I have previously posted on Basil Copper (1924-2013) due to his Solar Pons stories. But my first exposure to him was obtaining one of his first novels inspired by the Cthulhu mythos: The Great White Space, which first appeared in 1974.
I came across the 1976 paperback edition from Manor Books, with a great cover by Bob Larkin, though I got it sometime in the 1980s I believe. It was reprinted along with a couple of other works thanks to Stephen Jones in 2013 from Valancourt Books, though with a pretty dull cover. This new edition also has a nice intro by Jones, who gives a good overview of Copper’s life and career. I would like to get the study of Copper that Jones compiled, Basil Copper: A Life in Books, but it has yet to appear on Amazon.
Set in 1933, the story tells of a disastrous expedition to places men should not go. I am reminded of Lovecraft‘s The Mountains of Madness. It’s narrated by Frederick Plowright, a scientific photographer and filmographer. He is recruited by researcher Clark Ashton Scarsdale, who is clearly named as a homage to Clark Ashton Smith with the physicality of Professor Challenger. Plowright is putting together a scientific expedition called “The Great Northern Expedition” with three others. But they aren’t going to the Arctic but to central Asia, into an underground world. This is done to throw off the press and others. Our narrator doesn’t tell us where they actually go, but that they arrive at a city named Zak, and from there go further. But where is Zak?
Their ultimate goal is “the Great White Space,” a possible doorway known to the Old Ones. But keep in mind that doorways go both ways. To get there, they must journey into the desolate Black Mountains, and then underground. First, they must cross an underground lake, then go through a bizarre landscape, including an underground city, before they reach their goal. There, they experience an ultimate revelation. Only our narrator is able to return. What happens to the others you have to find out yourselves.
I really enjoyed this work, and Copper did write further Lovecraftian works. There is another novel he wrote, Into the Silence (1983), which is noted as being a companion piece to this one. Bizarrely, this has never been reprinted since it came out! With all of Copper’s other works being reprinted, I find it bizarre that this one, along with The Black Death, has been overlooked.
I will be reviewing some of his other works, including the three-volume collection of his supernatural fiction: Darkness, Mist and Shadows: The Collected Macabre Tales, which actually contains all his stories previously collected in Not After Nightfall, From Evil’s Pillow, Archives of the Dead, When Footsteps Echo, And Afterward the Dark, Here Be Daemons, Voices of Doom, Whispers in the Night, Cold Hand on My Shoulder, and Knife in the Back.
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