I like to ask this question every few months.
Currently reading Life of Pi by Yang Martel. Saw the movie a few months ago and wanted to read the book. The one I just finished was called Black Ice by Michael Connelly. It’s one of the Bosch books.
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I'm currently reading The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson. A strange and dense novel written in 1912 detailing a man's journey across an earth of eternal darkness to rescue his reincarnated love from the 17th century. He's got a powered saw like weapon he uses to dispatch twisted soul stealing monsters. The remnants of humanity live in a gargantuan pyramid called the Last Redoubt. The novel is written in an overly stylized "17th century" fashion and features no dialogue as it's laid out as if it is his diary (of course).
The book I finished previously is called Brother Assassin by Fred Saberhagen. A man is tasked with traveling to key points in time to prevent the malicious machine intelligences called Berserker probes from using their own time infiltrators to disrupt humanity's past. Whether acknowledged or not I'm fairly certain that this is the book that inspired Terminator and not Harlan Ellison's Outer Limits episodes.
Sounds very interesting. Especially to have been written in 1912
Indeed, there's a lot of interesting parallels with 40k in the book. It's a hard read though, you have to get in the groove of reading the repetitive 17th century diary style. His novel House on the Borderland is an easier read, and highly influential to the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
Ahhh. I though I recognized the name. I have read House on the Borderlands when I was trying to read pre-Lovecraft sci-horror. It was enjoyable.
You'd be surprised - a hundred years earlier, inspired by the Year Without a Summer of 1816, Lord Byron wrote a poem called "Darkness", that I've frequently seen quoted as a possible inspiration for Hodgson:
The Night Land is a weird book, in that it's incredible despite its prose and writing style, not because of it. Even a hundred years later, it stands out for not being like our world and culture with one or two sci-fi changes, but being something else.
Cool!!
I’ve heard of this book and it sounded so weird I assumed someone was shitting me and it wasn’t real.
When you finish The Night Land, I highly recommend John C. Wright's continuation of it, Awake in the Night Land. Of the various fanmade sequel stories, I think the four stories in that book are by far the best continuation of the world and setting.
I was wondering if those were any good. I normally discount non author continuations of a universe, but I'll give this a try, thanks.