Dark Sanctuary proved to be one of Midnight House’s best-selling titles and all of our copies have been gone for a number of years. However, two editions of this excellent novel still comprise less than 500 copies in circulation. That fact, taken with the new information about the novel available from no less than the book’s author makes the idea of a new edition quite compelling.
It’s not often that a novel is published with so much editorial apparatus, (two introductions and an interview with the author), but I think that after reading it you’ll agree that Dark Sanctuary is a classic of the genre that merits such special treatment. For my own part, I’m honored to be able to do my bit to keep this amazing work alive.
John Pelan
Midnight House
Gallup, NM
INTRODUCTION
In 1983, T.E.D. Klein, editor of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine had a brilliant idea. He approached three of the best read people he knew, Thomas M. Disch, Karl Edward Wagner, and R.S. Hadji, to list, for Twilight Zone’s readership, some of their favorite “forgotten” works of fantasy and horror. The lists thus produced are some of the most amazing ever compiled. Published separately, those of Disch or Hadji would have been impressive by any standard. Yet, over time, they’ve been overshadowed by Karl Edward Wagner and his three lists of thirteen books each. “Why?” is debatable. Perhaps it was just the force of Karl’s personality. Or, maybe, it was something more intangible. Wagner’s thirty-nine books have since become legendary, drawing attention to writers who would otherwise have languished in obscurity, while simultaneously driving hard-core collectors into spasms of frustrated apoplexy. Part of this is undoubtedly due to the personality and acumen of the compiler, for Wagner, like Hadji and Disch, had a keen grasp of historical perspective and a sharp editorial bent. Wagner though, for whatever reasons, had a more unusual and eclectic vision than either of his co-selectors. He also, whether by accident or by design, produced lists that were ready-made for would-be bibliophiles.
Of the thirty-nine books in the “Wagner list,” roughly one-third are easy to find, and even common — novels like Frankenstein or Psycho. A second third are obscure, but still relatively findable, at least to anyone with connections in the rare book market. The real key to Wagner’s list however, the thing that made it memorable and its books worthy of desire by all true bibliophiles, was the incredible scarcity of the final thirteen or so books. To this day, collectors search in vain for such rarities as Alan Hyder’s Vampires Overhead, or fantasize of finding books by obscure British authors like R.R. Ryan, Mark Hansom and Walter S. Masterman. At one time it had even been suggested that a few of Karl Wagner’s selections were not real books at all, but only titles made up to fool a gullible readership. An elaborate April Fools prank for bibliophiles. Of course, that was not the case. All of the books in Karl’s list were real, however rare and unavailable they might otherwise be.
Among the rarest of those books was Dark Sanctuary by a certain H.B. Gregory. Exactly why this book should be so difficult is a question that may never be answered. The fact that its author never wrote another may have something to do with it. It may also have never been reprinted, unlike contemporaneous works by authors like Ryan and Hansom, whose work remains rare despite multiple editions. Then, of course, there’s the matter of time and place. London, 1939–1945, was not a healthy place for books. German fire-bombing raids clearly took a toll, especially along Paternoster Row where the offices of Dark Sanctuary’s publisher were located. Then there was the damage inflicted upon such books by the British public themselves: lending libraries went through books quickly and wartime paper-drives were a patriotic duty. Yet, for all of these, Dark Sanctuary’s biggest problem may have been its own publisher, for whom fiction was but a small sideline.
William Rider & Son, later Rider & Co., appears to have begun life as a publishing house sometime in the first decade of the twentieth century. From the beginning their tastes were esoteric, to put it mildly. Primarily a publisher of non-fiction, Rider’s specialty were titles of an occult or metaphysical nature. Strange fact books by Eliot O’Donnell and parapsychological explorations by Hereward Carrington were two of their staples. Other typical releases included such titles as: The Mystery of Death, The Phenomenon of Astral Projection, Michael Juste’s The White Brother; an Occult Autobiography, A Search in Secret India, and Ghost Parade.
But Rider, from its very beginning, was not content to limit itself solely to non-fiction. Deciding that its readership would occasionally like to relax with less “serious” books, they began to seek out fiction which shared plot elements or themes with their other publications. Some early examples of these were books by Bram Stoker and Marjorie Bowen, R.J. Lee’s An Astral Bridegroom, and Mrs. Campbell Praed’s Soul of Nyria: The Memory of a Past Life in Ancient Rome. To better understand Rider’s editorial slant, and Dark Sanctuary’s place in it, one need only compare it with other novels published by them at around the same time.
By far, the most over the top of these, published just a few years after Dark Sanctuary, is Bridge Over Dark Gods by Furze Morrish. Part Gnostic/Theosophist Life of Jesus, it is also the tale of an eternal triangle between a Greek youth, a British slave girl, and the wife of the Roman Commandant of the garrisons in Palestine. Salome becomes an early Christian. Joseph of Arimathea is unmasked as a Zoroastrian sage. A youthful Jesus tours the world, honing his spiritual powers in secret Himalayan valleys and in hidden passages beneath the Pyramids of Giza. England is revealed as the future birthplace of one of the Seven Races of Man, its early church as a union of Christianity and Ceridwyn-worship. Pilate and friendly Romans plot to make Jesus King of Syrian. The Essenes are a branch of the White Brotherhood of Tibet and reincarnation an engine of spiritual atonement and reward. Toss in healthy doses of astrology, Lemuria, the mythology of the Watchers, Dualism, astral travel, elemental spirits, and Atlantean sex-cult survivals and one has a pretty good idea of the sort of subjects that Rider’s readers were most interested in. Perhaps most amazing of all, Morrish does all of this — and more! — in a slender one-hundred and sixty page book.
Of course, the problem with most “idea” books, especially those written by true believers, is that they are seldom successful. In this, Bridge Over Dark Gods is no exception. While some of the ideas might be interesting on their own, or if developed properly, Morrish simply didn’t have the skills, or the perspective, to pull it off. In the end, Bridge Over Dark Gods is simply a huge muddle, readable only with difficulty by any but the most avid of what are now called New Agers. It’s only redeeming value, at least for fans of weird fiction, is a rather effective invocation of a powerful but mindless water elemental (Dagon) aboard a storm-wracked Phoenician cargo ship.