******Beginning of Part Four******

We are halfway through my “Top 10 Recommended Stories by HP Lovecraft”. And, just getting this out there now, I think we are past the racist stuff, I think? We can now breathe a sigh of relief and move on to the actual horror and enjoy the colorful prose and weird monsters, and dang, I really hope the racist stuff is done. I feel like a used car salesman and that cool Model T I’m trying to pawn off is on fire. Just give me some cosmic or unthinkable horrors without real life horror crap, HPL! Please!

Anyway, as I cliffhanger’ed before, we are at my favorite HPL Short Story. Before we get into it, I will mention again that I’m using the audiobook collection provided by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society for relistening to all stories on this list and following the text at the HP Lovecraft Archives. Let’s do this!

5# The Color Out of Space

Getting this out now, the movie this is based on from 2019 starring Nicolas Cage was amazing. I saw it in an old school theater with booming speakers and it was an experience I won’t forget. This was also a movie I saw in February 2020 and was the second to last movie I saw before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The last movie was Bloodshot (2020) which I’ll talk about that another time.

Anyway, as a fan of this story, I am looking forward to digging into it. And. . . Oh! This one is not chaptered. And the audiobook is about 72 minutes long. Okay, forgot about that. So, no long winded recaps of each chapter since . . . there are no chapters. The chapters were an illusion, an invisible horror only unsane minds can perceive.

Right, get comfy and let’s do this!

Okay, so, I paused and marked my place to give a few thoughts. I love the setup during the opening, HPL is so good at describing setting and giving an air of unease with so few words. And I forgot that the unnamed narrator did not experience the horror in this story but learned it second hand. Which, in a way, leaves his imagination open to interpret things in ways that may be more horrible than the real thing.

This story highlights HPL’s love for science and outer space. The multitude of scientific tests performed by the professors from Miskatonic University add to the mystery and uneasiness of the “visitor from the stars.” I like it when science is applied to the unknown in a horror story but even the greatest tests cannot answer any question. It only provides more questions.

And oh ho-ho! After all that setup, the good stuff is starting now. I looked up skunk cabbage and it's naturally weird looking on its own, so imagine what it would look like when cosmic forces change it. I’m not going to pause again but I am at about 20 minutes in. I’m already getting chills. This story is just so darn good . . .

AHH! So gooood! I just could not pause anymore to commentate. I just got so into this story. I love the buildup as the story describes more and more the decay and vampiric descent into oblivion that sweeps the old farmstead. Wow! Such an awesome, horrid, and memorable tale. WAH! It still gives me goosebumps how engaging and engrossing this story is.

Of all the short stories I have presented, I do hope people read this one. There is just a tremendous vision and eloquence to the prose that is so very HPL. He binged a whole lot of science magazines and decided to put all that he learned to use. And he invented a tale that is simultaneously fascinating and grotesque, bleak and beautiful, and so enthralling that it sucks you in much like the life is drained by the unknown entity from this story.

I do not wish to say anymore so as to not spoil the tale. HPL was at his finest when he wrote this and it deserves to be remembered as one of his best. He even admitted that it was his favorite of his shorts stories. Kind of funny, how I make #6 his most hated and #5 his most loved.

And to go into depth about how inspirational this tale has been would take up the rest of this article. Several movies have been made using elements from “The Color Out of Space”. Going as far back as 1965 “Die Monster, Die” with Boris Karloff. And the novel “Annihilation” by Jeff VanderMeer made into a feature film by the same name (2018) was most certainly influenced by this tale. And there is the movie I mentioned before from 2019, which I have come to nickname “The Color out of Cage”.

I have gusted over this story like a blasphemous helllight burning upward into the starry sky. Go read it. Listen to an audiobook. Watch the many movies that take inspiration from it. This is HPL at his finest and deserves to be celebrated and admired.

Trust me, as an aspiring author, it is hard to write a story sometimes. But it’s even more difficult to write something so profound. And it’s lightning in a bottle when you write a story that resonates with others. Damn it, I’m raving about this story so much, I’m getting light headed.

ITs . . . the Color . . . it Burns . . . sucks the Life out of You!

There are so many more short stories I could have put on this list. But this article would never end if I did that. And I would be avoiding the novellas then, which arguably are essential reading when getting into HPL. And my favorite story is a novella and I decided to add three more that I think anyone getting into HPL should give a read or listen to an audiobook.

To my favorite HPL fans, I’m sure there are some short stories you would have featured on your own list of recommendations that I did not list here. And if you do, please, by all means, share them in the comment section.

Anyway, let's save the introduction of the novellas for next time. Give us a fresh start. Sniff, sniff. This smells like . . . the Color out of Cage.

Check out the HP Lovecraft Historical Society site for the audiobooks I listen to when making this article:

https://www.hplhs.org/

******End of Part Four******