At the time, local scientists take a sample from the meteorite, and are perplexed by several strange behaviors that it exhibits. 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 experiences with a farmer named Nahum Gardner and his family who used to live on the property.Ī meteorite crashed into Nahum's land over fifty years prior, in June 1882. The narrator, an unnamed surveyor from Boston, describes his attempts to uncover the secrets behind a shunned place referred to by the locals of the hills west of Arkham as the 'blasted heath'. 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).Ī 2012 illustration of Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space by Ludvik Skopalik depicting the mysterious color emerging from the well on the Gardner Farm. 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. Seeking to create a truly alien life form, he drew inspiration from numerous fiction and nonfiction sources. 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'.

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. In the tale, an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the 'blasted heath' in the hills west of the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts. ' The Colour Out of Space' is a science fiction/horror short story by American author H. Title page of 'The Colour Out of Space' as it appeared in Amazing Stories, September, 1927.

The colour out of space short story