Or....
City at the End of Time (2008)
-"The Night Land" review.
Quickie version-
Oh yeah, for sure it's "The Night Land 2: Electric Boogaloo".
The present time period is bumped up to 2008, the future timeline is bumped up to a hundred trillion, and Bear upgrades the Hodgson pseudo-science to more modern quantum-y Treknobabble.
And he adds a Lovecraftian Borg Queen-ish boss villain called The Chalk Princess.
Fun stuff, but very geeky. It's the "Tron Legacy" of the Hodgson-verse.
If TNL is a side-scroller, CATEOT is a point-and-click adventure.
More slow and thoughtful. Lot of working out puzzles and problems.
It'd make a damned good TV show.
You could read it on its own, but familiarity with "The Night Land" will definitely enhance it with lots of "oh!! That thing is like the other thing!! And there's that guy!! 😃👍".
Detailed version-
In the year hundred trillion, the titular city is The Kalpa.
In the 2008 timeframe, we're in Seattle.
Our Seattle heroes-
A girl named Ginny on the edge of semi-homelessness.
A guy named Jack who's a carnival performer.
And a guy who can body-swap into his dimensional selves called Daniel.
Our Seattle baddies-
We get our hench-baddies, Max Glaucus, Whitlow, The Moth, and Penelope.
They have various Matrix-y super powers.
They serve the main baddie, The Chalk Princess.
AKA The Queen In White, AKA their Livid Mistress.
Our Kalpa heroes-
Jebrassy, a breed, a genetically constructed human, and fighter in "the games" which are basically renaissance fair battles. He's dream/soul linked to Jack.
Tiadba, another breed, Jebrassy's gal-pal, and dream/soul linked to Ginny.
If X from TNL is analogous to Nancy of Freddy 1, then Jack/Jebrassy, Ginny/Tiadba, and Daniel are The Dream Warriors of Freddy 3.
Except they're called Fate Shifters.
Our Seattle baddies hunt the Fate Shifters.
As all this is going on, the universe is also collapsing on itself in both the future and the present.
So there are Doctor Who level problems to solve.
The power of books become diabolically important to the solution.
We get a ton of other good and evil side characters, but everything pretty much hinges on the success of our mains.
Stuff that's back from TNL-
(Medium spoilers)
Pretty much all in the Kalpa timeframe.
The Kalpa is protected from the decay of the universe by reality shields that are the new version of the Electric Circle.
The knight armor is upgraded to Iron Man style power suits.
They feed you intravenously, so gone is the powdered water.
They have swords called Claves that unfold into spinning lawnmower blades.
They're basically Diskos Mark 2.
The Watchers are back as Witnesses.
The new monsters are people that got gobbled up in the temporal anomalies and mutated.
The good guys are seeking a city called Nataraja, so it's like X's quest for the Lesser Redoubt.
In the Seattle timeframe, we find out William Hope Hodgson was a Fate Shifter, and what's more, he was X.
He got blown up in WWI before Glaucus could catch him.
We get a strong hint that Chalk Princess was the thing in the House of Silence in TNL and Nataraja is the CATEOT version of the House of Silence.
She's also what slowed the Watchers/Witnesses by horrifying them.
Other Easter eggs-
In the Seattle timeframe, they visit the bridge with the concrete bridge troll that Peter Beagle had as a character in "Under Bridge" in "The Overneath".
Finally!! Finally the Peter Beagle stuff comes full circle!!!!!
Three years later, but finally. There! Beagle's canon!!
And, that's it!
I thought I was gonna do "Cthulhu's Daughters" or Joanna Russ, or whatever next.
I don't need it.
I feel good now.
I feel like my training mission is done.
It feels right to do my own book right after this.
I wanted to feel right to do it, and I do.
Now, to retro-link this to the William Hope Hodgson entry in "Masters of Horror Return".
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