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| "The Colour Out of Space" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by H. P. Lovecraft | |
 Title page of "The Colour Out of Space" as it appeared in Amazing Stories, September, 1927. Illustration by J. M. de Aragon.[1] | |
 Text available at Wikisource | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction, horror |
| Publication | |
| Published in | Amazing Stories |
| Media type | Print (Magazine) |
| Publication date | September 1927 |
"The Colour Out of Space" is a science fiction/horror short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in March 1927.[2] In the tale, an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the "blasted heath" (most likely after a line from either Milton's Paradise Lost or Shakespeare's Macbeth)[3] in the hills west of the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts. The narrator discovers that 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.
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 truly alien life form, he drew 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 of his short stories. It has been adapted to film several times, as Die, Monster, Die! (1965), The Curse (1987), Colour from the Dark (2008), The Colour Out of Space (Die Farbe) (2010) and Color Out of Space (2019).
- ^ "The Colour Out of Space". ISFDB. 2022. Archived from the original on August 9, 2017. Retrieved November 3, 2022.
- ^ Lovecraft, H. P. (1927). "The Colour Out of Space (scanned typoscript)". Brown University Library, Brown Digital Repository. Retrieved November 3, 2022.
- ^ Lovecraft, Howard Phillips (1999). Joshi, Sunand Tryambak (ed.). The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. London: Penguin Books. p. 399. ISBN 978-0-14-118234-6.
Actually, two poets used the phrase 'blasted heath'. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth says to the witches: Say from whence / You owe this strange intelligence, or why / Upon this blasted heath you stop our way / With such prophetic greeting (1.3.75-78). In Milton's Paradise Lost, we find the following: ... as, when Heaven's fire / Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, / With singed top their stately growth, though bare / Stands on the blasted heath (1.612-15). Lovecraft was probably thinking of the latter passage.