- 🔀 This is an article about the short story. For the eponymous alien energy being, see Colour Out of Space
"The Colour Out of Space" is a short story written by American horror author H. P. Lovecraft in March 1927. In the tale, an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the "blasted heath" in the wild hills west of Arkham, Massachusetts. The narrator discovers that many years ago a meteorite crashed there, draining the life force from anything living nearby; vegetation grows large, but tasteless, animals are driven mad and deformed into grotesque shapes, and the people go insane or die one by one.
Lovecraft began writing "The Colour Out of Space" immediately after finishing his previous short novel, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and in the midst of final revision on his horror fiction essay Supernatural Horror in Literature. Seeking to create a form of life that was truly alien, he drew his inspiration from numerous fiction and nonfiction sources. First appearing in the September 1927 edition of Hugo Gernsback's science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, "The Colour Out of Space" became one of Lovecraft's most popular works and remained his personal favorite short story. It was adapted into feature film versions in 1965, 1987, and 2019.
Synopsis[]
Written in the first-person perspective of an unnamed surveyor from Boston, "The Colour Out of Space" tells the story of the narrator's attempts to uncover the secrets behind a shunned place referred to by the locals of Arkham as the "blasted heath".[1] Unable to garner any information from the townspeople, the protagonist seeks out an old and allegedly crazy man by the name of Ammi Pierce who relates his personal experiences with a farmer who used to live on the cursed property, Nahum Gardner. Pierce claims that the troubles began when a meteorite crashed into Gardner's lands in June 1882.[2]
The meteorite never cools, but begins shrinking and local scientists are unable to discern its origins. As the stone shrinks, it leaves behind globules of colour that are referred to as such "only by analogy",[3] as they do not fall within the range of anything known in the visible spectrum. These remains eventually disappear but, the following season, Gardner's crops come in unnaturally large and abundantly. When he discovers that, despite their appearance, they are inedible, he accuses the meteorite of having poisoned the soil. Over the following year, the problem begins spreading to the surrounding vegetation and local animals, warping them in unusual ways. The plant life around the farmhouse becomes "slightly luminous in the dark",[4] and Gardner's wife eventually goes mad, forcing him to lock her in the attic. During this time, Gardner begins to isolate his family from the rest of the town and Pierce slowly becomes his only contact with the outside world.[2]
Soon after Gardner's wife becomes mad, the vegetation begins eroding into a gray powder and the water from the well becomes tainted. One of Gardner's sons, Thaddeus, goes insane like his mother and is similarly locked in a different room in the attic. The livestock begins turning gray and dying and, like the crops, their meat is tasteless and inedible. Thaddeus eventually dies and Merwin, another of Gardner's sons, goes missing during an excursion to retrieve water from the well. After two weeks of silence from Gardner, Pierce visits the farmstead and witnesses the tale's eponymous horror for the first time in the attic. Gardner's final son, Zenas, has disappeared and the "colour" has infected Nahum's wife, whom Pierce puts out of her misery. He then flees the decaying house as the horror destroys the last surviving resident, Nahum.[2]
Pierce returns to the farmstead shortly after with six other men, including a doctor, who begin examining Nahum's remains. They discover Merwin and Zenas' eroding skeletons at the bottom of the well, as well as remnants of several other creatures. As they reflect upon their discoveries in the house, a light begins to emit from the well that eventually transforms into the "colour" and begins pouring out, spreading over everything nearby. The men flee the house just as the horror blights the land and then shoots toward the sky. Pierce alone turns back after the "colour" has gone and witnesses a small part of it try to follow the rest, only to fail and return to the well. The knowledge that part of the alien still resides on earth is sufficient to alter his mental state. When some of the men return the following day, there is nothing remaining but a dead horse and acres of gray dust, and the surrounding area is quickly abandoned by all of its remaining residents.[2]
Timeline[]
1832[]
- The farmer Nahum Gardner is born. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
1842[]
- The farmer Ammi Pierce is born. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
1868[]
- Nahum Gardner's second son, Thaddeus, is born. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
1882[]
June[]
- A meteorite falls in a small farming community west of Arkham, Massachusetts, on the property of Nahum Gardner. Professors from Miskatonic examine a piece of the meteorite and are baffled by its properties. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
August[]
- During harvest season, Nahum deduces that while his crops have grown to a phenomenal size, the meteorite has poisoned the soil of his land, causing his harvests not to ripen properly. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
1883[]
February[]
- The McGregor boys of Mountain Hill discover a horribly distorted woodchuck while hunting on the Gardners' property. This is only one of numerous cases of animals on the family's land which behave unnaturally. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
March[]
- Abnormally sized skunk-cabbages begin to sprout in Nahum's crops, sporting unknown color and a foul odor. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
April[]
- The bizarre phenomena surrounding the vegetation on Nahum Gardner's property becomes unbearable for the country folk, leading to the abandonment of the road past the Gardner home. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
May[]
- Nabby Gardner is the second member of her family, after her son Thaddeus, to notice the branches of trees beyond her home are swaying without the aid of wind. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
- A windmill salesman from Bolton reports to the Arkham Gazette that during his travels he took notice to the Gardner property and the fact that the vegetation on the land emits a "distinct luminosity" in the moonlight. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
- Toward the end of May, the cows on the Gardner property begin to produce bad milk. Nahum has the herd relocated upland, after which the problem ceases. At this point, it also becomes apparent that the vegetation on the Gardners' land is graying. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
June[]
- Around the first anniversary of the meteorite's landing on Nahum Gardner's land, Nabby, the farmer's wife, is driven insane. Nahum opts not to send her to the country asylum, instead letting her roam about the house so long as she isn't a harm to the family. However "[...] when the boys grew afraid of her, and Thaddeus nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him," Nahum decided to have his wife locked in a room in the attic. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
July[]
- Nahum Gardner's mad wife ceases to speak, and begins to crawl "on all fours" and emit luminosity in the dark, as does the plant life on the family property. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
September[]
- The graying vegetation on the Gardners' land begins to crumble, and the mad Nabby Gardner breaks her silence with "spells of terrific screaming." (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
- Ammi Pierce, a friend of the Gardner family, discovers the water being pumped from the family's well "was no longer good. It had an evil taste that was not exactly fetid nor exactly salty." (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
- Nahum's son, Thaddeus, goes insane after an encounter with "the moving colours [beneath the family well]." Like his mother, Thaddeus is left to roam the house until he becomes delirious, at which point Nahum relocates him to a room in the attic. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
- On the Nahum farm, poultry begin to turn grayish and die and hogs grow abnormally fat before becoming brittle and crumbling like the property's vegetation. A similar phenomena affects the cows, whose bodies "would be uncannily shrivelled or compressed, and atrocious collapses or disintegrations were common." By the time of harvest, every animal which belongs to the Gardners has either died or fled the premises. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
October[]
- On October 19, Thaddeus Gardner dies of the same affliction which claimed the Gardner family's vegetation and livestock. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
- On the evening of October 22, Merwin Gardner disappears after going to the family well to pump water. The next morning there is discovered "a crushed and apparently somewhat melted mass of iron which had certainly been the lantern; while a bent handle and twisted iron hoops beside it, both half-fused, seemed to hint at the remnants of the pail." His remains are discovered the following month at the bottom of the well. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
November[]
- Ammi Pierce visits the Gardner home where he finds Nahum Gardner has gone mad and his son Zenas has disappeared, with Nahum stating only that the lost boy "lives in the well." (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
- During the same visit, Pierce murders what he reveals to be a gruesomely distorted monster, or what Nahum´s wife has become, in the attic, and upon returning to ground level, finds Nahum "horribly brittle" and "distorted". Nahum's final words describe the entity which claimed him as "a kind of smoke" living in the family well, which must have traveled to Earth on the meteorite that impacted nearby 17 months prior. (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
- Pierce, accompanied by three officers, a coroner, a medical examiner and the veterinary who had treated Nahum Gardner's diseased animals, investigate the Gardner home. They find the remains of the farmer's sons Merwin and Zenas at the bottom of the well. Later that evening, the seven men witness the smoke described by Nahum extract a similar color "tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that come down on the apostles' heads at Pentecost" and they flee the scene before the smoke being darts into the sky and the Gardner property erupts a "cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance." (HPL: "The Colour Out of Space")
Background[]
Lovecraft began writing "The Colour Out of Space" in March 1927, immediately after completing The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.[5] As he wrote the tale, however, he was also typing the final draft of his horror fiction essay Supernatural Horror in Literature.[6] Although the author himself claimed that his inspiration was the newly constructed Scituate Reservoir in Rhode Island, Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi believes that the planned Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts must have influenced him as well. American writer and pulp fiction enthusiast Will Murray cites paranormal investigator Charles Fort, and the "thunderstones" (lightning-drawing rocks that may have fallen from the sky) he describes in The Book of the Damned, as possible inspirations for the behavior of the meteorite.[7]
Lovecraft was dismayed at the all-too human depiction of "aliens" in other works of fiction, and his goal for "Colour" was to create an entity that was truly alien.[8] In doing so, he drew inspiration from a number of sources describing colors outside of the visible spectrum. Most notably, Joshi points to Hugh Elliott's Modern Science and Materialism, a 1919 nonfiction book that mentions the "extremely limited" senses of humans, such that of the many "aethereal waves" striking the eyes, "the majority cannot be perceived by the retina at all".[9] This concept had previously been used in Lovecraft's 1920 short story "From Beyond".[9] Completed by the end of March, "The Colour Out of Space" was first published in Hugo Gernsback's science fiction magazine Amazing Stories in September 1927. (EXP: An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia)
The fact that the Miskatonic researchers found a new color can be seen as acquainted to the impossible color phenomenom. The effects on the environment of the meteor can also be linked to the ones of a nuclear weapon even though they were written some years before such creations.
Reception and legacy[]
"The Colour Out of Space" became the only work from Amazing Stories to make Edward O'Brien's anthology of The Best American Short Stories,[10] appearing in the 1928 "Roll of Honor".[6] Gernsback paid Lovecraft only $25[2] (approximately $350 in present day terms) and was late in doing so, leading Lovecraft to refer to the publisher as "Hugo the Rat".[10] He never again submitted anything to the publication. (EXP: An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia) Lovecraft did not write another major short story until the following year, when he crafted "The Dunwich Horror", although he did pen "History of the Necronomicon" and "Ibid" as minor works in-between,[8] as well as an account of a Halloween night's dream that he called "The Very Old Folk".[6]
In addition to its being Lovecraft's personal favourite of all of his short stories,[8][11] critics have considered "The Colour Out of Space" to be one of his best works, as well as the first to establish his trademark blending of science fiction and horror. (EXP: An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia) Lovecraft scholar Donald R. Burleson referred to the tale as "one of his stylistically and conceptually finest short stories".[12] Joshi praises the work as one of Lovecraft's best and most frightening, particularly for the vagueness of the description of the story's eponymous horror. He also lauded the work as Lovecraft's most successful attempt to create something entirely outside of the human experience, as the creature's motive (if any) is unknown and it is impossible to discern whether or not the "color" is emotional, moral, or even conscious.[8] His only criticism is that it is "just a little too long".[13] The text of "The Colour Out of Space", like many of Lovecraft's works, has fallen into public domain and can be accessed in several compilations of the author's work as well as on the Internet.[2] It also had a strong influence on Brian Aldiss's The Saliva Tree, which has been seen as a rewriting of Lovecraft's tale.[14] In 1984, the novel The Color Out of Time by Michael Shea was published as a sequel to the original novelette.[15]
Adaptations[]
The 1965 film Die, Monster, Die!, directed by Daniel Haller, is based on "The Colour Out of Space". Nick Adams plays a scientist by the name of Stephen Reinhart who travels to England to visit his fiancee (played by Suzan Farmer) at the home of her parents Nahum (Boris Karloff) and Letitia (Freda Jackson). There he discovers that Nahum is keeping a space rock in his basement and using it to grow giant vegetation and mutated animals. The rock has driven Nahum and Letitia insane and, in the film's climax, it transforms Nahum into a glowing monster. Lovecraft scholar Don G. Smith claims that, of the scenes that are derived from Lovecraft's work, the "blasted heath doesn't live up to Lovecraft's description"[16][17] and asserts that overall the film does not successfully capture Lovecraft's intent to "play... with the idea of an alien life form completely different from anything humans can imagine".[18] Smith considers Haller's work to be an imitation of Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films rather than a serious attempt at adapting Lovecraft's tale.[16]
Another adaptation, 1987's The Curse, was directed by David Keith and more closely follows the plot of Lovecraft's work. A meteorite lands on the property of Nathan Hayes (Claude Akins) and local physician Alan Forbes (Cooper Huckabee) is unable to explain why the rock keeps shrinking. He is dissuaded from contacting the authorities by Charlie Davidson (Steve Carlisle), a realtor who does not want the new arrival to discourage the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) from establishing a new reservoir in the area. As the rock disappears, a glowing color seeps out and into the ground. Within a few weeks, the farm's crops bloom but are soon discovered to be inedible. Shortly after, the local animals, as well as Nathan's wife, begin to go mad and a previously unknown element is discovered in the property's well. Soon Nathan and his son Cyrus (Malcolm Danare) are driven insane as well and begin terrorizing those who come to the farm, including the other children Zack (Wil Wheaton) and Alice (Amy Wheaton). In the film's conclusion, they are saved by TVA representative Carl Willis (John Schneider) and the house collapses. Lovecraft scholar Charles P. Mitchell referred to the film as faithful to the author's original work, but claimed that "[t]he last twenty minutes of the film are so disjointed that they virtually ruin the entire film".[19][20]
There is a DLC to the RPG game Darkest Dungeon called "The Color of Madness", which adds a new location to the game -- a Farmstead hit by a comet, full of creatures tainted by extraterrestrial power brought by that comet, a twisted Miller as one of the main enemies and a ghost of his wife as one of the cataclysm's victims. The DLC is largely based on Lovecraft's novel.[21]
The Color Out of Space (2010) is a German adaptation of the short story, filmed in black and white, with the scene set in the Swabian-Franconian Forest in Germany.
Color Out of Space (2019) is another adaptation, starring Nick Cage as Nathan Gardner, which retells the story in a contemporary setting. Gardner and his family move to a remote farmstead in rural New England west of Arkham, to escape the hustle of the 21st century. They are busy adapting to their new life when a meteorite crashes into their front yard, causing the local wildlife to mutate.
References[]
- ↑ Lovecraft, p. 595
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Lovecraft, H. P. (2008) H. P. Lovecraft: Complete and Unabridged New York City: Barnes & Noble, p. 1098.
- ↑ Lovecraft, p. 598
- ↑ Lovecraft, p. 601
- ↑ Burleson, Donald R. (1983) H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 243.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Joshi, S. T. (2001) A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time Liverpool University Press, p. 422.
- ↑ Murray, Will, "Sources for 'The Color Out of Space'", Crypt of Cthulhu No. 28 (Yuletide 1984), pp. 3-5; cited in S. T. Joshi, Annotated Lovecraft, p. 70.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Joshi, S. T. (1996) A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press, p. 316.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 S. T. Joshi, "The Sources for 'From Beyond'", Crypt of Cthulhu No. 38 (Eastertide 1986): 15-19
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Ashley, Michael (2000) The History of the Science Fiction Magazine Liverpool University Press, p. 320.
- ↑ Burleson, Donald R. (1990) Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe University Press of Kentucky, p. 170.
- ↑ Burleson, "Critical", p. 135
- ↑ Joshi, "Subtler", p. 137
- ↑ Gaiman, Neil (2012). Short Stories. FAQs » Books, Short Stories, and Films. neilgaiman.com. Retrieved on 2012-12-18.
- ↑ D'Ammassa, Don (2009-01-01). Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction New York City: Infobase Publishing, p. 315.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Smith, Don G. (2006) H. P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, p. 173.
- ↑ Smith, p. 45
- ↑ Smith, p. 47
- ↑ Mitchell, Charles P. (2001) The Complete H. P. Lovecraft Filmography Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 249.
- ↑ Mitchell, p. 115
- ↑ Official Darkest Dungeon Wiki
External links[]
- "The Colour Out of Space" complete text at the H. P. Lovecraft Archive
- "The Colour Out of Space" at Wikipedia
Gallery[]
