1 h 24 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the thing destroying your home has no shape you can name?
In the hills west of Arkham, an unnamed surveyor from Boston comes to measure land for a reservoir. He finds a stretch of ground where nothing grows. An old neighbor, Ammi Pierce, tells him about the Gardner farm—and the stone that falls from the sky.
Nahum Gardner wants to save his farm and family, but the land begins to grow strangely. Trees blossom in unusual shades. Animals weaken. His wife, Nabby, senses something wrong in the air and walls. In H. P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space, even the professors of Miskatonic University cannot explain what their tests reveal.
What you’ll discover
- A farm turned strange Watch thick grass and strange blossoms turn familiar farmland into a source of dread.
- A family under threat Follow Nahum’s struggle to protect Nabby and their sons from a ruin he cannot explain.
- Knowledge meets its limits See scholars bring fire, acid, and theories to something that defeats their understanding.
- A witness remembers Hear Ammi’s account through the surveyor, as remembered details draw you toward the farm.
- Fear beyond familiar monsters Encounter a presence from beyond the stars, without ghosts or monsters with teeth.
Who will love it
For readers who love creeping dread, fear of the unknown and cosmic horror, and anyone curious about where modern cosmic horror began.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A surveyor meets the blasted heath
- A stone falls from the sky
- The farm begins to grow wrong
- Animals and people begin to suffer
- What the story is really about
- How the tale is told
Who’s who
- The surveyorAn unnamed engineer from Boston who comes to survey the hills for a reservoir and learns the history of the blasted heath.
- Ammi PierceAn old, half-forgotten farmer and neighbor who watched the blight from its start and tells the surveyor what he saw.
- Nahum GardnerA hardworking farmer on whose land the meteorite falls, who wants to save his farm and family from a ruin he cannot explain.
- Nabby GardnerNahum's wife, who is the first to sense that something in the air and in the walls has gone terribly wrong.
- Thaddeus, Merwin and ZenasThe three Gardner sons, who live and work on the farm as the strange blight settles over their home.
- The professors of Miskatonic UniversityScholars from Arkham who test the meteorite with fire and acid and cannot explain its strange behavior.
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Read and hear La Couleur tombée du ciel in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
La Couleur tombée du ciel
by H. P. Lovecraft · 1927
A meteorite falls on a farm near Arkham, and a strange colour spreads through the land, animals and family.
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In short
The Colour Out of Space is a short horror story by H. P. Lovecraft. He wrote it in 1927, and it first appeared that September in the magazine Amazing Stories.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A surveyor meets the blasted heath
The story opens with a narrator who has no name. He is an engineer from Boston, sent to survey the hills west of Arkham. The city plans to dam a valley there and flood it to make a new reservoir. He describes wild hills, deep woods and valleys that no axe has ever cut. It is a lonely, half-forgotten country, and he finds it a little uneasy even before he meets its strangest place.
At the center of that country lies the blasted heath. It is a stretch of about five acres where everything is a dead gray. There is no grass, no leaf and no bright soil, only a fine grayish dust like ash. The narrator sees the ruin of a farmhouse and barn, a dry well, and an old orchard that looks sick in an odd way. Even the air near the place seems wrong to him.
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What is The Colour Out of Space about?
It is about a farm near Arkham, Massachusetts, where a meteorite lands in 1882. An unknown colour spreads through the land, plants, animals and people. A surveyor hears the story from an old neighbor years later.
Is The Colour Out of Space a true story?
No. It is fiction. Lovecraft wrote it in 1927, and it first appeared in Amazing Stories that September. Arkham is an invented town, though it is set in a real part of New England.
What is the colour in The Colour Out of Space?
The story never names it. It is described as a colour not found in the normal spectrum, something from beyond nature. Lovecraft leaves it to the reader to imagine, which is part of the horror.
The author
H. P. Lovecraft
1890–1937 · American horror writer
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937) was an American writer and editor born in Providence, Rhode Island. He lived mainly in Providence, but also lived in New York City from 1924 to 1926. He wrote horror stories, including “The Call of Cthulhu,” published in 1928, and “The Dunwich Horror,” published in 1929.
More by H. P. Lovecraft
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