The Derelict is a short story by William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1912. As he does in many of his stories, Hodgson employs a framework or "story within a story." In the framework, an elderly ship's doctor recounts a strange event that happened to him some years earlier, in the context of discussing his ideas about a fundamental life force that can manifest itself in the presence of proper materials. The doctor believes that the particular combination of cargo aboard the derelict, as it decayed, may have resulted in spontaneous generation of a new life form.