Quote:
Originally Posted by K-Thom
Uh, am I correct that these are all brand-new stories? Since the original ones have been written by William Hope Hodgson early last century.
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Yes, brand new, by me, using the character.
Here's what I say in the foreword:-
I write to escape.
My brain needed something, and writing gave it what was required. That point, back nearly twenty years ago, was like switching on an engine, one that has been running steadily ever since.
And most of the time, the things that engine chooses to give me to write are very pulpy. I'd love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.
Most of the aforesaid characters are trademarked and off-bounds for writers without paying licensing fees.
Carnacki however is fair game.
Nowadays there is a plethora of detectives in both book and film who may seem to use the trappings of crime solvers, but get involved in the supernatural. William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel (the book that led to the movie Angel Heart) is a fine example, an expert blending of gumshoe and deviltry that is one of my favorite books. Likewise, in the movies, we have cops facing a demon in Denzel Washington's Fallen that plays like a police procedural taken to a very dark place.
My interest goes further back to the "gentleman detective" era where we have seekers of truth in Blackwood's John Silence and... and William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki.
Carnacki resonated with me immediately on my first reading many years ago. Several of the stories have a Lovecraftian viewpoint, with cosmic entities that have no regard for the doings of mankind. The background Hodgson proposes fits with some of my own viewpoint on the ways the Universe might function, and the slightly formal Edwardian language seems to be a "voice" I fall into naturally.
These eight tales see Carnacki pitted against a variety of foes. and sees me working out more aspects of the cosmology.
There will be more to come.