The Colour Out of Space

By Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Parallel worlds, unsolved family secrets, evil spirits, alien matter, witchcraft and magic, cursed places, visions beyond the human mind – Lovecraft's world of fiction is not only filled with Cthulhu myths. His universe is inhabited by other unknown and unfathomable creatures that come from the depths of forests, impassable swamps, deep caves, mysterious dungeons and even other times and dimensions, which can be accidentally entered by opening a window in the attic. Lovecraft wrote one of his first stories, "The Beast in the Cave," when he was only 14 years old. Short story "The Color Out of Space" the author considered one of his best works. The original plots of Lovecraft's mystical stories became the basis for popular songs, movies, and computer games. The famous writer Stephen King considers Howard Lovecraft his inspiration.


"The Colour Out of Space" appeared in the September 1927 edition of Hugo Gernsback's science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. The story revolves around the area known as the "blasted heath" near the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts. Many years ago a meteorite crashed there, poisoning every living being nearby; vegetation grows large but foul-tasting, animals are driven mad and deformed into grotesque shapes, and the people go insane or die one by one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aegitas
• Release date: Jun 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9780369408907

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

by H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

L18 The Colour Out of Space – М.: Aegitas, 2022. – 47 p.

Parallel worlds, unsolved family secrets, evil spirits, alien matter, witchcraft and magic, cursed places, visions beyond the human mind – Lovecraft's world of fiction is not only filled with Cthulhu myths. His universe is inhabited by other unknown and unfathomable creatures that come from the depths of forests, impassable swamps, deep caves, mysterious dungeons and even other times and dimensions, which can be accidentally entered by opening a window in the attic. Lovecraft wrote one of his first stories, The Beast in the Cave, when he was only 14 years old. Short story The Color Out of Space the author considered one of his best works. The original plots of Lovecraft's mystical stories became the basis for popular songs, movies, and computer games. The famous writer Stephen King considers Howard Lovecraft his inspiration.

The Colour Out of Space appeared in the September 1927 edition of Hugo Gernsback's science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. The story revolves around the area known as the blasted heath near the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts. Many years ago a meteorite crashed there, poisoning every living being nearby; vegetation grows large but foul-tasting, animals are driven mad and deformed into grotesque shapes, and the people go insane or die one by one.

© «Aegitas» publishing house, 2022

© Photo by henri meilhac on Unsplash

eISBN 978-0-3694-0890-7

Copyright: This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA.

All rights reserved. No part of an electronic copy of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting in the Internet and in corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Reader Reactions

From Layton

I've read somewhere that when Lovecraft set out to write The Colour Out of Space, he wanted to write about an alien entity, that was actually alien and unknown. Because Lovecraft realized that if you used the same caricature of a grey alien every time that you wrote an alien/UFO story it wasn't going to be scary at all. And besides, the word alien refers to something absolutely foreign and unknown, and after awhile being told something is alien, doesn't make it so.

But Lovecraft did it. He created a terrifying entity that mere humans can't fully comprehend.

From April

This was such an intriguing read, capturing something like radiation poisoning through other words that give this story a supernatural feeling. I'm not sure what the scientific knowledge was like at the time this was written, but Lovecraft definitely captured the sense of the uncanny (the known with something a bit off about it). This story, to me, read like an episode of The Twilight Zone, and it makes me wonder if Rod Sterling got inspiration from any Lovecraft stories (something that I'm going to look more into).

From YourLocalEdgelord

Well I really think this is as good as a Lovecraft short story can get. Really, imaginative, properly structured (the rarest thing for HP), the characters inspire sympathy and, I can't really stress this enough: No overt racism. Just a mild distaste for rural folk at the start but hey, for the author that is as good as you are gonna get.

This story revolves around a meteorite crashing in a rural area near Arkham and Boston, the events that follow are equal parts awe inspiring and eerie, culminating in a tragedy. Despite this reading like the end, there's actually another climax in the last part which is a great closer and gives more questions than answers, which works in its favor actually. I don't know, if you like Lovecraft, this is him at his peak creativity while still being readable. I can't stress this enough: no racial slurs in this one.

From Schlermie

Sometimes I think Lovecraft is