Pulp Fiction Friday: The Colour Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft

In this week's focus on the great pulp fiction era, I switch gears away from sword and sorcery and into the realm of horror.  Certainly most are familiar with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, primarily his stories of the Cthulhu mythos.  Lovecraft has become a legendary figure among the geek crowd and gaming circles over the past twenty years or so, and with good reason.  His style of writing is reminiscent of the days of classic literature.  His ability to construct a sentence in such a way that it springs the experience of terror right off the page and into the reader's mind makes him a notable contributor to American letters.

"The Colour out of Space" was written and published in Amazing Stories magazine in 1927.  Lovecraft would go on to regard it as one of his favorite stories.  While the story has no mention of Cthulhu, or any of the other entities associated with the mythos, it still possesses all the elements of cosmic terror and alien horror.

The story is told through the perspective of an unnamed surveyor.  He has come to the small New England hamlet just outside the town of Arkham to survey the area for a reservoir development.  While walking through the hills and forests of the area, he gets the sense that the area is haunted.  Eventually he stumbles upon a large spot of gray ashen earth adjacent to the remains of an old house and a well.  Curious about what happened to cause such a thing, he begins questioning the people of Arkham, who speak little about those "strange days."

Eventually our narrator finds a man named Ammi Pierce, the only remaining settler in the area.  Ammi recounts the tale of a fallen meteorite on the farmland that is now called the "blasted heath" and how it affected and slowly destroyed Nahum Gardner and his family.

The story, while a bit slow to develop, builds up to a fantastic and terrorizing conclusion.  What I liked most about this tale was the way Lovecraft handled the monster, if you can call it any such thing.  Rather than describe the alien as humanoid, he continuously asserts how indescribable and incomprehensible the thing actually is.  It is apparently devoid of any actual physical appearance that can be described to the human eye.  Rather, it takes form in the shape of a vast array of colors of which are not in our own earthly spectrum of understanding. 

Lovecraft is a true master of the genre of horror and this tale is easily my favorite of his that I've read.  The full text is available for free, along with a lot of his other works, at manybooks.net.  So, download and dig in for a classic story sure to send chills down your spine and get the wheels of your mind turning.

Pulp Fiction Friday: The Phoenix on the Sword by Robert E. Howard

"The Phoenix on the Sword" was the first Conan story to be published in Weird Tales which began a long run of tales featuring the Cimmerian conqueror.  The story ran in the December 1932 edition of the pulp magazine. 

In the story, a middle-aged Conan finds himself as the king of a foreign land after slaying the former ruler and taking the crown.  A man by the name of Ascalante attempts to take the throne for himself and engages with four other nobles in a coup.  Ascalante has in his service a fallen wizard from another land whom, now powerless, has no other choice but servitude.  During the night Conan meets with an ancient sage named Epemitreus in a vision.  The sage marks Conan's blade with the symbol of a phoenix.

As the plot unfolds, Ascalante sends a group of men to attack Conan while he sleeps, but Conan, now awakened, is prepared for the attack.  Meanwhile the fallen wizard, having now recovered a powerful ring which was once stolen from him, has regained his power.  He summons a creature to attack Ascalante.  The creature attacks and kills Ascalante during the attempt on Conan's life.  Conan then slays the creature with the marked sword. 

The story is reprinted in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, a collection of Howard's Conan tales, but can also be read online for free along with many of his other works, as I pointed out in last week's entry. 

Pulp Fiction Friday: The Shadow Kingdom by Robert E. Howard

This is the first installment of a weekly feature here on Black Hole Diaries I call pulp fiction Fridays.  Every Friday I will highlight a story from the pulp age (1920's and 30's Weird Tales and the like) from authors such as Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and others of the time period.  In cases where possible, I will provide links to the stories themselves as many of them can be read online for free.  Let us begin.


Before Robert E. Howard brought down the wrath of the mighty Conan and the Hyborian Age onto the pages of Weird Tales, he was busy spinning similar tales centering around Kull the Conqueror.  "The Shadow Kingdom" was first published in the August 1929 issue of Weird Tales magazine.  Although it didn't seem important enough for even a cover blurb at the time, the tale would go on to have a significant impact on fantasy fiction. 

Many people credit "The Shadow Kingdom" with creating what would later become known as the sword and sorcery genre of heroic fantasy fiction.  In the story, Kull, a barbarian from Atlantis, has seized the throne of Valusia through the might of his sword.  One night he is visited by a man from a rival tribe who reveals to him a plot on his life.  As the story unfolds, Kull discovers there is a secret power behind the scenes that has been working in Valusia for years through evil and treachery.  I won't give away any more of the plot for those who may not have read it yet.

Howard's use of words in this story is brilliant as his setup for the action packed climax.  The story, while probably not revealing anything new in the way of storytelling for seasoned readers in the genre, still manages to keep the reader engaged and turning the page until the grand finale.  Of course, most seasoned readers of fantasy literature have likely read "The Shadow Kingdom," but I often find that younger readers of the genre have allowed these foundational stories to escape them somehow.  Classics like "The Shadow Kingdom" are becoming lost along the way in the wake of modern day ground breakers like George R.R. Martin and R.A. Salvatore.  And that is a true shame considering so many of these stories can be found for free online.  In fact, that is where I first read "The Shadow Kingdom" myself.  The full text of this story, as well as many others by Mr. Howard, can be found by visiting ManyBooks.

If you're a fan of fantasy fiction, especially heroic fantasy or sword and sorcery, "The Shadow Kingdom" is an absolute must read.  Head on over to ManyBooks and dig in.  You'll be glad you took the time to read this classic of the genre.