The Color Out of Space

The “blasted heath” near Arkham and the “strange days”. ?!?!? That little piece of land, described above, is creepy from start to finish in this tale. Something happens to that land, and all the organic life around it is highly affected - and changed. And whether or not the mystery is ever solved, that land will soon be underwater when the reservoir is built, and “nothing could bribe me to drink the new city water of Arkham.” - creepy, right? And how about these quotes, from the ending... “Something terrible came to the hills and valleys... and something terrible - - though I know not in what proportion - - still remains.” “I shall be glad to see the water come.” Lovecraft has "crafted" one spooky story here, and a great tale to read around Halloween!

This is a prime example of why HPL is a master of the macabre. In just a few words, he paints such a vivid scene you can easily picture it with your mind's eye. The horror builds slowly, almost unnoticed until the climax. HPL's style of writing has been copied, or at least attempted, by many authors; with varying degrees of success. This tale has spawned at least two other stories. One is almost a sequel, "The Colour Out of Time" by Michael Shea which is a pretty decent read. "The Colour Out of Darkness" by John Pelan is the other. That one I haven't read. From its review, it is a poor pastiche.

Taking a "documentary" style not uncommon for speculative fiction of this vintage, the creep factor is slowly brought to a boil. A little slow for some tastes, but not nearly drawn out as the longer-form At the Mountains of Madness that is one of his most famous works. Better to start here. This story also succeeds more at investing you in the characters who are in peril (at least in relative terms; the style is so matter-of-fact aside of the depiction of creepy sights, that it's hard to get beyond a sense of detachment). The payoff is reasonably satisfying. For a few dollars more, you can get a massive compilation and sample his works as your whims dictate.

I expected to read about eldricht horrors, not be confronted by one. Individual letters or whole words are either replaced or entirely missing. This is not readable. Avoid it.

but lots of typos in the kindle edition... good story though! twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twentry

Story is fine, but you failed utterly to fix the line breaks. This made a rather good story difficult to read.

What else do I have to say? H P Lovecraft.

Great book and fast delivery

Will definitely read another. Very vivid descriptions and yet I feel like everyone probably has a totally different experience because it leaves much up to the imagination.

I thought this ebook was a collection of short stories. It is not. A story about an otherworldly horror slowly corrupting everything around it. A good read.

The “blasted heath” near Arkham and the “strange days”. ?!?!? That little piece of land, described above, is creepy from start to finish in this tale. Something happens to that land, and all the organic life around it is highly affected - and changed. And whether or not the mystery is ever solved, that land will soon be underwater when the reservoir is built, and “nothing could bribe me to drink the new city water of Arkham.” - creepy, right? And how about these quotes, from the ending... “Something terrible came to the hills and valleys... and something terrible - - though I know not in what proportion - - still remains.” “I shall be glad to see the water come.” Lovecraft has "crafted" one spooky story here, and a great tale to read around Halloween!

This is a prime example of why HPL is a master of the macabre. In just a few words, he paints such a vivid scene you can easily picture it with your mind's eye. The horror builds slowly, almost unnoticed until the climax. HPL's style of writing has been copied, or at least attempted, by many authors; with varying degrees of success. This tale has spawned at least two other stories. One is almost a sequel, "The Colour Out of Time" by Michael Shea which is a pretty decent read. "The Colour Out of Darkness" by John Pelan is the other. That one I haven't read. From its review, it is a poor pastiche.

Taking a "documentary" style not uncommon for speculative fiction of this vintage, the creep factor is slowly brought to a boil. A little slow for some tastes, but not nearly drawn out as the longer-form At the Mountains of Madness that is one of his most famous works. Better to start here. This story also succeeds more at investing you in the characters who are in peril (at least in relative terms; the style is so matter-of-fact aside of the depiction of creepy sights, that it's hard to get beyond a sense of detachment). The payoff is reasonably satisfying. For a few dollars more, you can get a massive compilation and sample his works as your whims dictate.

I expected to read about eldricht horrors, not be confronted by one. Individual letters or whole words are either replaced or entirely missing. This is not readable. Avoid it.

but lots of typos in the kindle edition... good story though! twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twentry

Story is fine, but you failed utterly to fix the line breaks. This made a rather good story difficult to read.

What else do I have to say? H P Lovecraft.

Great book and fast delivery

Will definitely read another. Very vivid descriptions and yet I feel like everyone probably has a totally different experience because it leaves much up to the imagination.

I thought this ebook was a collection of short stories. It is not. A story about an otherworldly horror slowly corrupting everything around it. A good read.

Read this due to a friends recommendation , he said it would be very scary. It was not. Unsettling would be a better word to describe it.

H.P. Lovecraft is faacinatingly wonderful in his writing.

Love this story. Loved it when I was young, middle-aged, and now. Wanted my own copy.

This was one creepy ass tale told with an artists palette of colorful words as only HPL can produce. Seriously twisted. Tell ya friends.

At times, I couldn't read fst enough

WARNING: This is not a collection of stories as several reviews mention, but a single short story. There are no illustrations. This is more of a pamphlet than a book, and while the story is great, the product is *not* worth the money. There are much better Lovecraft compilations if you do your homework (which sadly, I failed to do here not noting there are only 36 pages).

A book probably ahead of its time.

4.5 I didn't think a 1927-published story about a meteorite hitting a (fictitious) town in Massachusetts and poisoning away all living things about would pass the test of time and still be fun to read today (too many copycats of this author's ideas so you feel you've heard them before)... but I found myself quite engrossed in this one. Very readable. Loved all the descriptive language. A lot of the imagery is genuinely creepy. Trees, vegetation, animals and insects begin to change in freaky and/or disfiguring ways... the madness, the death, the disappearances... so far this is my favorite Lovecraft short story.

(This is just about the title story) Written in 1927, before the idea of radioactivity was in anyone's public consciousness, this is one of my favorite Lovecraft stories. For me, the non-Cthulhu stories have more to offer (The Rats in the Walls, The Music of Erich Zann, Cool Air), but this is arguably one of his best-written, possibly because the whole thing is (for Lovecraft) relatively understated. All the little touches - the trees moving when there is no wind, the strange produce from the crops, the creepy woodchuck - are well put together, and not dwelt on, but they are mirrored by the family's slow deterioration and breakdown. I reread this recently, prompted by the problems Japan is having with the nuclear plants. Lovecraft didn't know about radiation sickness or the pollution that could be caused by radioactivity, so of course his descriptions of the effect of this meteor aren't anywhere like the real thing. Obviously he wasn't thinking of radiation per se; yet in a way that makes it a little more haunting - the way he describes the slow degradation of the countryside and the effect far beyond the Gardner farm gives it an uneasiness connected with them that's kind of haunting. It's a story without the usual monster shambling on stage at the last couple of pages, and for once Lovecraft must have decided to just see if he could paint more of a mood piece than a fright fest. By the end, we understand why the narrator says "... nothing could bribe me to drink the new city water of Arkham."