BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - FICTION

The Black Spider (1842) Jeremias Gotthelf I have a general rule that, once I have started to read a book, I must continue with it to the end before I can claim the right to comment on it. In the case of The Black Spider , I was beginning to get depressed by page 20 of this classic early nineteenth century Swiss horror novella. One fifth of the tale gone and I had been treated to a lengthy, rather dull and wholesome account of a christening feast for the child of a prosperous Swiss peasant in the first half of the nineteenth century. But Gotthelf knows what he is doing. He has set the reader up for a multi-layered morality tale that loosely bases itself on pre-modern folk interpretations of the causes of the plague. He weaves, from the security of the first section, a genuinely horrific and disturbing tale of a demonic black spider that punishes all those who have defied God and who have tried to short-circuit authority with an appeal to the Devil. The spider, a truly nasty

The Voice in the Night (Short Story, 1907) The House on the Borderland (1908) William Hope Hodgson's much-anthologised The Voice in the Night is a n early (1907) example of eco-horror. It tells the tale of a mysterious natural life form in the South Pacific which has the ability to absorb all life around it including any human beings who come into contact with it. It is a fine tale set in the sea-going environment that so often inspired Hodgson. It should also be regarded as science fiction since there is nothing supernatural in the cause of the distress of the couple who come alongside the narrator's ship. I originally discovered William Hope Hodgson initially as the author of one of the better stories in Cuddon's Penguin Book of Horror Stories . The Derelict (1912) is also an atmospheric tale of sea-going monstrosity. He was also the author of the pulp series Carnacki the Ghost Finder . Hodgson is an oddity and The House on the Borderland is an odd story. It fal