‘The Great White Space’ – Basil Copper (Valancourt Books)

Page Count: 162 Pages

Life really isn’t about finishing as many books as you can but after the week I’ve had at work… It’s really nice to be able to finish something that I’ve started. I’m celebrating this one ;o)

‘The Great White Space’ has been sat on various TBR piles for far too long and after a couple of ‘Paperbacks from Hell’ that really hit the spot, I figured that it was time to finally sit down and see what ‘The Great White Space’ was all about. What I wasn’t expecting was to finish it as quickly as I did. Seriously… I was so into the plot that I even skipped my regular ‘nap on the bus home’ to get a few more pages read. That should tell you all you need to know but stick around for a little longer, I’m going to keep going ;o)

Frederick Plowright, a well-known scientific photographer, is recruited by Professor Clark Ashton Scarsdale to accompany his research team in search of "The Great White Space," described in ancient and arcane texts as a portal leading to the extremities of the universe. Plowright, Scarsdale, and the rest of their crew embark on the Great Northern Expedition, traversing a terrifying and desolate landscape to the Black Mountains, where a passageway hundreds of feet high leads to a lost city miles below the surface of the earth. But the unsettling discoveries they make there are only a precursor of the true horror to follow. For the doorway of the Great White Space opens both ways, and something unspeakably evil has crossed over-a horrifying abomination that does not intend to let any of them return to the surface alive…

I’ve always said that the best thing Lovecraft ever did was give future generations of writers the concept of Cosmic Horror to play with. Nothing against Lovecraft per se, I just think that other writers do it better. And Basil Copper did just that with ‘The Great White Space’. Honestly, this book has it all… Lost cities underneath the earth, sullen tribes living on the outskirts of humanity and deadly encounters with a cold and uncaring cosmos, all set against an Earth that may be unknowingly drifting into the End Times. Oh yes, I mustn’t forget the narrator driven to madness ;o)

If this sounds like Copper is just ripping off Lovecraft, I’d say it’s a definite homage on Copper’s part, not quite in ‘rip off territory’. ‘The Great White Space’ knows that the focus needs to be on plot and keeps it there, making for a lot more accessible read. Copper also does a fine line in atmospheres of creeping dread that makes the ‘getting from A to B’ parts of the book a lot easier to stick with. The Lost City of Croth is massive and not only is that a handy way to show us how small humanity is (in comparison with everything else), it also makes for a handy way to hide your otherworldly denizens while they wait to strike. It’s a double dose of dread that you’re constantly reeling from; the ‘travelogue bits’, that I was dreading, swiftly become so much more.

‘The Great White Space’ is a great dose of adventure (both inside and outside Croth plus bullets and grenades against alien slime...) and cosmic horror, coupled with a finale that’s so horrific that our narrator cannot even bring himself to talk about it until the very end of the book. Having read it, I can confirm that it’s well worth the wait.

If you come across a copy of ‘The Great White Space’, don’t hang about, pick it up and get reading. Trust me, you’ll love it.