THE DEEP ONES: "Out of the Storm" by William Hope Hodgson
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1semdetenebre
"Out of the Storm" by William Hope Hodgson
Discussion begins July 14, 2021.
First published in the February 1909 issue of Putnam's Monthly.
ONLINE VERSIONS
https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Out_of_the_Storm
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?880954
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories
The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea
William Hope Hodgson (The Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction)
Out of the Storm
MISCELLANY
https://williamhopehodgson.wordpress.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hope_Hodgson
https://fantastic-writers-and-the-great-war.com/the-writers/william-hope-hodgson...
https://tinyurl.com/55t88bmx
Discussion begins July 14, 2021.
First published in the February 1909 issue of Putnam's Monthly.
ONLINE VERSIONS
https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Out_of_the_Storm
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?880954
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories
The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea
William Hope Hodgson (The Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction)
Out of the Storm
MISCELLANY
https://williamhopehodgson.wordpress.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hope_Hodgson
https://fantastic-writers-and-the-great-war.com/the-writers/william-hope-hodgson...
https://tinyurl.com/55t88bmx
2AndreasJ
Turns out I’ve got this one in Horrors from Haunted Seas.
3housefulofpaper
I've got this in the Hodgson volume of The Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction.
4semdetenebre
>3 housefulofpaper:
I have that beautiful volume too, but I'm going to read from the Centaur Press Out of the Storm with really its fine b&w illustrations by Stephen Fabian that somewhere along the line got a nice big circular coffee mug stain in the middle of the cover and right through the first few pages!
I have that beautiful volume too, but I'm going to read from the Centaur Press Out of the Storm with really its fine b&w illustrations by Stephen Fabian that somewhere along the line got a nice big circular coffee mug stain in the middle of the cover and right through the first few pages!
7AndreasJ
Well, that was short.
I take "It" to be some sort of non-anthropomorphous personification of the Sea.
The doomed man's message being dictated over wireless is certainly an improvement over the written versions (e.g. Poe's "MS Found in a bottle"). I also liked the idea that the monster was created by God but no longer under His control.
On the whole, though, I didn't like it the story all that much. If this was the first Hodgson I'd read I'd been in little hurry to read more.
(The first Hodgson I did read was The Night Land, which might be better suited to scaring away the average reader. As I've mentioned before, Hodgson is an author I've on the whole enjoyed better in novel format rather than short story.)
I take "It" to be some sort of non-anthropomorphous personification of the Sea.
The doomed man's message being dictated over wireless is certainly an improvement over the written versions (e.g. Poe's "MS Found in a bottle"). I also liked the idea that the monster was created by God but no longer under His control.
On the whole, though, I didn't like it the story all that much. If this was the first Hodgson I'd read I'd been in little hurry to read more.
(The first Hodgson I did read was The Night Land, which might be better suited to scaring away the average reader. As I've mentioned before, Hodgson is an author I've on the whole enjoyed better in novel format rather than short story.)
8semdetenebre
The "bit" (ouch!) with the mother and her little boy was kind of harsh. Nice touch, though. Not much to the story, although it does contain another one of those endings in which the narrator keeps recording his demise up until the bitter end. I should keep a list. Hodgson's evocative maritime touch is on fine display.
9RandyStafford
By coincidence, this is the second story in a row which has weird imagery but nothing supernatural going on. I expected that though since I suggested this story.
For me, there are three things of interest
First, I think Hodgson's inversion of air and sea and land by describing one in terms of the other is interesting. This isn't the only story he does this.
Second, I like how the sea becomes an angry god, the supreme god, before whom humans are rendered bestial and feel compelled to sacrifice to. That's the mother and son and lovers turning on each other.
Third, we have a theme that shows up in Lovecraft: suppressing the truth of the universe, and here's it's only the "normal" natural universe the speaker begs not be revealed.
Joshi has remarked on the story that the narrator's denunciation of God in the early part of the story seems more sincere than the more pro forma apology he gives later. Hodgson was, of course, a clergyman's son.
For me, there are three things of interest
First, I think Hodgson's inversion of air and sea and land by describing one in terms of the other is interesting. This isn't the only story he does this.
Second, I like how the sea becomes an angry god, the supreme god, before whom humans are rendered bestial and feel compelled to sacrifice to. That's the mother and son and lovers turning on each other.
Third, we have a theme that shows up in Lovecraft: suppressing the truth of the universe, and here's it's only the "normal" natural universe the speaker begs not be revealed.
Joshi has remarked on the story that the narrator's denunciation of God in the early part of the story seems more sincere than the more pro forma apology he gives later. Hodgson was, of course, a clergyman's son.
10paradoxosalpha
I like this story better with Randy's comments!
Knowing nothing of Hodgson's bio, it's interesting to learn that he was a PK ("Preacher's Kid")!
Knowing nothing of Hodgson's bio, it's interesting to learn that he was a PK ("Preacher's Kid")!
11housefulofpaper
What I took from this story was
- new technology (radio communication) giving the observers knowledge of the "there are some things Man is not supposed to know" variety. Presumably no witnesses in history have ever been able to report back on the true nature of a storm like this before (taking the Thing as real and not an illusion or metaphor). I suppose a closer comparison would be The Statement of Randolph Carter but as I was reading the story, the one that came to mind was a very short one by Isaac Asimov: a high speed film camera has taken footage of a nuclear explosion. As it's advanced frame by frame, there's a moment at which the mushroom cloud takes on an anthropomorphic shape, but with Devil's horns.
- the scenes with the desperate passengers, especially the mother and child, were really surprisingly gruesome. I wondered how the Putnam's Monthly editors understood the story, why they thought it suitable for their magazine. Wikipedia doesn't say anything about editorial philosophy or target audience for this late stage of its existence. But possibly the apology to God was the important thing for them? A mortal life lost but an immortal soul saved, that kind of thing? That would turn the bleak, proto-Lovecraftian view of the universe we (I think) are all taking from the story, on its head. But, is that what Hodgson felt, or was put in it there to make the story sellable?
- new technology (radio communication) giving the observers knowledge of the "there are some things Man is not supposed to know" variety. Presumably no witnesses in history have ever been able to report back on the true nature of a storm like this before (taking the Thing as real and not an illusion or metaphor). I suppose a closer comparison would be The Statement of Randolph Carter but as I was reading the story, the one that came to mind was a very short one by Isaac Asimov: a high speed film camera has taken footage of a nuclear explosion. As it's advanced frame by frame, there's a moment at which the mushroom cloud takes on an anthropomorphic shape, but with Devil's horns.
- the scenes with the desperate passengers, especially the mother and child, were really surprisingly gruesome. I wondered how the Putnam's Monthly editors understood the story, why they thought it suitable for their magazine. Wikipedia doesn't say anything about editorial philosophy or target audience for this late stage of its existence. But possibly the apology to God was the important thing for them? A mortal life lost but an immortal soul saved, that kind of thing? That would turn the bleak, proto-Lovecraftian view of the universe we (I think) are all taking from the story, on its head. But, is that what Hodgson felt, or was put in it there to make the story sellable?
12RandyStafford
>11 housefulofpaper: In a way, Hodgson helped the landlubbers learn more about "cyclones" (what we would call typhoons and hurricanes) and the experience of sailing into one.
Besides an interest in bodybuilding, Hodgson was something of a pioneer photographer taking photos on board a ship including, I believe, ones taken in a hurricane. Some were of enough interest to be purchased by, I believe, the Royal Society, since they were electrical phenomena at sea unphotographed before.
Before he turned to fiction, he used the photos to illustrate four lectures he would give on cyclones and "pyramidal seas". The latter term seeming to refer to a rising up of sea level in an area of atmospheric pressure". (He doesn't seem to have invented the term, it being found in maritime texts at least as early as 1850.)
Tartarus Press' The Wandering Soul has some of the photos and text of those lectures.
Besides an interest in bodybuilding, Hodgson was something of a pioneer photographer taking photos on board a ship including, I believe, ones taken in a hurricane. Some were of enough interest to be purchased by, I believe, the Royal Society, since they were electrical phenomena at sea unphotographed before.
Before he turned to fiction, he used the photos to illustrate four lectures he would give on cyclones and "pyramidal seas". The latter term seeming to refer to a rising up of sea level in an area of atmospheric pressure". (He doesn't seem to have invented the term, it being found in maritime texts at least as early as 1850.)
Tartarus Press' The Wandering Soul has some of the photos and text of those lectures.
13elenchus
Commenting late as I largely was offline for a couple weeks.
I immediately recognised the story could be understood as wholly natural, without any supernatural elements. But also, the Thing could be considered literal, not merely the wireless operator's "impression" of a natural phenomenon. The passage in which the waters were said to have teeth, to literally be biting and tearing at a sailor, were memorable in that respect. Hodgson seemed deliberately to be using phrases and terms that avoided the idiosyncratic use of metaphor, so the water didn't "pull someone back" but instead had teeth.
I like these ambivalent tales, or perhaps bivalent is a better term: they work equally well as strictly naturalist or supernatural, as opposed to simply being uncertain whether it's one or the other.
I immediately recognised the story could be understood as wholly natural, without any supernatural elements. But also, the Thing could be considered literal, not merely the wireless operator's "impression" of a natural phenomenon. The passage in which the waters were said to have teeth, to literally be biting and tearing at a sailor, were memorable in that respect. Hodgson seemed deliberately to be using phrases and terms that avoided the idiosyncratic use of metaphor, so the water didn't "pull someone back" but instead had teeth.
I like these ambivalent tales, or perhaps bivalent is a better term: they work equally well as strictly naturalist or supernatural, as opposed to simply being uncertain whether it's one or the other.
