The Night Land (1912)

I think it's interesting if you like post apocalyptic settings. The sun (every star in the galaxy) is dead. Earth is tidally locked, all remaining life sits in a 100 mile deep chasm where the atmosphere hasn't been stripped away and liquid water still exists and the last of humanity is waiting its ultimate destruction when its geothermal power runs cold and it is destroyrd from eldrich horrors that surround them.

Its neat. Entropy and cosmic horror and a questing knight story.

The first third is really great, then he goes outside and it becomes repetitive shit
The whole eating and sleeping routine gets boring pretty fast and around the same time the worldbuilding slows down

>>9942671
The ending was amazing.
>Spend all book being terrified of these monsters
>Future Chainaxe Beowulf fucking slaughters a hundred of them to get his waifu to safety

>>9942787
Yeah it takes some patience or some skimming to get through the tedious journey and its worse after the hero finds the heroine.It picks up later once they spot the great redoubt on the return trip, that part until the end of the book, think is really well done.

>>9942795
Yeah, the imagery is awesome, the guy in broken armor, running for 3 days straight and so angry and tired he can't even remember killing half the things he did. The whole population of the redoubt goes ape-shit berserk watching this dude dragging his lady home, they are so hyped it alerts the eldrich horrors with the sheer psychic gestalt and the whole finale battle was absolutely awesome.

>>9942671
AND THIS YOU SHALL PERCEIVE

>>9942671
this picture and title is my most inner dreamscape
ive had this dream and it is mythological and strange

>>9942671
epub download anywhere?

>>9943004
This was the most annoying shit, I just got flashbacks.
>AND THIS I TELL YOU SO THAT YOU WILL PERCEIVE AND KNOW

>>9942671
neat.
You read The Black Star Passes by Campbell? Gets exceptional around halfway through, had some similar surprising themes.

>>9943010
The image is almost exactly how I imagined everything to look like. Lot of neat fanart and fanfic associated with the book. The one story like a prequel with the autonomous war robot built by a faction of>>9943109
weirdo philosophers was one of my favorites even if it didn't mesh with how I interpreted the setting.

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>>9943821

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Also read Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright if you haven't already.

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>>9943821
I liked the flashback to the twilit world where human civilization consisted of a bunch of slowly moving trains.

>>9942671
Prose is too complicated for me, apparently I'm retarded.

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>Literally spend millions of years waiting for a chance to kill humans
>Finally get the chance
>Outnumber the human five to one
>Lose instantly because he's actually Hercules lol

And this I tell you, that you may perceive the absolute state of the servants of those dark powers which dwell in the night land.

One thing I've always wondered about is why the inhabitants of the pyramid don't just plan on committing suicide once the defences of their redoubt fail. Isn't the scariest aspect of some of these monsters the fact that they can destroy souls?

I am reading this now and enjoying it.

It's one of those books that goes well with a glass of wine or whisky

>>9944251
They probably do, it's just so ridiculously far off that they haven't bothered planning for it yet.

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>>9943834
Just finished that first story. It's the first thing I've ever read by Wright, I'm surprised he didn't write it in the original style, looking at his website he seems to fucking love overwrought verbosity.

It is good though. He captures the sheer hideousness of the evil humanity is facing pretty well, but I far prefer the original Main Character's unflappable pic-related attitude to Telemachus's cerebral attitude.

>>9942671

Is this like... Berserk in space?

>>9942671

Unique setting, yep. One of my favourite novels, but also not a big fan of its story and writing style.

So... What is the Master-Word?

>>9942671
Just tried to read it. This is pure trash. It's ridiculous and long-winded with not a shred of authenticity to it, a parody of a parody.

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>>9944370

Not really. The Night Land's protagonist is more like your regular hero, has no tragic backstory and is definitely no anti-hero. The setting is quite dark, yep, but no demonic sacrifices or giant penises so, nope, this is no Berserk in Space (awesome as that would be)

>>9944240
The Ab-Humans probably aren't directly servants of the powers that want to destroy humanity. Likewise, the Silent Ones (maybe?) pretty much just go about their business. Same with the giant slugs. The truly malevolent forces appear to be concentrated directly around the Redoubt.

>>9944487
Jesus

>>9944487
Its basically a telepathic message authentication code ala radio cryptograpy. Only humans 'know' it. Its probably not an actual word.

>>9944565
My theory is that the creatures and abhumans are influenced by the dark forces, except maybe the Silent Ones. They are psychically dominated or manipulated by them at the least. Consider the North East watcher signals to them to attack on a couple occasions.

>>9943851

The philosopher war robot story featured the cities on a train, too. It tried to help them while It perpetrated acts of genocide on the subset of people that built fixed redoubts because it was disgusted and horrified that they didn't dream when they slept. Those people are implied to have devolved into the abhumans and the train people turned into psychic humans.

http://nightland.website/index.php/stories/night-land-stories/the-days-of-darkening/11-narcissus

There is that story, written with 20th century scifi prose thankfully.

>>9944251
Everyone who leaves carriwe suicide pills. Presumably there are enough on hand to pass out if needed.

>>9944673
No doubt. But a key part of Night Land seems to be that the Powers don't really pay that much attention to anything except the redoubts. The hero encounters the Ab-Humans far away from either redoubt so they were probably on their own time.

>>9944901
Yeah that's true but they seem totally hell-bent on killing the soldier and his waifu even after they get themselves sliced apart in scores. It does say that they are more or less human. So that said maybe they really just wanted to bang Naani or wanted his weapon?

>>9944876
So wait, is the implication that he became the Watchers?

>>9945952
Yeah it does imply that which I think is silly. I hate nano-machines as plot magic wands. But its spoiler alert- all a simulation, its more interesting as a Japanese Holdout murder-bot that kills you because your dreams are boring. Dumb if its the Watchers.

>>9944876
It's really hard to reconcile all of these with Wright's expansions, because they're so different in tone. I actually like this one more in terms of how it's written, but not its subject matter. It feels too sci-fi, too mundane.

>>9944487
It's something that the demons and monsters of the Night-Land cannot say back, so I'm betting it's the name of God or something, though they seem to have largely forgotten about religion or faith beyond the vague understanding that there are "good powers" out there.
Wright makes it pretty explicit in his interpretation in The Last of All Suns that it's the name of God, because the main character is capable of summoning anything that he can name, and at the last moment says the Master Word to prevent the dark ones (implied to be pagan gods) from getting into the House of Silence, which is actually the lock on an interdimensional cage implied to be hell.

Think I've laid that one out, it's a bit hard to understand wtf is going on at the end there. Then again Wright is obviously not canon, he wrote that story like 80 years after Hodgkinson died, but I like the interpretation.

>>9946205
I like the story on its own but I agree the tone is different. Its alot of the author trying to shoehorn his menschejager killer robots into a setting, but it fits themantically. Consider William Hodgeson was a soldier, killer, intellectual in real life and wrote as such. Narcissus isn't too far off that mark, even if the story doesn't mesh to the setting or feel of the original.

>>9944637
>>9946224
This is even more crazy if you know that in the Hindu tradition at the end times only remebering God's name will be enough to save your soul!

>>9942671
I have it and enjoyed it
but the second half of the book for the return journey sucks a lot compared to the first half

>>9946330
There's really no need to "reconcile" the story with Wright; the authors just had different views on the setting. There's actually quite a bit of Night Land fan fiction out there; many modern authors try to explain the Night Land in terms of advanced technology. Wright's Gothic approach (along with his general competency) sets him apart though.

>>9946224
The Last of All Suns also said the House of Silence was the House on the Borderland from Hodgson's eponymous story (which you should read if you haven't already).

honestly reading this book I got so fed up with the annoying girl once he found her that I never finished it, is the end actually worthwhile?

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map of the night land

>>9945952
Read another story, Gold. It kind of explains why he became the Watcher. The plot of Gold reminds me of Stross' Accelerando, too.

>>9946885
That's really cool. I know Wright was still an atheist when he wrote that story, I wonder if he was aware of that, and referencing it instead of the religion he would later actually adopt.

>>9947643
It spends a little while being slow, then it gets fucking metal and flies out of control.

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>>9947398
Glad that that shithole survived the heat-death of the universe. I wonder what happened to that palooka and his hundred friends who charged into the House of Silence in The Night Land, do you suppose they just got soul-eaten? I'm actually surprised Wright didn't mention them stuck in some hideous torment for eternity in the silent plain.

>>9947657
So what's the deal with the Dark Palace?

>>9948273
no idea
most of this stuff is just mentioned in passing and expanded in latter fan fiction stuff
here's a timeline with related fan stuff

http://nightland.website/index.php/background/timeline

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>>9942671
It's in my "to read" pile. Will make it a priority since it sounds very neat.