William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land was first published in 1912. Then, one day, they learn that a second Redoubt exists, one smaller, weaker, and on the verge of destruction. They await the inevitable day when the Current fails and the monsters gathering outside swarm their defences. They live within a colossal pyramidal Redoubt, lit, heated, and defended by the mysterious Earth Current, and besieged by the incomprehensible creatures of darkness who have overtaken the rest of the Earth.

The remaining millions of the human race have moved downward into deep ravines, where volcanism still provides enough heat to keep the air in a breathable form. Millions of years into the future, the Sun has died, plunging the Earth into darkness. Only a great poet could have conceived and written this story and it is perhaps not illegitimate to wonder how much of actual prophecy may have been mingled with the poesy.'This to be Love, that your spirit to live in a natural holiness with the Beloved, and your bodies to be a sweet and natural delight that shall be never lost of a lovely mystery… And shame to be unborn, and all things to go wholesome and proper, out of an utter greatness of understanding and the Man to be an Hero and a Child before the Woman and the Woman to be an Holy Light of the Spirit and an Utter Companion and in the same time a glad Possession unto the Man. it impresses the reader as being the ultimate saga of a perishing cosmos, the last epic of a world beleaguered by eternal night and by the unvisageable spawn of darkness. Writer Clark Ashton Smith said that 'In all literature, there are few works so sheerly remarkable, so purely creative, as The Night Land. He must journey alone through the evil darkness to find her, knowing that she is the reincarnation of his past precious love. Leaving the protection of their refuge means certain death, but our narrator makes mind contact with a survivor in a forgotten Lesser Redoubt. The last millions of the human race cluster together inside the Last Redoubt, a huge metal pyramid, and are set upon by mysterious forces from the dark outside.

In that distant time Earth is only dimly lit by the remaining glow of the dead Sun. Telling the story of a dying earth, The Night Land starts with a man from the 17th century who, mourning the death of his true love, is given a vision through the eyes his future incarnation. Lovecraft as being 'one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written', The Night Land is a classic horror fantasy novel by William Hope Hodgson published in 1912.

The night land