Best 1917 Adventures (2)
By:
December 27, 2016
One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1917 adventure novels. Happy 100th anniversary!
Arthur Machen’s autochthonic thriller The Terror.
As WWI rages, a small town in Wales is plagued by strange incidents — including the destruction of factories and machinery. Simultaneously, there are a number of bizarre killings in the area: a child is found smothered to death in a field with no marks on her body; a family is beaten to death outside their country cottage; a boat runs aground, its crew dead and reduced to skeletons. At twilight, a vast, dark cloud-like mass filled with twinkling lights looms across the countryside. Are these events connected… and might German saboteurs have something to do with them? A local doctor and a friend begin to connect the dots… which leads them to speculate that the carnage of the war has unleashed awesome forces that threaten humankind.
Fun fact: A short-story version appeared in the Evening News in 1916. Machen had a long literary career — beginning in 1894, when his novel The Great God Pan shocked and titillated readers with depictions of the sex, death, and madness that accompany occult magick practices. In the 1920s, his work was deeply influential on H.P. Lovecraft, who called Machen one of the “modern masters” of supernatural horror, Robert E. Howard, and others.
Let me know if I’ve missed any 1917 adventures that you particularly admire.