This horror short story follows a farming family's decline after a meteorite lands near their New England home. Its strange threat appears as a colour unlike any known on Earth.
46 pages 54 min reading time
One of the most admired stories of cosmic horror, and the one Lovecraft himself said was his favorite among his own works.
Imagines a threat from outer space that is truly alien, something that cannot be understood, named, or even properly seen by human minds.
Suggests that the universe does not care about people, and that ordinary lives can be destroyed by forces with no reason or evil intent behind them.
Helped set the model for later science fiction horror about strange things from space that poison land and change living things, a model that writers and filmmakers still follow.
Has been adapted for film several times, most notably as "Die, Monster, Die!" (1965) and "Color Out of Space" (2019), starring Nicolas Cage.
Paid only 25 dollars
The magazine paid Lovecraft just 25 dollars, and only after a long delay and repeated letters asking for it.
A grudge against the editor
Lovecraft was so angry about the slow payment that he called the publisher "Hugo the Rat" and refused to send him more stories.
Printed as science fiction
It first appeared in Amazing Stories, one of the earliest magazines devoted only to science fiction.
A valley soon to be flooded
The story's doomed valley is set to vanish under a reservoir, likely drawn from real Massachusetts plans to flood whole towns.
H. P. Lovecraft 1927 
