The Colour out of Space: H.P. Lovecraft a la Carte No. 3

By Howard Phillips Lovecraft

In later years, this was H.P. Lovecraft's favorite among his own stories, and many of the most serious H.P. Lovecraft fans readily agree that it's his best work. It is one of his most truly cosmic horror stories, trading not at all on supernatural elements, relying for all its power on the idea of real forces and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pulp-Lit Productions
• Release date: Sep 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781635910667

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.

Book preview

 The Colour out of Space:

H.P. Lovecraft a la Carte No. 3.

H.P. LOVECRAFT

Copyright ©2016, 2019 Pulp-Lit Productions.

All rights reserved, with the exception of all text written by Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft and his collaborators, and on all text and art originally published in pulp magazines, on which copyright protections have expired worldwide. In the spirit of good stewardship of the public domain, no copyright claim is asserted over any of H.P. Lovecraft’s original text or any magazine art as presented in this book, including any and all corrections and style changes made to the originals. 

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Pulp-Lit Productions, Post Office Box 77, Corvallis, OR 97321, or e-mail [e-mail]. (However, please note that no permission from us or anyone else is needed for any use of any public-domain content appearing in this or any other book.)

ISBN: 978-1-63591-066-7

Cover art by J.M. de Aragon

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The COLOUR out of SPACE.

12,300-word novelette

1927.

Many of the most serious H.P. Lovecraft fans consider The Colour out of Space to be his best story, and it was in later years his own personal favorite. It is one of his most truly cosmic horror stories, trading not at all on supernatural elements, relying for all its power on the idea of real forces and entities that humans are simply not equipped to fully perceive or understand.

Looking for new markets in the aftermath of several unexpected rejections of his work by Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales, Lovecraft sent The Colour out of Space to Amazing Stories, the groundbreaking scienti-fiction magazine edited by the now-legendary Hugo Gernsback. He was pleasantly surprised when it was accepted right away, and published just a few months later in the September 1927 issue; he was surprised again, less pleasantly this time, when he received the check for it: a whopping $25, roughly one-fifth of the payment he was expecting. 

Needless to say, Lovecraft never sent another story to Gernsback, and took to calling him Hugo the Rat (Wright, of Weird Tales, was Farny the Fox). But seeing Lovecraft’s by-line in a competing magazine did have the salutary effect of shaking Wright up a little and encouraging him to be more generous with his acceptance letters.

The COLOUR out of SPACE.

————

WEST OF ARKHAM THE HILLS RISE WILD, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he recalls from the strange days. Ammi, whose head has been a little queer for years, is the only one who still remains, or who ever talks of the strange days; and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads around Arkham.

There was once a road over the hills and through the valleys, that ran straight where the blasted heath is