Colour out of space (species)
Encyclopedia
A colour out of space is a fictional extraterrestrial
in the writings of the horror fiction
author H. P. Lovecraft
. It first appeared in Lovecraft's short story
"The Colour Out of Space
" (1927).
extraterrestrial creatures who suck life out of all living things in the area. They arrived in a meteorite
that fell in a rural area west of the fictional town of Arkham
, Massachusetts, landing next to a well, on farmland belonging to Nahum Gardner.
The colours inhabit small colored, fragile globules within such meteors, exhibiting the odd band of colors described above. A simple hammer tap is sufficient to break one open, resulting in no noticeable release of anything at all.
Snow around the house melted faster than anywhere else nearby, and skunk cabbage
s of prodigious size and unusual color sprouted out of the soil. The trees budded early and were observed to be moving even with no wind of any sort. Sprouting saxifrage
bore the same unnatural hues as the cabbages. Within a few months all plant life near the site took on unnatural properties and odd hues to the point where the road running near it fell into disuse, owing to people fearful of seeing such a sight.
Insects were also affected in a similar manner. Their bodies and movement pattern noticeably altered from what was known through past experience, and behaving in a manner contradictory as such. It is probably safe to assume that they are affected to a similar degree as animals.
ones, started taking after the fate of the grass, turning brittle, growing smaller than normal, growing increasingly more hideous-looking, gray, and in the case of the crops, tasteless. The insects followed suit, dropping dead rapidly.
The vegetation thereafter began crumbling like dust into grayish powder, and it was soon discovered afterwards that the well water was of undrinkable quality. The rest of the farm animals also fell to the same fate. The poultry turned gray, rapidly died and their meat found useless as food, being dry and of disgusting taste. Hogs grew massively fat, developed isolated mutations on their bodies here and there, and then soon after turned gray and collapsed like the rest of them, their meat found inedible for the same reasons as the poultry. Cows were next, portions of their bodies, or even the entire thing, shrank incredibly. The result was the same. They turned gray and died.
Although all plant life in the area tended to die away, some, most notably trees, reacted in an unusual way - one member of the family claimed that the branches of some trees "swayed also when there was no wind," although it is never established if this swaying was the result of specific manipulation from the alien species, or was merely another example of the unusual growths.
. They are also mentioned in the adaptation, Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: At the Mountains of Madness
as well as the movie The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu
.
The colours are included in Lovecraft-inspired role playing games, such as in the Call of Cthulhu
game, where a colour out of space is a monster that the player character
s may encounter.
A colour out of space appears to Lovecraft in the story "To Mars and Providence
".
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
in the writings of the horror fiction
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
author H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
. It first appeared in Lovecraft's short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
"The Colour Out of Space
The Colour Out of Space
"The Colour Out of Space" is a short story written by American fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft in March 1927. In the tale, an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the "blasted heath" in the wild hills west of Arkham, Massachusetts...
" (1927).
Description
In Lovecraft's story, the colours out of space are unknowable, non-humanoidHumanoid
A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being. The term first appeared in 1912 to refer to fossils which were morphologically similar to, but not identical with, those of the human skeleton. Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, it...
extraterrestrial creatures who suck life out of all living things in the area. They arrived in a meteorite
Meteorite
A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the Earth's surface. Meteorites can be big or small. Most meteorites derive from small astronomical objects called meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by impacts of asteroids...
that fell in a rural area west of the fictional town of Arkham
Arkham
Arkham is a fictional city in Massachusetts, part of the Lovecraft Country setting created by H. P. Lovecraft and is featured in many of his stories, as well as those of other Cthulhu Mythos writers....
, Massachusetts, landing next to a well, on farmland belonging to Nahum Gardner.
Meteorite properties
The meteorite possesses odd properties:- It wastes away when exposed to natural air.
- It continuously produces significant amounts of heat.
- It is unusually soft for something resembling rock.
- No noticeable gases released when heated over charcoal.
- No reactionChemical reactionA chemical reaction is a process that leads to the transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Chemical reactions can be either spontaneous, requiring no input of energy, or non-spontaneous, typically following the input of some type of energy, such as heat, light or electricity...
to the borax bead testBorax bead testThe bead test is a traditional part of qualitative inorganic analysis to test for the presence of certain metals. The oldest one is the borax bead test or blister test. It was introduced by Berzelius in 1812. Since then other salts were used as fluxing agents, such as sodium carbonate or sodium...
. - No apparent reaction to any producible temperature, including that of the oxyOxygenOxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...
-hydrogenHydrogenHydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...
blowpipeBlowpipe (tool)The term blowpipe refers to one of several tools used to direct streams of gases into any of several working media.- Blowpipes for torches :...
. - Highly malleable.
- LuminousLuminosityLuminosity is a measurement of brightness.-In photometry and color imaging:In photometry, luminosity is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to luminance, which is the density of luminous intensity in a given direction. The SI unit for luminance is candela per square metre.The luminosity function...
. Especially noticeable in dark surroundings. - Spectroscopic analysis during heating resulted in shining bands unknown previously in the visible spectrumVisible spectrumThe visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 750 nm. In terms of...
. - Mostly immune from reaction to all laboratory-standard reagentReagentA reagent is a "substance or compound that is added to a system in order to bring about a chemical reaction, or added to see if a reaction occurs." Although the terms reactant and reagent are often used interchangeably, a reactant is less specifically a "substance that is consumed in the course of...
s, ranging from water to aqua regiaAqua regiaAqua regia or aqua regis is a highly corrosive mixture of acids, fuming yellow or red solution, also called nitro-hydrochloric acid. The mixture is formed by freshly mixing concentrated nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, usually in a volume ratio of 1:3, respectively...
. Small and faint traces of Widmanstätten patternWidmanstätten patternWidmanstätten patterns, also called Thomson structures, are unique figures of long nickel-iron crystals, found in the octahedrite iron meteorites and some pallasites. They consist of a fine interleaving of kamacite and taenite bands or ribbons called lamellæ...
appear on it in response to acid reagents. Same reagents also slightly cool it. - Generally accepted to be a metal of some sort.
- Possesses the qualities expected of a magnetic material.
- Affinity for electricity, to the point where it could divert lightning strikes to itself.
- Mutually damaging to siliconSiliconSilicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...
compounds.
The colours inhabit small colored, fragile globules within such meteors, exhibiting the odd band of colors described above. A simple hammer tap is sufficient to break one open, resulting in no noticeable release of anything at all.
Environmental impact
They possess mutagenic properties. The crops on the farm near the impact site grew to great size and unnatural gloss, but this was useless as their taste was bitter, sour and unlikeable in the extreme. Animals in the area were also affected, their bodies, behavior and activity showing hints of alteration, such as leaping distances well above their normal capability, malformed body proportions and appearances, and footprints in the snow of unnatural configuration.Snow around the house melted faster than anywhere else nearby, and skunk cabbage
Eastern Skunk Cabbage
Eastern Skunk Cabbage, Clumpfoot Cabbage, Foetid Pothos, Meadow Cabbage, Polecat Weed, Skunk Cabbage, or Swamp Cabbage , commonly known as simply Skunk Cabbage, is a low growing, foul smelling plant that prefers wetlands...
s of prodigious size and unusual color sprouted out of the soil. The trees budded early and were observed to be moving even with no wind of any sort. Sprouting saxifrage
Saxifrage
Saxifraga is the largest genus in the family Saxifragaceae, containing about 440 species of Holarctic perennial plants, known as saxifrages. The Latin word saxifraga means literally "stone-breaker", from Latin + ...
bore the same unnatural hues as the cabbages. Within a few months all plant life near the site took on unnatural properties and odd hues to the point where the road running near it fell into disuse, owing to people fearful of seeing such a sight.
Insects were also affected in a similar manner. Their bodies and movement pattern noticeably altered from what was known through past experience, and behaving in a manner contradictory as such. It is probably safe to assume that they are affected to a similar degree as animals.
Effects on mammals
Later on in the story, cows grazing on grass near the site produced milk of worthless quality. The cows were moved away, a solution that worked as the milk returned to normal thereafter. The grass near the site, the same general area the cows fed in, started taking gray colours and became strangely brittle. Horses in the stable one night were driven violently mad by it, and had to be shot for their own good when found a week later after they were released from the stables during their bout of madness. Woodchucks populating the area have also been affected; at one point two villagers find and shoot one specimen described as strangely deformed, with "an expression which no one ever saw in a woodchuck before".Effects on plant life
The plant life in the area, even the mutatedMutation
In molecular biology and genetics, mutations are changes in a genomic sequence: the DNA sequence of a cell's genome or the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. They can be defined as sudden and spontaneous changes in the cell. Mutations are caused by radiation, viruses, transposons and mutagenic...
ones, started taking after the fate of the grass, turning brittle, growing smaller than normal, growing increasingly more hideous-looking, gray, and in the case of the crops, tasteless. The insects followed suit, dropping dead rapidly.
The vegetation thereafter began crumbling like dust into grayish powder, and it was soon discovered afterwards that the well water was of undrinkable quality. The rest of the farm animals also fell to the same fate. The poultry turned gray, rapidly died and their meat found useless as food, being dry and of disgusting taste. Hogs grew massively fat, developed isolated mutations on their bodies here and there, and then soon after turned gray and collapsed like the rest of them, their meat found inedible for the same reasons as the poultry. Cows were next, portions of their bodies, or even the entire thing, shrank incredibly. The result was the same. They turned gray and died.
Although all plant life in the area tended to die away, some, most notably trees, reacted in an unusual way - one member of the family claimed that the branches of some trees "swayed also when there was no wind," although it is never established if this swaying was the result of specific manipulation from the alien species, or was merely another example of the unusual growths.
Aftermath
The majority of the colours eventually returned to space in a dramatic fashion, with everything it had ever touched glowing with its unnatural colours, and the trees pointing their branches up towards the sky. It then rapidly shot itself up into space, leaving a hole in a cloud as the only sign of its departure. All things organic that it had associated itself with crumpled into dust. A small portion remained in the well where it had originally taken up residence. The farm which had been invaded was located near one of four towns later flooded to form a reservoir.Other appearances
Danforth mentions the name "colour out of space" in At the Mountains of MadnessAt the Mountains of Madness
At the Mountains of Madness is a novella by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in February/March 1931 and rejected that year by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright on the grounds of its length. It was originally serialized in the February, March and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories...
. They are also mentioned in the adaptation, Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: At the Mountains of Madness
Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: At the Mountains of Madness
Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: At the Mountains of Madness is a 2006 radio drama performed by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, and based on the novella At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft...
as well as the movie The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu is a 2009 horror comedy film directed by Henry Saine about the last living relative of noted short-story writer H.P. Lovecraft. The film premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and was acquired by MPI Media which intends on releasing it theatrically through...
.
The colours are included in Lovecraft-inspired role playing games, such as in the Call of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)
Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos.The game, often abbreviated as CoC, is published by Chaosium.-Setting:...
game, where a colour out of space is a monster that the player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
s may encounter.
A colour out of space appears to Lovecraft in the story "To Mars and Providence
To Mars and Providence
"To Mars and Providence" is a short story by Don Webb, published in War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches. It is a conflation of The War of the Worlds, the Cthulhu Mythos, and the biography of H. P. Lovecraft.-Plot summary:...
".