Sharks of the Ether
immortality, reincarnation, and psychic predation
within a science-fictional framework in Hodgson's fiction
Hodgson's work assumes humans have an immortal, immaterial component which is
constantly reincarnated in successive bodies, and is potentially the prey of
larger and more powerful entities. I will argue that Hodgson has
carefully worked this out within a consistent and rational
science-fictional framework which merely borrows the background
colouration of religious or occult superstition: and that in making
this confusion, Hodgson was attempting a poetic reconciliation of
scientific and religious views of the human condition.
The Night Land is full of monsters.
But these monsters are not simply meaningless bogeymen, nor
are they the devils associated with this or that traditional religion.
Hodgson formulated a "scientific" construction of psychic monstrosity, which
is perhaps best expressed in this lengthy excerpt from "The Hog", one of
the Carnacki stories, (written some ten years after THE NIGHT LAND):
'And so it seems to me we have the conception of a huge psychic world, bred out of the physical, lying far
outside of this world and completely encompassing it, except for the doorways about which I hope to tell you
some other evening. This enormous psychic world of the Outer Circle "breeds'- if I may use the term, its own
psychic forces and intelligences, monstrous and otherwise, just as this world produces its own physical forces
and intelligences - beings, animals, insects, etc., monstrous and otherwise.
(For the time being I am simply going to assert that the Carnacki stories
and other works by Hodgson such as "Eloi, Eloi", employ the same
"Ab-Natural psychic biology" as THE NIGHT LAND. Later I may be able
to demonstrate it more clearly)
Let us rephrase the first paragraph of the quotation above:
'And so it seems to me we have the conception of a huge
energy-being world, bred out of the physical, lying far
outside of this world and completely encompassing it,
except for the doorways about which I hope to tell you
some other evening. This enormous energy-being world of the Outer
Circle "breeds'- if I may use the term, its own
energy-being forces and intelligences, monstrous and otherwise,
just as this world produces its own physical forces
and intelligences - beings, animals, insects, etc., monstrous and otherwise.
Suddenly, this sounds a lot more science-fictional, doesn't it?
But in fact nothing whatever has
changed. I have merely substituted a set of noises commonly recognised as
flagging "Science Fiction" - "energy being", "plasma entity" - for an equally meaningless set of noises commonly
recognsed as flagging "Horror" - "psychic", "spirit", "ka".
Reflect upon C.S Lewis's words in PERELANDRA.
We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct
categories, which we label "scientific" and "supernatural" respectively. We think,
in one mood, of Mr Wells' Martians . . . or his Selenites. In quite a different mood
we let our minds loose on the possibility of
angels, ghosts, faries and the like. But the very moment we are
compelled to recognise a creature in either class as real
the distinction begins to get blurred . .
Lewis effectively asked: What if angels were real?
Really real? Then they would be a sort of
powerful living being, one not composed of ordinary matter, but in
theory explicable by science. No longer supernatural, but real.
Light is blood to them. By
presenting his eldils to the reader as aliens, and only then moving upwards, as it were,
into the supernatural realm, Lewis forced his readers to bypass the internal censors which
instinctively divide the world into the supernatural and the
scientfic and surlabel the supernatural "unreal".
Hodgson attempted something similar, but not from a Christan viewpoint.
His logic went something like this. Religion is bunk: but what if
the human "spirit" is real, nontheless?
Really real? And really eternal? Then it must have some
sort of physics. It must subsist on some sort of energy. It must have
an identifiable location. It must have senses. And - finally - it may
have predators.
An ecology of the Ether
For another dose of Hodgson on the psychically monstrous let's return to CARNACKI.
(By the way, I apologise for
the number and length of these quoted sections: but it happens that
they are the most apposite way of getting Hodgson's ideas across).
'But this is not the only circle of gas which is floating round us.
There are, as I have been forced to conclude, larger and more
attenuated "gas" belts lying, zone on zone, far up and around us.
These compose what I have called the inner circles.
They are surrounded in turn by a circle or belt of what I
have called, for want of a better word, "emanations".
'This circle which I have named the Outer Circle can not lie
less than a hundred thousand miles off the earth, and has a
thickness which I have presumed to be anything between five and
ten million miles. I believe, but I cannot prove, that it does not
spin with the earth but in the opposite direction, for
which a plausible cause might be found in the study of the
theory upon which a certain electrical machine is constructed.
'I have reason to believe that the spinning of this, the
Outer Circle, is disturbed from time to time through causes
which are quite unknown to me, but which I believe are based
in physical phenomena. Now, the Outer Circle is the psychic
circle, yet it is also physical. To illustrate what I mean I
must again instance electricity, and say that just as electricity
discovered itself to us as something quite different from any
of our previous conceptions of matter, so is the Psychic or
Outer Circle different from any of our previous conceptions of
matter. Yet it is none the less physical in its origin, and
in the sense that electricity is physical, the Outer or
Psychic Circle is physical in its constituents. Speaking
pictorially it is, physically, to the Inner Circle what
the Inner Circle is to the upper strata of the air, and
what the air - as we know that intimate gas - is to the
waters and the waters to the solid world. You get my
line of suggestion?'
Can you say "Van Allen Belts"?
In this passage the Hog and its kindred
Sharks of the Ether take on the
characteristics of "plasma beings",
encoded in matter which is too thin and tenuous to be considered
mundanely physical, but which is nontheless not supernatural.
Hodgson's coinage for this mode of being was was "Abnatural".
The monsters in THE NIGHT LAND are essentially descendants of the Hog.
Alive, the products of an evolutionary process,
but not made of ordinary matter, they presumably,
sustain themselves within an
ecology of lesser "Abnatural" entities.
Think of them as predatory fish in an ocean. The ones that bother us are in this analogy facultative bottom-feeders.
From the human point of view, they are soul-eaters.
Call them PNEUMAVORES.
Hodgson speculates brilliantly on the
source and origin of these entities. Some of them may be
native to the Earth. Others have entered from other universes, through
Doorways in the Night, "ruptures in the Aether", gaps in space which might correspond to the
SF concept of Wormholes or Einstein-Rosen bridges.
But they are not Gods or demons. They are the product of nature.
However, what is essential about these beings from a
human point of view
is not their origin, but their intent.
As Hodgson memorably
states, they are
"congregate and gathered about the Mighty Pyramid,
being attracted thereto by the great spiritual essence
of so wondrous a multitude of humans gotten so close in
one spot, even as sharks do come after the ship that hath
bullocks within."
Sharks of the Ether indeed!!
It is now time to examine Hodgson's ideas about the favored Prey of these
monsters - the human spirit.
The human spirit as a psychic symbiote of the body
Let us continue our excerpt from "The Hog"
'The monstrosities of the Outer Circle are malignant towards all that we consider most desirable, just in the
same way a shark or a tiger may be considered malignant, in a physical way, to all that we consider desirable.
They are predatory - as all positive force is predatory. They have desires regarding us which are incredibly
more dreadful to our minds when comprehended than an intelligent sheep would consider our desires towards
its own carcass. They plunder and destroy to satisfy lusts and hungers exactly as other forms of existence
plunder and destroy to satisfy their lusts and hungers. And the desire of these monsters is chiefly, if not
always, for the psychic entity of the human.
This formulation is clear, simple, and logical. In a nutshell, it is that
human beings have a "non-physical" component which:
-
is composed of the same type of immaterial "life", as the Hog and other pneumavores.
-
is the seat of human consciousness
-
is potentially the prey of the pneumavores, which are far larger and more powerful.
The picture we get is of a human being as a sort of symbiote, with a
material, animal, body and a localised, semi-immaterial,
co-inhabiting "energy creature", which is identified with the traditional Spirit or Soul.
This identification is not religious.
Hodgson was of course working in a fantastical/fictional mode.
However,
he attempted to work out his naturalistic idea of the "spirit"
consistently and logically,
while at the same time employing the vocabulary
of spiritualism
and religion to signal the fact that he was attempting a synthesis -
a world-view which would be scientifically consistent with a God-less and
radically entropic universe, but would allow humanity
purpose and meaning.
The abilities of the spirit-symbiote
It is now time to ennumerate Hodgson's ideas about the Spirit's capacities.
First, The "psychic symbiote" has senses, and is capable of surveying
its environment in ways apart from the information obtained by the physical body.
Our hero is afflicted with the
Night Hearing, which allows him to contact the humans
in the Lesser redoubt and to some degree to listen in
on the messages passing between the monsters in the Night Land.
However, he is not unique except in degree. All human beings of this age have
some "spiritual" senses - they can see the Pneumavores with varying degrees of
clarity, and all if them can sense the monsters' oppressive presence
Second, the Spirit can send and receive messages.
All human beings who "be not clods" can
send and receive the telepathic
identification code that Hodgson calls "The Master Word".
Also, some degree of
controlled communication is possible. Not only does X
have conversation with Nanni, but massed messages, at least,
can be sent by others with lesser talents - a group
of would-be rescuers sends a long-distance message by calling
"in unison".
Third, the Spirit is apparently the true seat of
consciousness and volition. It is the human Spirit, solely, which utters the
Master-Word (whether directly or through the lips). A human being without
a Spirit is a sort of monster.
Finally, the Spirit is potentially immortal.
It persists after death. It fleets away at death and
becomes immune to the Pneumavores.
And in X and in Nanni we learn that the Spirit is (at least in
some cases) repeatedly reincarnated, and can carry information down the ages.
The Real Unreal and the Natural Supernatural
Hodgson does not speak more clearly of
the nature and life cycle of the Spirit,
because. I think, he is trying to perform a delicate balancing act. He is attempting
to authenticate the spirit by integrating it with future sciences, while at the
same time to keep a distance between the Spirit and everyday technology
and life.
To express this authentication, Hodgson systematically
breaks down the barriers between the "spiritual" and the
scientific.
At no time is any such distinction acknowledged
by any one within the Redoubt.
The messages passing across the Night Land
are the messages of entities which have the numinous essence
of evil gods, or demons. But, they are also telepathic. And,
they can also be
detected mechanically, by machines. No distinction between these modes of being is ever
made.
Simlarly, the castellians of the Redoubt
seem to be capable of fending off the Pneumavores
by purely mechanical/electrical means
(though exactly how the force
field that surrounds the Redoubt does this is not
specified: Hodgson speaks only of a "vibration":
perhaps it is a forgotten or rote
technology)
The armourers of the Redoubt can not boast as much: there are
no portable shields, no Spectrum Defences,
and all the Redoubt's
explorers are offered is a suicide capsule. But this in itself
tells us that the people of the Redoubt know that death is an escape
from the pneumavores, and therefore that there is something surviving after death
to escape.
The Redoubt has no supernaturalist religion. It is not needed.
It would be unfair to ask Hodgson to offer us more than this. Any attempt
to explain the Spirit beyond the hints he has given would destroy its
mana. At the same time, any attempt to invoke a conventional
religion would puncture the mystery of the Night Land like a balloon.
The point of Hodgson's formulation of the Spirit is that it is
both natural and supernatural,
physical and nonphysical, and it is real.
As such, for this reader at least, it works perfectly.
this essay © A W Robertson
Love in the Night
A third essay will attempt to fathom Hodgsons treatment of the erotic in THE NIGHT LAND and THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND
Send me your comments on this
essay and I'll post them here next time I update the site.
Forgotten Futures CARNACKI worldbook
I should draw attention to
this RPG gaming
resource by Marcus L. Rowland, which attempts to
systematise the "Abnatural" elements in the CARNACKI books.
It is a good
summary of Hodgson's ideas in this area,
though it does not directly link in to THE NIGHT LAND.
Back to Night Thoughts
|