William Hope Hodgson's borderlands: monstrosity, other worlds, and the future at the fin de siècle.

William Hope Hodgson has generally been understood as the author of several atmospheric sea-horror stories and two powerful but flawed horror science fiction novels. There has been no substantial study analysing the historical and cultural context of his fiction or its place in the Gothic, horror, and science fiction literary traditions. Through analysing the theme of borderlands, this thesis contextualises Hodgson’s novels and short stories within these traditions and within late Victorian cultural discourse. Liminal other world realms, boundaries of corporeal monstrosity, and the imagined future of the world form key elements of Hodgson’s fiction, reflecting the currents of anxiety and optimism characterising fin-de-siècle British society. Hodgson’s early career as a sailor and his interest in body-building and physical culture colour his fiction. Fin-de-siècle discourses of evolution, entropy, spiritualism, psychical research, and the occult also influence his ideas. In The House on the Borderland (1908) and The Night Land (1912), the known world brushes against other forms of reality, exposing humanity to incomprehensible horrors. In The Ghost Pirates (1909), the sea forms a liminal region on the borderland of materiality and immateriality in which other world encounters can take place. In The Night Land and The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ (1907), evolution gives rise to strange monstrous forms existing on the borderlines of species and identity. In Hodgson’s science fiction—The House on the Borderland and The Night Land—the future of the earth forms a temporal borderland of human existence shaped by fin-de-siècle fears of entropy and the heat-death of the sun. Alongside the work of other writers such as H. G. Wells and Arthur Machen, Hodgson’s four novels respond to the borderland discourses of the fin de siècle, better enabling us to understand the Gothic literature of the period as well as Hodgson’s position as a writer who offers a unique imaginative perspective on his contemporary culture.

Human traces in urban places.

Over the last two centuries many major cities have undergone large-scale modernisation that has led to the growing sense of homogenisation associated with such locales across the globe. The fractal logic that is at the heart of so many urban settings, where the whole system is made up of parts that are identical to the whole, seems to serve in making anonymous everyday experiences. Public transport and its corresponding street furniture, if thoughtfully designed and planned, has the potential to form an integral element in the promotion of a sense of identity, interconnectedness and flow within a city. Furthermore, bus stops, benches, litter bins, curb-sides, posts and pavements, to mention a few, offer interesting cases to consider how people truly engage with contemporary urban spaces. These objects—part of routine and made familiar—are elements of daily lives that are ingredients towards visual and multi-modal experiences. In addition, these are places where individuals encounter sociality and materiality in ordinary and sometimes extraordinary ways. This paper uses a visual ethnographic approach towards exploring the human traces of routine activities that have an impact on the cityscape. An Investigation of these details found within the urban landscape lead us towards understanding how we engage with and navigate cities. This is essentially an urban archaeological study that looks to reveal how non-designed phenomenon in urban places can contribute to our image of a city, providing a reflection on homogeneity within the built environment. Our visual ethnography focuses on six major cities: two each in Britain, Europe and North America. The findings of this work illustrate through visual analyses three key characteristics: first, how urban spaces are transformed intentionally and unintentionally; second, how transformations are practical, functional, beautiful and sometimes ridiculous; third, how transformations reveal values around visual and multi-modal experiences inherent to people.