![]() ![]() ![]() In "The Colour Out of Space", Lovecraft succeeds in the very difficult task of presenting something that is so alien, so unlike anything we know, that it's hard to visualize and yet it's a convincing threat. Lovecraft's own stories often featured this effect I thought Wilbur Whately would have been scarier if his gruesome carcass was not described in such exact detail in "The Dunwich Horror." Even the typical alien from deep space you met in most science fiction is recognizably a person or beast from our own world with some attributes cranked up or distorted (tentacles, slime, antennae, you know). Most literary monsters are basically people or animals with (symbolic) scary masks on. "The Colour Out of Space" (AMAZING STORIES, September 1927) was from all accounts Lovecraft's personal favorite of his stories, the one that best conveyed his attempts at presenting a horror from The Beyond that is literally incomprehensible. It doesn't have a lot of heavy plotting or characterization, but the mood and atmosphere is so dense that you'll get some on your hands and have to wipe the pages. Even for Lovecraft, this is an odd story. ![]()
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