31 favorite monsters: THE COLOUR
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Howard Phillips Lovecraft grew an entire literary career out of fear of the unknown and unknowable; stories of impossible cosmic beings and forces that made us and our own world seem horrifyingly miniscule in the grand scheme of the universe, and while his Mythos was loaded with tentacled polyps, crawling slimes and brain-snatching crustaceoid fungi, my personal favorite of his dark creations can barely be described as a "creature" in any traditional sense, and far that matter, can barely be described at all. Lovecraft was sick and tired of seeing so much anthropomorphism in other writer's aliens, and set out to create an entity almost impossible to rationalize by what we understand of our world. The result was The Colour out of Space,. There isn't a lot more I can say without spoiling the fun, suffice to say Lovecraft considered it his finest work, and I'd have to agree. In fact, I'd have to say that the "colour" (he chose the British spelling despite being American, so I might as well too) is far more frightening and imaginative than the more popular Cthulhu, and if you only read one Lovecraft story in your entire life, this should be it. It's not very long, and it's public domain, so you can find all around the web in its entirety.
If you never have before, give it a read HERE...and never look at shooting stars the same way again.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft grew an entire literary career out of fear of the unknown and unknowable; stories of impossible cosmic beings and forces that made us and our own world seem horrifyingly miniscule in the grand scheme of the universe, and while his Mythos was loaded with tentacled polyps, crawling slimes and brain-snatching crustaceoid fungi, my personal favorite of his dark creations can barely be described as a "creature" in any traditional sense, and far that matter, can barely be described at all. Lovecraft was sick and tired of seeing so much anthropomorphism in other writer's aliens, and set out to create an entity almost impossible to rationalize by what we understand of our world. The result was The Colour out of Space,. There isn't a lot more I can say without spoiling the fun, suffice to say Lovecraft considered it his finest work, and I'd have to agree. In fact, I'd have to say that the "colour" (he chose the British spelling despite being American, so I might as well too) is far more frightening and imaginative than the more popular Cthulhu, and if you only read one Lovecraft story in your entire life, this should be it. It's not very long, and it's public domain, so you can find all around the web in its entirety.
If you never have before, give it a read HERE...and never look at shooting stars the same way again.
posted by Scythemantis at
8:34 AM
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