tradition of the Army,” and “Work vital to our efforts,” – brown ink on cream paper – but in between, curious phrases concerning sudden action and “necessary haste”. By which I have come to believe that a mine was blown before its due time, and that my father and the sappers were still at work when it was done.
They call his condition shell shock. He himself denied this when I sat by him in the early months. He promised to tell me the truth, one day, when he could. This lonely isle, I believe, is what he has been seeking.
A James McAllister calls, to enquire if we need seaweed for our vegetable garden.
He takes a nip of whisky, and offers to bring a hand-cart full of it over, and my father nods, accepts. Outside, McAllister turns to me.
“Hit bad, thon?”
“Flanders. But he’s getting better.”
“Aye. Mony a soul lost; mony a guid man broken.”
He explains, haltingly, that he was on the fishing fleets, keeping the country fed. I praise his efforts, and am rid of him at last.
Father no longer drinks, but he holds up McAllister’s empty glass, watching it glint in the morning light.
“Is this the day, Emma?”
I seat myself on the window-bench, watching his scarred hands re-arrange the cheap plaid rug over his knees. He might be one hundred and thirty seven, from the look in his narrow eyes.
“Only if you wish.”
I take up the blank journal which has been ready since June 1917. I had it when I first sat by his hospital bed, and it has always been to hand. I had always wanted a record, from his own lips.
He puts the glass down.
“I… I think so.”
Bending back the spine of the journal, I lift my pen…
Fancy a poem or ten? Don’t look at us like that – they’re jolly interesting ones, for today we consider the poetry of William Hope Hodgson, as part of our remembrance on this, the centenary year of his death. We don’t poet, ourselves, so we’re most grateful to have writer, poet and poetic scholar Frank Coffman to help us along our way. Not only does Frank offer us a commentary on, and analysis of, some of Hope Hodgson’s verse, but he has dug out more of WHH’s poems for the event (see second section below).
“The Unuttered Word”
Some Thoughts on the Poetry of William Hope Hodgson
by Frank Coffman
There are worlds of foam that I have known And the songs of wild, young children blown Make music in the glittering spray In that strange world where I was grown Where the light is not the light of day Where the breath of life in the stounding breeze Is at play on the foaming seas
—William Hope Hodgson
The great majority of enthusiastic readers of the work of William Hope Hodgson know him from his weird and speculative fiction. Almost all know him from his novels such as The Night Land, The House on the Borderland, The Boats of the “Glen Carrig,” and The Ghost Pirates; and collections of similarly-themed short stories in Sargasso Seas Stories and others. Some have discovered Hodgson through the few stories on his intriguing occult detective, Carnacki, the Ghost Finder. But Hodgson’s poetry has remained in general obscurity.
But in 2005, Tartarus Press did a very limited 150 copy run of The Lost Poetry of William Hope Hodgson, edited and introduced by Jane Frank that has since become more widely available in a Kindle and other editions. This book is a most welcome addition to the Hodgson corpus, and gives a fine overview of one side of the man relatively unknown prior to its publication.
As might be expected from Hodgson’s life, the theme of The Sea— with all of its mysteries, its pull upon the imagination, its contemplation-worthy immenseness, its beauties and its dangers, its place in his soul—is predominant. Jane Frank notes:
Hodgson’s long-time friend, A. St John Adcock, editor of The Bookman, wrote in his introduction to The Calling of the Sea: “in his poems, as in his prose, it is the mystery, the strength, the cruelty, the grimness and sadness of the sea that most potently appeal to him.”
But other themes like Death and the Question of Immortality, Love, Faith, Patriotism, the Pain of Loss, and the big one—The Meaning of Life—are all touched upon to various degrees. Hodgson’s overall poetic work can be seen as decidedly influenced by the later Romantics and the more Romantic of the Victorians, which should not be at all surprising. Even rebellious artists can’t help but be influenced by the cultural and artistic atmosphere of their own and the immediately previous era—if for no other reason that they ought to understand fully what they rebel against.
But Hodgson was no rebel. Frank calls his verse, “…largely of his time: mannered, grandiloquent, and oblique.” She also notes that “Sam Moskowitz blamed Hodgson’s clergyman father for Hope’s stylistic affectations, but… keep in mind the romantic, elegiac Victorian poetry Hodgson was striving to emulate, in which Biblical and archaic English forms were the norm” (“Introduction”). Some few of the poems display some maudlin sentimentality. One example of this would be “Little Garments” about a mother mourning the loss of a child, reminded that the “little garments” were the only physical things now left to her. Some few other poems do hypothetical, it seems, moanings over the loss of a loved one, death being preferable to the pain of loss and other such overdone sentiments.
As far as direct poetic influences to, Hodgson admired the works of Poe, Machen, and Blackwood, with Poe being, perhaps the (or one of the) primary poetic influences. He even parodies “The Raven” in a letter of complaint about the frequency of rejection letters to his friend, Coulson Kernahan (December 1905), he wrote:
Every morning for a fortnight have I pondered weak and weary O’er letters still unanswered that are scattered round your floor While I’ve pondered nearly napping, sometimes there has come a tapping As of someone gently rapping, rapping on my outer door Tis the Postman,’ I have muttered, ‘dropping MSS through the door— Only that and nothing more’ Then my soul has leapt up stronger, and I’ve stayed in bed no longer; For a glad idea has whispered that the Post is at the door, And that all that gentle tapping which has stirred me in my napping Is the postman dropping billet doux from C.K. on the floor And at the thought (loud cheering) have I galloped to the door— “REFUSALS”—nothing more.
All writers who have sought acceptance of their efforts and publication can relate to the sentiments in this parody. And, regarding, poetry, Hodgson clearly experienced the sad dearth of markets that has seemingly always been the case with work in that mode. Fiction is hard enough to publish, but the market for poetry has always been scantier. What Hodgson [and other writers clearly in love with the poetic mode, such as Robert E. Howard] experienced was that poetry is damned hard to get accepted and, beyond that—it doesn’t “pay the rent,” even if published.
Hodgson bundled many of his poems early in his career into three separate collections, presented in Lost Poems for the first time. These were: Mors Deorum [Death of the Gods] and Other Poems, Through Enchantments and other Poems on Death, and Spume. Each of these begins with a long musing monologue, the first two on Life and Death and the question of Immortality, the third—as the title suggests—mostly regarding the Sea, some in this latter collection perhaps derived from specific experiences, some seemingly based upon incidents in his journals and logs.
But most of the poetry is strong and striking in imagery, and some of it is distinctly metrically experimental. This in that Hodgson wrote very few poems in what we might call “fixed forms.” The rhyme and meter are there, but not in standard tetrameters and pentameters and often varied and randomly rhymed with some use of slant rhyme.
Most of Hodgson’s poetry seems to have been written between his retirement from the Merchant Marine in 1899 and about 1906. He was somewhat frustrated by the lack of good markets for his verse, but—as with all of his literary work—was tenacious to the point of obsession in keeping it in circulation, following each rejection immediately with a resubmission to another market.
As noted, the Sea and the effect it had on the young writer predominates. A sense of his poetic style and urge for distinctness can be seen in the opening section of “Song of the Ship”:
And I toss the blue from left to right, And I leap the driving surge, And the tall seas follow close behind, And ever the moaning of the wind Wails softly a solemn dirge
This pentastich (five-line section) is, essentially an expansion on the meter of the literary ballad from a four-line to a five line form, including an extra four-accent line in the fourth line, altering the normal 4-3-4-3 to 4-3-4-4-3 accents. The normal rhyme of ABAB or ABCB (with the even-numbered short lines always rhyming) is also changed to ABC[slant rhyme with C]B. Following this section the other two sections of the poem are 8 and 11 lines long, respectively.
Here and elsewhere, one distinctive feature of Hodgson’s verse is that it seems to flow organically and is not preconceived to be a sonnet, a ballad, or any traditional form. For him, traditional iambic metrics (with anapestic variety quite often) are kept, but often with a variety of line lengths [similar to what Matthew Arnold did in his most famous poem, “Dover Beach”]. And the poems rhyme, but often randomly, with the echoes close enough to be noticeable, but following no strict pattern. To those degrees, Hodgson’s poetry is at least formally atypical—if not distinctive.
Several poems are on Hodgson’s clear interest in Life, Death, and what, perhaps, lies beyond. The poem “Farewell,” evidently written around the time of his leaving the merchant navy in 1899—or certainly regarding that occasion—is brief enough to include in its entirety:
FAREWELL
And, now it is farewell, Forever, O great Sea! Yet in some distant world, my soul Shall dream of thee. For now, a far-off toll, I hear— It is my knell Rung out by solemn waves on mist-bound shores, While overhead, the groan Of opening, monstrous doors Comes echoing down to me, And streams of awful light Shine o’er thy tumult, Sea, As I pass up across the night Into the great Unknown.
Here again we have Hodgson’s personally common (but for his period and the precedent traditions uncommon) “mix” of meter and rhyme. Essentially iambic, the line lengths ramble with various feet: 3-3-4-2-4-2-5-3-3-3-3-3-4-3. Thus, in effect, the poem is a most unusual sonnet with the required 14 lines, but with highly irregular and brief line lengths (except in the pentameter of line 7). My guess is that became a sonnet “accidentally” and, again, organically driven rather than being preconceived, but we can’t be sure.
The rhyme scheme [using a lower case letter to indicate a “slant” or “near” rhyme] is: ABaBCADEDBFBFE. This is most irregular, but it displays Hodgson’s organicism of poetic creation. The poem “evolves” and rolls on like the varied waves and moods of the sea. The distance of six lines between the E rhymes almost loses the echoing effect, and the lack of any echo for C is also unusual. The third line slant rhyme of “soul,” partly echoing “farewell,” is actually “picked up” in a full cross rhyme into line five with “toll.” The musical effects are there. The poet is not eschewing rhyme and meter, but he is using them in a distinctive way.
Hodgson was also interested in the theme of artistic inspiration itself. This can be seen in the poem aptly entitled, “Inspiration”:
INSPIRATION
Thou pursuest thy lonely way ‘Midst tortuous paths of brooding thought Lit by no gleam of earthly day Till, in a while, thy soul has caught, Despite of flutterings to escape, A formless thing of light —unwrought; A misty, glowing spirit-flake, Waiting thy fire, thy forge, to make It into some great glorious shape.
All in all, a fine brief lyric, containing the loneliness, the “brooding thought,” the capture by the “soul” of that “fluttering” and fleeting thing, always threatening to “escape” —the essence of inspiration, the “thing of light” as yet “unwrought”—the spark that through the poet’s soul of “fire” and the “forge” of mind and imagination might, just might, become a “great and glorious” thing.
Perhaps the most poignant theme to be found in Hodgson is the same as that expressed by Keats in his famous sonnet, “When I Have Fears”: that of the artist who is aware of his own genius and fears that the potential creative work that might yet be—will never be done:
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;…
We see this also in Hemingway, in his masterful short story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” The character of Harry, dying of gangrene, thinks:
Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.
And in Hodgson’s important poem, “The Death Cry of Young Genius,” sub-titled, [In understanding of G’s feelings, as he lay dying, speechless; his message undelivered—his personality unexpressed. WHH] we find the same somber theme in its opening:
I am here for a little time; I came from the great Unknown; Life leaps from birth to death, And then I am alone In some unremembered clime, Wondering—Without breath. I am here, and when I go I would leave some mark behind, But I must haste, or I am lost And wandering outward, blind, Forgetting, ere scarce I know, The gain of life for the cost.…
(emphases added)
And in its conclusion:
But overtopping much Agony’s drearest goal Is the agony now hurled. Genius smothered unheard, Ere the soul-tale is expressed, Is the greatest terror the world hath known, A double terror unguessed, For with such dies the unuttered Word – The genius dies not alone.
(emphases added)
Alas, William Hope Hodgson was not allowed to finish the tale of his soul; the amazing and wondrous works of both prose and poetry that might have been must remain forever unheard. And that dreaded thing—“the unuttered word”—must always be the plight of us all. But we know today that Hodgson’s genius was not truly “smothered.” No author or poet or artist in any art has ever succeeded in “[gleaning their] teeming brain.” There is not world enough or time. What we have in the compilation of the work of this young genius, including his little-known poetic output must suffice. And most believe it does.
Frank Coffman is a published poet, story writer and college professor
TEN POEMS
A Selection of Poems by William Hope Hodgson
Selected and edited by Frank Coffman
william hope hodgson
THE NIGHT WIND
O, thou sad wind, drear and inscrutable,
I hear thy speech among dark mountain crests – (Above their faces, calm and immutable,) Sinking at whiles to rests Like the slumbering creep of foam on quiet sands, Or sleeping of mists and rain o’er silent lands, Rising anon to speech which seems to sound Out of the throat of some undreamt-of Pain – Rising and rising, till the whole world round Gives back an echo of thy mournful strain, Till the mysterious deeps that lurk in space Receive the sound in their engulphant maws; And further off, where through tremendous doors God peers, strangely it passes o’er His face, Meaning of worlds in pain.
INSPIRATION
Thou pursuest thy lonely way ‘Midst tortuous paths of brooding thought Lit by no gleam of earthly day Till, in a while, thy soul has caught, Despite of flutterings to escape, A formless thing of light —unwrought; A misty, glowing spirit-flake, Waiting thy fire, thy forge, to make It into some great glorious shape.
GONE
Thou hast gone on before me Into the grave’s strange gloom. Would that I could have gone with thee To share thy tomb! To share thy tomb, and thy waking, If waking there be from death; If not, it were joy forsaking This life and the torture of breath And the pain of my old heart breaking And the fear of the years yet to roll With their terror of loneliness aching Within my hungering soul!
LOVE SONG TO THE DEAD
I stand upon the rim of death, and sing my song, E’er I, stepping, pass along Where the lonesome shadows throng In the silent Underneath. Whether I may come to thee Who shall tell me? I go blind. Just my life, a useless thing! To the lone abyss I fling Chance that, dying, I may find Thee, who art all hope for me. If I find thee not, then I, Wand’ring ‘neath some awful sky, Shall sup doom with every breath, Past the easeful touch of death. . . . Just a shape of agony Craving for one sight of thee. I stand upon the rim of death, and sing my song, E’er I, stepping, pass along Where the lonesome shadows throng In the silent Underneath.
SPUME
A loud wind screams; A sea-horse rushes past, A form of raging water filled with gleams, Hurling before the blast.
SONG OF THE SHIP
And I toss the blue from left to right, And I leap the driving surge, And the tall seas follow close behind, And ever the moaning of the wind Wails softly a solemn dirge
Through the lofty heights Whence the tender lights Of evening take their flight. And the night comes down in gloomy waves, And the growling thunders rise, Till their booming echoes fill the night, And the lightning throws its livid light Across the murmuring skies:
Whilst mountainous steeps And muttering deeps Shape in the blast that raves. And the light flies up across the waves, And the dark gives place to dawn, And I see the whirling clouds of spray Break over half of the coming day In the luridness of morn, That lifts and flies Far across the skies Lighting a thousand graves.
THOU AND I
O Sea, in days Long past, thy bosom bore My little craft upon thine endless ways, From shore ‘cross thee, and back again to shore. Thy solitude I shared with thee when thou Didst sink to some great stillness, there to brood; And loneliness lay coldly on thy brow. Sad, solemn notes Chimed softly o’er thy breadths, As though some secret rite in thy remotes Wafted its harmony from slumberous depths. And this poor shape I would commend to thee; Treat it with tenderness—hide it, and drape It with thy beauties submarine, O Sea.
CONQUEST
I saw the cold dawn stride across the East, A ghostly light –a livid Shade, that stept With quick’ning strides from the abyss of night. Higher it strode and flashed a sword of flame, Shearing the murky clouds of night in twain, A riven gap that reached from sea to heaven. And then a thousand glittering darts it flung Of blazing rays that flamed across the void And pierced the heart of night with quivering wounds That bled a sombre glory o’er the wave. Then o’er the dim sea’s edge I saw the targe Of day—the Sun—loom grandly through the mists; And night expired beneath the feet of day.
THY WANDERING SOUL
Thy spray-dewed soul o’er many a sea has ridden, Borne unseen through the spume where tempests ever call; Where seas in shuddering mountains, tortured, driven, Heave smokily along, while over all The deep continuous boomings and the moanings Of some vast storm’s reverberating sound, Fills the whole sky with screamings and with groanings Rising above the shouting seas around.
Anon, the grim and murky night is riven With some green serpent flaming from the vast, With some cruel glitter lighting up the wildness, Lighting the night-tide of that overcast; One moment showing all that has been hidden— Deep quaking valleys gaping ‘neath the blast, Mad screeching fountains shooting through the darkness, Leaping sea-horses roaming masterless.
And there, where spray, in foaming pillars forming, Reaching the sky its canopy upholds— Whitening towers of surge to save it falling, Seen in the flash of some weird lightning’s glow— There midst the din, the tumult and the storming, Comes to thy soul the well-known, tortured cry, Comes the wild scream of some poor sailor calling, Calling for help beneath a lonely sky—
While through the wrack there drive up ghosts unbidden, Even as thou art—driving through the surge, Joining their eldritch cries to ocean’s weeping, Joining their voices to that thunder-dirge; Dirging for one, who sinking to his sleeping, Sinking is gone where mystery unfolds; Sinking, has passed until death shall awaken From that sad sleep far in the deeps below.
FAREWELL
And, now it is farewell, Forever, O great Sea! Yet in some distant world, my soul Shall dream of thee. For now, a far-off toll, I hear— It is my knell Rung out by solemn waves on mist-bound shores, While overhead, the groan Of opening, monstrous doors Comes echoing down to me, And streams of awful light Shine o’er thy tumult, Sea, As I pass up across the night Into the great Unknown.
Works Cited
Frank, Jane. “Introduction.” The Lost Poetry of William Hope Hodgson. Tartarus Press, 2005.
Hemingway, Ernest. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” — pick any edition or online source.
Hodgson, William Hope. The Lost Poetry of William Hope Hodgson. Ed. Jane Frank. PS Publishing & Tartarus Press. Kindle Edition.
Keats, John. “When I Have Fears” — pick any edition or online source.
Are writers still perpetuating stereotypes? How do we portray women in speculative fiction? We’d like to believe that modern weird fiction has mostly moved on (we’d like to think that), but are we right? Have the fantasy and SF genres done the same? When US author Balogun Ojetade recently made a strong statement of his views on the portrayal of women in SFF, focusing especially on black characters, we paid attention.
The questions he asks can also easily be applied to how we present female characters of any colour in SFF – and horror.
“A closet misogynist has a vast array of words, comments, phrases and attitudes they can employ to subtly put a woman down, or disconcert her, but without it being immediately apparent that is what they are actually doing.”
We asked Balogun if we could host his article here, and he kindly agreed. It’s worth some thought…
Bombshells and Bae: Sexism in Afrofuturism
by Balogun Ojetade
I love reading and writing Afrofuturistic and Afroretroistic stories – particularly science fiction, fantasy and horror featuring larger than life heroes and sheroes and eye-popping action. I really do. But I am growing increasingly disgusted by the sexism within a lot of it. I can no longer read books in which people of color and women are constantly oppressed and seen as lesser beings in a world based on fantasy and science fiction – even if WE are the authors of it.
Lately – as the father of seven daughters who are all avid readers of Afrofuturism and Afroretroism – I have become particularly disgusted with the continuing sexism in the writing and in the visual art.
Writers, you can create a world with any rules you choose. In your world, you don’t have to continue to perpetuate the sexist tropes so prevalent in Fantasy and Science Fiction since its inception.
Are you that lacking in creativity that you cannot write something better? Are you that apathetic to the plight of our Sisters? Or have you convinced yourself you have to maintain some sexist status quo to sell?
Bruh. Do better.
Certain tropes have been formed and propagated. Given the overwhelming number of novels set in a sort of idealized, white, medieval Europe; given the grossly oversimplified and homogenized concept of medieval gender roles, stereotypes and sexist archetypes have arisen in Fantasy and Science Fiction and Black male writers are giving us the same old trite bullshit. Some examples of these played out, tired tropes are:
The Spirited Woman Married Off Against Her Will To A Man She Doesn’t Love
The Lone And Exceptional Woman Warrior In A Culture Of Male Warriors
The Widowed Queen Fighting To Keep Her Throne Against An All-Male Cast Of Contenders
The Woman Who Runs Away Rather Than Be Married Off Against Her Will But Who Then Needs Rescuing From Worldly Perils
The Woman Whose Love Of Books And Scholarship Is Exceptional And Odd And Therefore Deemed Socially Awkward
The Unmarried Woman Who Is Happy Being Unmarried And Therefore Considered An Oddity
The Unmarried Woman Who Was Forbidden To Marry The Man She Loved And Is Therefore Sad And Unfulfilled
The Woman Who Ran Away To Marry The Man Forbidden To Her And Who Is Now A Social Pariah
The Penniless Woman Who Needs To Be Rescued From Penury As Her Gender Prevents Her From Working
The Girl Forced To Dress As A Boy In Order To Live Out Her Socially Unacceptable Dreams
The Adventurous Daughter Whose Parents Let Her Run Free But Threaten Her With Marriage Should She Fail
The Female Scholar/Magician Trying To Make It In A Largely Male World
The Lone Female Soldier/Technician/Magician/Scholar Whose Male Colleagues Don’t Take Her Seriously.
Come now. That’s all you got?
Bruh. Do better.
As writers, we are not bound by these tropes. We can choose to write otherwise. Or we can choose to take our exploration of sexism further.
In most Fantasy and Science Fiction, we are left with sexism as a background detail; a tool used to justify the plight or origins of women and girls in the story, but never actually addressed.
You, dear writer, can follow sexism to some of its natural conclusions rather than focus exclusively on those few exceptional women who have avoided it, forcing characters – and, by extension, the readers – to view sexism as more than an inevitable background detail.
Or, you can avoid writing default sexism in the first place by actually considering how gender roles work in your story, building a cultural, social and historical setting that usurps the expectations of the reader. You can create an equal society, or one whose inequalities are unusual; you could write a typically sexist society, but make sexism a major narrative focus. Lots of different ways to explore the topic… if you are willing.
If not?
Bruh. Do better
As writers, we should not perpetuate sexism by training readers to take its presence for granted: to refrain from so much as questioning or calling it out, let alone showing its worst consequences.
Most male authors write sexist stories without any conscious thought, simply because it never occurs to them to do otherwise. The freedom to ignore the relevance of women is just another form of privilege – a privilege more malignant than benign. And remember: if your equality looks homogeneous, then it’s probably not equality.
Modern sexism has become cunning, sly, codified. In the same way a closet racist would never dream of openly saying “nigger” but might refer to killing “zombies,” or make a pointed reference to someone Black having a natural rhythm, or liking fried chicken, a closet misogynist has a vast array of words, comments, phrases and attitudes they can employ to subtly put a woman down, or disconcert her, but without it being immediately apparent that is what they are actually doing.
Intelligent writers are particularly adept at this.
I have written several novels – Moses: The Chronicles of Harriet Tubman, Once Upon A Time in Afrika, A Haunting in the SWATS, A Single Link and Wrath of the Siafu and the just-released Initiate 16 – that attempt to turn these tropes on their heads. Read the novels and tell me if I succeeded.
Let us all strive harder for awareness of – and sensitivity to – sexism in our writings and our readings. Let us be more critical of it, for to do and say nothing about sexism is to help propagate it. Are you helping to propagate oppression?
If so?
Bruh. Do better.
As always, your comments are welcome and encouraged.
Balogun Ojetade writes novels, short stories, and comics, is a martial artist, and champions speculative fiction by black creators. And you can find all sorts of interesting stuff on his site The Chronicle of Harriet:
We’ll link the Initiate 16 book some time soon, but in the meantime, his dark novel A Haunting in the SWATS is particularly worth a look:
“A substantial blockbuster, a type of urban fantasy, and brutal with it. This isn’t cute magic and laying small tricks – the book is dark and gritty. Savannah Swann’s strict rules are sometimes praiseworthy, sometimes highly objectionable; she’s a hard woman, torn over her loyalties and the strange nature of her own family, never mind what she has to fight. A blend of African source myths, demonic possession, shapeshifting – and dare we say even Lovecraft when the dirt really hits the fan. Read it as a big grimdark contemporary adventure, or as a twisted struggle of right and wrong, love and hate.”
We think we might have said the above, but we can’t remember.
He’s also in Terminus, an enjoyable new collection of speculative and horror tales set around black Atlanta, which has just become available in Kindle:
Do add your own thoughts – and join us in a couple of days for something entirely different…
Whilst you’re here, we should also mention that the latest dark, thrill-packed issue of Occult Detective Quarterly has just hit the stands. Don’t miss out.
Want something different to read? Today we bring you news of eight books with it all – weird portents, a horror film tribute, essays on supernatural fiction, an eerie and literary novella, Afrikan historical fantasy, warped psychological horror, the weird West, and the scary fantasy of black Atlanta. Phew! Yes, dear listener, it’s a quick round-up of recent releases from small and independent presses, which ought to be enough to keep you busy.
‘Son of Mfumu: A Changa’s Safari Adventure’ by Milton Davis
Milton Davis finally completes his Changa’s Safari series, an enjoyable alternative to Medieval Europe-type fantasy books.
From the frigid steppes of Mongolia to the illustrious heart of the Songhay Empire, Changa has sailed the high seas and trekked across treacherous landscapes. He has battled men and monsters, the living and the dead, survived countless perils, acquired and lost fortunes, commanded armies and allied with demigods. All along he pursued profit and adventure for the sole purpose of quenching his thirst for vengeance in the blood of the ruthless sorcerer who killed his father. Now, Changa finds himself alone, bereft of his faithful companions and the resources he intended to finance an army to help him seize his vengeance. Changa’s safari finally leads him back to his homeland, back to the place where it all began. And this safari is the most dangerous of all….
‘Of Doomful Portent’ by Matthew M. Bartlett (Author), Yves Tourigny (Illustrator)
First released as a limited edition, Of Doomful Portent is now available generally in paperback, a great little (nasty) book to browse. Fabulous black and white illos throughout.
Pope Sevenius. The Segmented Man. Mister White Noise. Hurt Me Henry. These are just some of the monstrous characters you’ll wish you hadn’t met in the countdown to a catastrophic Christmas storm in Of Doomful Portent: An Advent Calendar of Grotesque Horrors
Today’s top Horror and SF authors pay tribute to C.H.U.D. film in this anthology of original fiction. C.H.U.D. is a genre defying, cult classic film featuring monsters living in the sewers below New York. The stories in this anthology expand the world created by the film and add depth to the C.H.U.D. universe like never before. From stories of apocalyptic horror and all out monster action, to tales of underground parties interrupted by uninvited guests and evening strolls that end in death, this anthology will leave you both smiling and breathless. Also features in-depth interviews with Andrew Bonime (producer) and Parnell Hall (screenwriter).
A disturbing novella which explores the rare creations of a reclusive author.
“Tragedy, urban legend, Gothic romance, warped fairy tale of New York: it’s all there. And of course, most important of all is the seductive allure of writing and of books – and what that can lead some people to do. You may not like my answer to the mystery of the third book. But I hope you stay to find out.”
The Black Pilgrimage & Other Explorations’ by Rosemary Pardoe
Essays on supernatural fiction from the scholarly and widely read editor of Ghosts & Scholars.
The celebrated writer M. R. James (1862-1936) is the most significant author of ghost stories in the world. His macabre work has terrified and fascinated readers for over 100 years. Now collected in one volume, 29 essays on his ghostly tales and themes by editor and James scholar Rosemary Pardoe
In addition, a further eight essays on other authors, including Fritz Leiber, Arthur Machen, E. G. Swain and Many Wade Wellman and a fascinating miscellany of nine additional pieces on a variety of topics.
A foray into a sub-genre with a growing body of work, the Weird Western.
In the chaotic years following the end of the Civil War, Little Dixie is a brutal no-man’s land where life and death are dictated not just by gangs of lawless thugs, but by far more sinister things as well. Shadowy beings that walk the line in the dirt separating Jesus from the Devil, writing their names in blood, terror, and human suffering. Such is the woeful condition of Coffin Mills, a town cursed by a history of dark arts and shameful secrets. Something wicked has been stealing the town’s children, something not of this world, or even the next.
Salvation arrives in the form of a trio of mysterious gunslingers known throughout the South as the Haints, a legendary band of bounty hunters specializing in tracking prety of a supernatural variety. They kill monsters, plain and simple.
Local bus driver, Liz Frost, pulls the gun from her mouth and decides to live with her loneliness for one more day. She dresses, combs her hair, and goes to work. Nine souls board her route that fateful morning in rural Australia, nine souls who Liz drags back to her home against their will. She wants to build a new family from these passengers, men and women who are willing to kill to avoid becoming her kin. The bus leaves a trail of carnage in its wake as it rockets towards a house that has held its secrets for far too long, a place where crows now gather, ready to feed on whatever is left behind.
This award-winning, psychological experience is back in print, and includes the exclusive sequel The Sound of his Bones Breaking, a novella that will leave you leave you truly shaken.
Another anthology for which we received the ARC. Very different takes on Atlanta, from light urban fantasy to gritty detection work, by a range of black writers.
Atlanta. ATL. The Rising Phoenix. The City too Busy to Hate. The Black Mecca. Capital of the Deep South. There, between flitting shadows and full moons, exists another world filled with dark creatures, demons, and immortals. Only a thin veil separates the Atlanta you know from this mysterious realm. Nine brave authors risk it all to reveal the crossroads of Southern charm and the Black Fantastic. Y’all ready?
“In the end, it becomes obvious that it doesn’t matter what country, culture or colour with which you identify – this is a lively anthology with some powerful moments and some wry laughs vying for your attention.”
That’s it for today, but more features in a day or so, including a return to our marking of 100 years since the death of William Hope Hodgson. And possibly something light-hearted thrown in as well…
