/lit/ - Literature

Tonight I re-read HP Lovecraft's The Colour Out Of Space, a novella from 1927. It's still among the best of his stories - where a land surveyor arrives in a unsettling land of abandoned buildings, local rumours, and a featureless blasted heath. After hearing the history of the land from a local the narrator abandons his survey, and narrates the events leading to the blasted heath - beginning with a meteorite falling at a family farmstead.

Lovecraft describes a phenomenon outside of our nature, obeying laws unknown to us. The effects of the meteor are insidious, increasingly menacing, and build to a climax as a farmland and family are devastated. This is the appeal - we voyeuristically witness an undeserving family ruined by incomprehensible outside forces.

There's also a bit of Twilight Zone SF feel about this one. Anyway, this still a five star Lovecraft story on rereading.