Resumo de The Hope - LOVEGROVE, JAMES

ABSTRACT, JAMES LOVEGROVE ? THE HOPE (1990) White Wolf Press. A very dark and uncompromising horror story that initially reads like a series of short stories, but the various threads intertwine and interact as the story goes on. The Hope is a vast cruise liner, five miles long and one mile high, and like the Titanic, you almost sense it is doomed from the moment of its launch. After some weeks at sea, the passengers realise that there seems to be no land in sight. No one seems to even remember where he or she were going in the first place. As food and drink reserves run low, anarchy reigns, and some passengers are reduced to poverty and crime. Others adopt a stoic indifference and continue to attend the evening balls, and listen to the orchestra play. Pushed to the brink of starvation, and willing to prostitute herself to save herself and her children, a woman gains a mysterious package of tinned fruit, which she quickly takes, and makes a feast of them for herself and her kids. The food poisoning from them is so intense that the diners each lose their intestines instantly. It is clear that some malevolent supernatural forces are at work on The Hope (where there is none). Crewmen report sightings of rats that seem to be able to burrow even through bulkhead steel. The crew give chase through the corridors and galleys, and find said rats are even able to burrow inside human flesh. When an orchestra member finds that his lover is having an affair under his nose, he rigs her cabin bed to collapse and impale both her and her adulterer on sharp blades underneath. As the creatures within the fabric of the ship become more intelligent, the passengers and crew are reduced to the feral and desperate state. A fight is arranged in the empty shop swimming pool, which fills up as the fight goes on, drowning everyone involved. A figure is seen on the decks, composed entirely of rainwater. If he touches you, your flesh, melts into H2O. One man discovers the awful truth about the ship ? which it is going round in circles and that it will never reach land. Instead of alerting the other passengers and crew, he throws himself over the board in despair. This is a disturbing allegory, mixing the horror of Edgar Allen Poe with the anarchic reversionism of William Golding?s Lord Of The Flies.

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