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V A S T Y H O U S E S 2001/04/05
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a bibliography
This is a list of stories (novels, short stories) that feature
houses (or similar things) whose interiors are vast, or even
infinite. The archetype is that dream (you know, that dream)
where you find a door in your house where there never used to
be one, and beyond it you find room after mysterious (or
familiar, or terrfiying) room.
This list is not comprehensive, but it would like to be, so if
you know of any qualifying stories that aren't here, drop a line
to "houses@theogeny.com".
The current and official version of this file lives on the Web,
at "http://www.davidchess.com/words/vh_bib.html".
Someday maybe we'll do this up as a fully databasized Web app,
so you can view subsets of it in different orders, get it in
XML form via SOAP calls, and so on and so on. In the meantime,
what you see is what you get.
The format of the entries is mostly self-explanatory. The
"relevance" value has roughly these meanings:
5 - a vast or infinite house, or something sufficiently
like that, forms a major part of the story.
4 - something that is probably a vast or infinite house,
or something like that, appears non-majorly in the story.
3 - a house or something that is at least larger inside
than you'd expect appears in the story.
2 - a house or something that contains a door or something
that leads somewhere distant or unexpected appears.
1 - something else vaguely the same flavor appears.
0 - why is this story listed here at all?
? - we don't know enough about this story yet to give it
a relevance number; someone please fill us in!
If a story fits more than one description, it gets the
higher number. So Stoddard's High House is both vast itself,
and leads to exotic places; it gets a 5. The house in Lewis'
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe merely leads to (it
does not contain) Narnia; it gets a 2.
The stories we're most interested in for the list here
are the 4's and 5's.
The list follows, in alphabetical order by author or something.
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Dr. Who
by ?various
a brand; relevance 3 Added: 2001/01/27
The Tardis is Dr. Who's transport device. From the outside
it appears to be a British telephone box or something; on
the inside it is a multi-room spaceship-like thing which
can take one all over space and time.
The Bridge Added: 2001/01/27
by Iain Banks
a novel; relevance 5
The eponymous Bridge is a vast structure with lost
libraries, mysterious elevators, corridors both teeming
and empty, and (for awhile) no visible endpoints. Also
trains!
The Library of Babel Added: 2001/01/27
by Jorges Luis Borges
a short story; relevance 5
The library is vast, regular in the arrangement of its
hexagons, but chaotic and opaque in the arrangement of
its books.
Parable of the Palace Added: 2001/01/27
by Jorges Luis Borges
a short short story: relevance 5
"They wandered next through antechambers and courtyards
and libraries, and then through a hexagonal room with a
waterclock, and one morning, from a tower, they made out a
man of stone, whom later they lost sight of forever. In
canoes hewn from sandalwood, they crossed many gleaming
rivers -- or perhaps a single river many times... Every
hundred steps a tower cut the air; to the eye, their color
was identical, but the first of them was yellow and the
last was scarlet; that was how delicate the gradation was
and how long the series."
Little, Big
by John Crowley Added: 2001/02/01
a novel: relevance 4
Or maybe 5; opinions are welcome! The House in question
is Edgewood, which is apparently both vast/infinite within,
and leads to the realms of Faerie. How key a role does the
big, sprawling house play in this big, sprawling novel?
House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski Added: 2001/01/27
a novel; relevance 5
"A filmmaker and his family move into an old house. They
return from a weekend trip to find a connecting hallway
between two rooms that wasn't there before, and discover
that the house is a half-inch larger on the inside than on
the outside. And then a corridor into nowhere appears in the
living room..." -- Brennan M. O'Keefe
The Sandman
by Neil Gaiman
a series of graphic novels; relevance 4 Added: 2001/04/05
In at least "Brief Lives", we find out that all the mazes,
labyrinths, in the world are connected together; if you
know how (or perhaps only if you're one of the Endless)
you can journey through the Mystifying Maze in the local
carnival, through strange labyrinths in other times and
places, and finally into Destiny's garden.
And He Built a Crooked House
by Robert Heinlein
a short story: relevance 3 Added: 2001/02/21
The house is just eight times as big inside as it looks
from the outside, because a tesseract has eight cubes.
The Number of the Beast
by Robert Heinlein
a novel; relevance 2 Added: 2001/01/27
Or possibly relevance 3. Is the "Gay Deceiver" merely
connected to lots of other spaces, or is it also extra
large inside? Anyway, the "Gay Deceiver" is a car or
spaceship or something that appears in a number of
the later Heinlein novels, most prominently in this one.
The House on the Borderland
by William Hope Hodgson Added: 2001/01/29
a novel: relevance 2
"Granted, the house is a gateway and not a universal house,
but it's really a good book." -- Kevin Meehan
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Added: 2001/01/27
by C. S. Lewis
a novel; relevance 2
You can get to Narnia by going through the back of the
wardrobe. But Narnia isn't *in* the wardrobe. Similarly
for many of the other Narnia books.
The Haunted Woman Added: 2001/02/06
by David Lindsay
a novel; relevance 5
Well, probably 5. It sort of depends on just what actually
happens when Our Heroine goes up those mysterious stairs.
Gormenghast Added: 2001/01/27
by Mervyn Peake
a series; relevance 5
The vast sprawling edifice, castle, hive of Gormenghast, its
kitchens and libraries and towers and roofs, figure prominently;
the series is usually known by the name of the last book, which
is also the name of the house.
A Man Asleep Added: 2001/01/27
by Georges Perec
a novel; relevance ?
This space available.
Discworld Added: 2001/01/27
by Terry Pratchett
a series; relevance 4
All the libraries (in the universe?) are connected through
L-Space. Which seems like a really good idea.
The High House
by James Stoddard
a novel; relevance 5 Added: 2001/01/27
The High House of the title seems to be an ordinary sprawling
mansion from the outside, but various doors and ways inside
lead to a vast (infinite?) complex of hallways, rooms,
courtyards and towers, opening into distant worlds. (A
sequel, "The False House", should probably also be listed.)
The Book of the New Sun
by Gene Wolfe
a series; relevance 4 Added: 2001/01/27
Two citadels with vast mazy interiors (The Citadel of the
Torturers and the Citadel of the Autarch) show up in this
four-novel cycle. There are hints that although distant
the two are connected, parts of some even vaster structure.
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