The novel is a hallucinatory account of a recluse's stay at a remote house and his experiences of supernatural creatures and otherworldly dimensions. American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft listed The House on the Borderland and other works by Hodgson among his greatest influences and Terry Pratchett has called the novel "the Big Bang in my private universe as a science fiction and fantasy reader and later, writer". A classic novel of horror by the acclaimed master of the macabre, William Hope Hodgson.