The Color Out Of Time

by Michael Shea

Set in a beautiful New England vacation spot, a lake surrounded by wooded farmlands, the narrator and his professorial colleague discover eerie and sinister features about this area. The lake shimmers with a disturbing, unnatural color; tourists disappear; an evil presence sickens or twists the thoughts of the park rangers and vacationers alike. Seeking to discover the nature of this horror and prevent further deaths, the narrator and his friend suspect that the lake hosts an alien monstrosity. Together with a long-time resident and sister of one of the area’s past victims, they muster all their strengths and skills to combat a terrifying opponent. Shea’s literary skills and insight into character and group behavior are as skillful as his ability to create fantastic and nightmarish scenarios.

An homage to H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Colour Out of Space”, Shea’s haunting, fast-paced novel continues that narrative. A new Introduction by the author is included.

By the author of the Fantasy Award winners NIFFT THE LEAN and “The Growlimb”, and a finalist for several Hugo and Nebula awards.

"Michael Shea may not be the only writer hybridizing science fiction and horror, but he is certainly among the best."
- Publishers Weekly

“Michael Shea puts his people in the damnedest nightmares.”
- Stuart Gordon, writer/director of Re-Animator

“Michael Shea has long been one of the most vital writers of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. The imaginative scope of his work is exceeded only by the gripping and evocative vibrancy of his prose.”
- S. T. Joshi, award-winning author of H.P. Lovecraft: A Life

"Michael Shea has graced the field of the fantastic for more than thirty years… His prose is as rich and inventive as his considerable imagination…"
- Ramsey Campbell, multiple World Fantasy Award-winning author.

“Shea demonstrates what a boundary bender can do to make us rethink our definitions.”
- Locus Magazine

“Michael Shea has been writing dazzling books of fantasy and horror since the early eighties, and over the intervening decades, readers who come to him for the first time invariably wind up asking themselves, ‘Where has this guy been all my life?’ ”
- Peter Straub, bestselling author of GHOST STORY and SHADOWLAND

“(Shea is) one of the most interesting mavericks in the field.”
- Locus Magazine

about the author:
Michael Shea was born in Los Angeles—in Culver City, across the street from the huge north wall of MGM Studio's main lot. There, the billboard-size movie ads greeted his infant eyes, and taught him awe and a love of grand narratives. An inveterate hitch hiker before, during, and after his college years, he encountered, in a flophouse up in Juneau, Alaska, a book of pure Fantasy entitled The Eyes of The Overworld. A year or so later, at a different flophouse in the Fillmore District (a ghetto in those days) of San Francisco, he encountered AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS. His aesthetic goose was cooked, though he didn't come to know it till a couple years later, when he began writing Sword and Sorcery, and Mythos. He's won two WFA's, was a finalist for a third, was twice a finalist for Hugos, and twice for Nebulas. His work has been translated into French, German, Russian, Italian, Japanese, Swedish, Hungarian, Finnish, Greek and Urdu. (No—not Urdu—that's just a little joke.)

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Lovecraftian, Cthulhu Mythos, Fiction, Science Fiction, Pulp

124 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

For the British author of thrillers and non-fiction see Michael Shea

Michael Shea (1946-2014) was an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction author who lived in California. He was a multiple winner of the World Fantasy Award and his works include Nifft the Lean (1982) (winner of the World Fantasy Award) and The Mines of Behemoth (1997) (later republished together as The Incomplete Nifft, 2000), as well as The ARak (2000) and In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985).

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

'tis the season...

13 TALES OF TERROR: BOOK 8

three erudite, whiskey-lovin' old-timers versus a lake in which some hideous alien presence has nested and transformed. hideous alien presence sucks the life out of everything from trees to moths to humans, and then fills them with a bloated sort of anti-life. hideous alien presence is not just from out of space... as far as these brave seniors are concerned, it is out of time. its number is up and it is goin' down! i love that this novel features three aged intellectuals as its heroes. what a treat! maybe, if i'm lucky, i can combat alien terrors in my twilight years.

the horror is rather old-fashioned and i like that. however the description of what happens to the various victims is rather modern in how grisly and sickening (but not overly detailed) these deaths and un-deaths turn out to be. at one point the alien being mocks our heroes by dangling a barely-living gent in front of them, making the poor victim dance like a puppet held up by tentacles. shudders!

Michael Shea is perhaps known as a sort of modern day August Derleth. he is Derleth to Jack Vance's Lovecraft. he has skills and he is an often restrained, classy, and witty writer - but what i've read by him so far has not been notable for originality (although i have yet to read In Yana, which is supposed to be All Shea All The Time). best known for his sequels to Vance's The Dying Earth series, he also had an interesting sideline in horror. although the writing in The Color Out of Time is more akin to Vance than Lovecraft (despite a few Lovecraftian flourishes here and there, purple prose is really not his style), this is definitely a Lovecraft pastiche.

well, it is a bit more than that. the novel is actually a sequel to the classice Lovecraft story "The Color Out of Space" - with a twist. the novel has Lovecraft himself as a background character (the sweet and sensitive and apparently not-revoltingly-racist author mentored one of the seniors when she was a young lady) and the tale in question is a the-names-have-been-changed-to-protect-the-innocent True Alien Crime Story. it gets surprisingly meta at times. my favorite bit is actually a very minor part where the characters discuss the style and the value of the Lovecraft story itself:

"Not long after we had set to our task, myattitude to the work had struck a teasing balance between exasperation and enthralment. On the exasperating side fell all the author's obvious artistic strategies. As literary diversion, these were often highly successful. He combined a Ciceronian amplitude of style, a sonorous gentility of phrase, with an almost incantatory use of repetition and adumbration, which endowed the prose with a menacing, echosome quality. But precisely this excellence of artistry and effect disqualified the work as a source of the vital empirical data that we urgently needed for our counter-assault on our vague, unspeakable enemy. And as for the tales' substantial actions, they involved a pantheon of malign entities which had a similarly 'invented' quality, their names clearly chosen for a threatening dissonance, or in an effort to produce a phonetic facsimile of certain names in established mythology.

But on the side of enthralment was something both far more vague, and at the same time far more persuasive, than these considerations. For, as a pointillist's technical strategy aims at an unreal idiom which, seen from the right distance, conveys new realities of light, so did Lovecraft's narratives reveal, through an artificial idiom of fantasy, the true quality and meaning of the horror we had encountered. The precise psychological posture of that unique kind of dread, where awareness cringes from the first exploring touch, the first tenderly probing palpation of alien Entity, alien hunger - this was Lovecraft's special preserve..."

huh... 'a Ciceronian amplitude of style'! that's a first.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I had read this before the Nifft stories or Quest for Simbilis, I probably would not have pursued any more of Shea's writings. He commits the two big sins.

The first is to make this the actual sequel of a Lovecraft story, "The Colour out of Space", hooking into that story's final situation: the landing site of the inimical meteorite/alien is eventually drowned in the construction of an unnamed reservoir. Unfortunately, Shea doesn't follow the spirit of the earlier work. "Space" features enigmatic events beyond human understanding, without a recognizable, anthropomorphic menace. The invading entity consumes without any sort of interest in humanity (as rival, fellow intelligent lifeform, or especially tasty food source) and then departs. It is not a menace to be combated, a sentient being to be transacted with, or, indeed, a thing that follows accepted physical and chemical laws that science can wrap its head around.

Time, in comparison, turns that ultimate "outerness" into a conventional boogeyman monster that shares enough with humanity that it would stoop to taunting the protagonists with a puppet of a dead/dying/undead/undying person. The Scooby Gang discuss the creature's behavior and motives and mechanism at length, pigeonholing it into measurable if not entirely rational terms. So, everything that made "Space" great--Can't fight it! Can't analyze it! The evidence is all gone! Better hope it doesn't come back!--is now lost.

Secondly, Time brings Lovecraft himself into the mix. Here, a writer named Lovecraft wrote a short story called "The Colour out of Space" which related an altered account of actual events. Ack.

Shea does nibble around the edges of some interesting ideas which I wish he had gone forward with, instead of the "hey, monster!" approach. The alien elemental essence leaching from the original crash site is starting to affect nearby towns through the drinking water, causing behavioral calamities (though I think Peter Straub went that way in Floating Dragon).

And, in the midst of all this, there's the very Lovecraftian notion that the extremely rational will stubbornly cling to their quotidian worldview even when exposed to direct evidence of otherworldly horror, until that evidence becomes particularly overwhelming. The heroes have real problems getting others to accept their story, even when compelling facts exist. The horror doesn't want itself to be known. (Though, now I think of it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer did this, right?)

[Kevin Lucia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enjoyable sequel to THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE, with a lyrical, rhythmic style evocative of Lovecraft's best work, but without some of his more purple prose. One thing to note is Lovecraft is referenced as a character in this novel, (the premise being that his fiction was him reworking real-life cosmic events because fiction makes more of an impact that nonfiction, and I did like that angle) and it of course DOES paint him as a kindly, gentle mentor, side-stepping his problematic racist beliefs, which is to be expected given this novel's publication date. HOWEVER, he's only referenced in past tense and never as an active character, so that doesn't overshadow the novel much itself.

[Printable Tire]

Picked up at the library for no other reason than my cousin shares the same name as the author.

The narrator has that pantomime over-written quality to it that seems to be the hallmark of 20th century horror imitating old gothic tales. It makes some sense here as he is a senior-citizen scientist, an intellectual sort removed from the hoi polloi, but sometimes it verges on the comical, such as:

"It was a seven-link fragment of steel chain snugly jacketed with a thick polyethylene to retard the action of hack-saws. In plainer terms, it was a piece of an expensive bicycle-chain."

There are also pages and pages of descriptions verging on rants directed toward a certain dimwitted alpha-male character that seem ludicrously unnecessary, even hilariously so. It would appear the author was confronted by some slack-jawed beer-guzzling mullet-wearing jock-ass on a beach trip and decided to assassinate that asshole's character in his book.

There is also copious amounts of hard drinking. This is no book for an alcoholic to read.

Despite all this, and the snotty undertones sometimes emanating from the characters, it's a good horror story, though fairly short and with wafts of Jaws. My reading of it was interrupted when I was instructed by a character in the book to read Lovecraft's "The Color out of Space," which I did, and found very enjoyable, and added to my enjoyment of this book, its sequel.

I very much like the idea of an evil presence (an unknowable color) that afflicts the mind to a state of dread and depression and sloth and loathsomeness, like a bugbear made manifest...

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Die zwei Sterne sind nur eine vorläufige Bewertung, die nicht mehr als eine Tendenz anzeigen sollen)

Michael Sheas Kurzgeschichten Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea haben mich so begeistert, dass ich gleich das nächste Buch von ihm angefangen habe, dieses Mal einen Roman - DIE FARBE AUS DER ZEIT. Wie der Titel schon unmissverständlich nahe legt, schreibt Shea hier eine Fortsetzung zu Lovecrafts The Colour Out of Space. Da Shea ausgesprochen bewandert mit dem Cthulhu-Mythos ist und in den Stories HPL stilistisch nicht kopiert, sondern eigenständig, sehr viel moderner und nicht ohne Anspruch geschrieben hat, habe ich nicht gezögert, diesen Roman in Angriff zu nehmen.
Aber schon nach den ersten Kapiteln lege ich ihn - fürs erste deutlich enttäuscht - beiseite.

Zwei ältere Akademiker, Anthropologen ihres Zeichens, verbringen Sommerferien an einem See. In schöner HPL=Manier wird die idyllische Landschaft mit dem "Crescendo der Qual" kontrastiert, dass dem gänsehäutigen Leser gleich zu Beginn in Aussicht gestellt wird. Und ja, "namenlos" bleibt der See, namenlos der Schrecken, der hier lauert.
Man fühlt sich sonderbar erschlafft, unerklärlich, bis man auf ein Farbphänomen aufmerksam wird: Eine bizarre Farbschicht breitet sich über dem See aus, von der es heißt:
"Es war eine Mischung von Farben, die uns beiden gänzlich fremd war - und auch allen anderen vernünftigen Menschen fremd sein musste (...)".
Hier begibt sich Shea in eine äußerst gefährliche Nähe zu seinem Vorbild, zumal er auch postuliert, dass die Sprache unfähig sei, das Phänomen zu erklären. Dass es unirdisch und böse sei, daran besteht für den 59-jährigen Erzähler Gerald und seinen 70-jährigen Freund Dr. Ernst Carlsberg (einen Doktortitel muss er schon haben), nicht der geringste Zweifel.
Überraschend dann auch nicht, dass die beiden sich mit den anderen Gästen am See nicht gemein machen und sich ihnen sogar überlegen fühlen. Neben dem Grauen, das über dem See schwebt, ist es vor allem auch der Zeitgeist, der Gerald und Ernst fremd und gefährlich ist.

Hätte ich den Eindruck, dass Shea hier eine Persiflage auf HPL schreibt, wäre das alles okay, aber nichts spricht für diese Distanz zum Vorbild.

Damit es mir nicht die Freude an Sheas Stories verhagelt, lege ich DIE FARBE erst einmal beiseite.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not good.

[Curtis · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only good part was when everyone died gory deaths. I love Lovecraft but there's nothing worse than when people try writing exactly like him. I prefer cover bands who give the songs a fresh and different sound rather than a bland attempt at sounding exactly the same as the old version.

[Michael Larson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting take on Lovecraft's 'Colour Out of Space'. It's not written in Lovecraftian prose, which is a smart move on Shea's part, as it helps to root the action in the modern day.

Shea makes a number of other wise choices as well. The horror here is of the cosmic variety, but he grounds it also in the haunting actions that the Colour drives some characters to take. The passage about the man who tried to 'purify' his family by bathing them in scalding water was particularly affecting to me, and unlike anything that might be found in Lovecraft's own tales.

This is another thing that Shea does well- the protagonist here is not the haunted loner of most of the Lovecraft's writing, but a man with a mission, and friends, including, shock of shocks!, a strong female character! The horror here is not lessened by the fact that those who oppose it are a sensible group of people doing their level-headed best to warn people of the cosmic danger that awaits them at the bottom of the lake.

I do think the book stumbles a bit in the climax, as a large portion is given over to the protagonists trying to convince vacationers to evacuate the lake, including their opposition by one particularly bull-headed tourist, and I think the actual confrontation with the monster, which takes up only a few pages, could have used a lot more detail than it got. It's like if a big part of the climax of 'Jaws' was the mayor trying to convince everyone to leave the beach, rather than the actual hunt for the creature.

[Graham P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Shea's fiction is firmly rooted in pulp traditions, whether heroic fantasy in the mold of Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance, or the cosmic horror penned by Lovecraft and his Arkham House circle. This short novel takes on the latter, and what could have been a joyous, tentacled romp seems a bit too stunted by its novella-sized length. However despite its narrative shortcomings, there's certain moments that are truly memorable. Trees coming to life, prehistoric insects, and a Lovecraftian horror awakened inside a New England lake, where lame-brained tourists slowly feel its horrid influence. The two main characters are elder German professors, who make unlikely heroes as they join forces with an older woman who once hung out with the master himself, Lovecraft. The three of them, armed with elder signs (and copious amounts of brandy and whiskey), go face to face with the creature (the same evil that was behind the classic tale, 'The Colour out of Space). The images of the Gardner's farm underwater, and the stone well harboring the horror itself, are quite vivid, but the rushed conclusion seems to undervalue the atmosphere that Shea builds throughout. One shouldn't go into this expecting the best of the mythos, but with that in mind, it's quite enjoyable. And how can not one admire a rotting corpse being puppeteer'd by slimy tentacles (as the cover so boldly, comically shows).

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good Lovecraft pastiche; a short novel that compares quite favorably with any almost anything else set in his Mythos. Memorable and well-worthwhile!

[Joel Hacker · Rating 2 out of 5]

An (eventual) trio of professorial men (and woman) of action take on the forces left behind beneath a lake in Shea's sequal to Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space." The remnants of that story have been gestating beneath the lake for decades, slowly becoming something both subtle and physically powerful that is now ready to openly reach out to...feed upon all life on earth? I guess? Their main opposition besides this creature? Forest rangers and late '70s/early '80s vacationing dads? Perhaps also their own alcoholism, as I can't remember the last time I've read a story in which anyone drinks as much and as continuously as these characters do (breakfast to bed, I kid you not). Its the equivalent of people chainsmoking in pre-1980s cinema.
I really love Shea's original work, including his obviously Lovecraftian influenced work. I started reading it semi-recently, thanks to Patton Oswalt's contributions to Chad Fifer and Chris Lackey's excellent podcast. Unfortunately, a lot of what makes his other work so appealing either doesn't work or is entirely absent here. Typically, he's focused on the average people in society, if not the underclasses. He portrays their lives accurately, interestingly, and with sympathy. But here, we're following upper middle (possibly even upper) class professors. It seems he's trying to merge Lovecraft's preferred, or at least most famous, scholar protagnoists ala Armitage or Dyer with his preferred man or woman of action, and it just doesn't work well. It comes across as clumsy pastiche instead of believable characters. Shea's enjoyment and understanding of the physicality of people, bodies in action and motion, is also almost always a key piece of his writing. Its here, but again, feels clumsily shoehorned into a Lovecraft story that was ostensibly about a barely percievable menace, an internal corruption that at best can be escapted from rather than a target to be fought. Setting is typically a living, breathing, complex factor in Shea's stories as well. He understands and communicates clearly the beauty of urban settings even when showing us their dirty, hidden, frequently ignored parts. Yet this story plops us down in a setting that couldn't be more rural.
I haven't yet read Shea's sequal to the Nifft the Lean stories, but I'm hoping this isn't a consistent failing when Shea attempts to work directly in the world's of others. Because coming off of his original work, this was extremely disappointing (though that cover art is on point). It seems like if he had written a straight homage to Lovecraft, or a straight Shea story that was simply inspired by Lovecraftian elements, this could have come out better than the hodgepodge of styles we ended up getting. It might have also benefitted from focus and brevity, more novella in length. Unless you're a completionist, I'd skip this one.

[Jay Rothermel]

A modest novel-length pendant to Lovecraft's supreme "The Colour out of space."

All the sins of Lovecraft pastiche by Lovecraft's epigones are on display. A force that for Lovecraft was completely indifferent to mankind and earth becomes for Shea an occasion for good versus evil.

Some human monsters have walk-on roles, as they did in J.G. Ballard's early apocalypse novels. Other horrific bio-consequences foreshadow the rural body-horror of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher.

Reading this novel may sound like a chore. But Shea played a large role in the literature of Lovecraftismo in the post-1970 period. It is of historical interests for completists to check it off their lists.

[Nyarlathotep · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a sequel to HPL's The Colour Out of Space. It would help this novel make more sense and increase your enjoyment. That said, reading the Colour Out of Space is needed to be read prior to this, it is a stand alone novel.

Michael Shea knows how to spin a good story. The main characters that he develops are real people, not just cardboard cut outs. The Color is "fleshed out, it that makse sense. The way it is described & portrayed makes it a truly Evul monster.Shea uses good diction and there few, if any, typos in the Kindle version. Having a good editor certainly makes a difference.

Brief SYNOPSIS:
The tale is set 40 or so years after the events of HPL's novella. The old gent is even the mentor of one of the main protagonists. It turns out, the Colour was actually true (if you have read the Colour, you'll recall the ending, the after the climax, Amie (??) looks back & thinks he sees a brief flicker in the well?) This event is the seed from which this story grows.

2 of our 3 protagonists are camping by the lake (formed from HPLs reservoir) when they begin to notice odd things: insects, trees, etc. do not look right. One evening, away from camp, they actually see the lake & the shoreline forest glowing with a strange Color.

After a few more shocking events, they meet the third protagononist. Her brother was one of the Color's victims. Turns out she was witness to the first Colour. To wrap this upwithout revealing too much, they team up, investigate & agree to fight the Color.

I do like the fact that the protagonists were all elderly, it adds, to me, a certaini depth to them. It also shows that your never too old to fight against the Mytrhos.

All in all, this was anjoyable read and is a good addition to the Mythos spawned by the Grand Old Gent from Providence.

[arc · Rating 4 out of 5]

It really isn't hard to parody Lovecraft's style. His prose is overblown, antiquated even for its time. The same can be said for his themes, settings, and entities. Its why so many authors have chosen to take his ball of indescribable terrors and run with it.

What is not easy is pastiche. To try, with love and admiration, to imitate not only the sorts of stories an author weaves, but also the way in which they write. Notice, I say, "with love and admiration": Anyone can stand on a karaoke stage and belt, off key, a song they know well, drunkenly trying to parrot the inflections and swagger of the original artist. Very few can recreate the magic, or even make an effort to.

Michael Shea's "Color Out of Time" is one of the best examples of pastiche in literature.

I've often wondered if Lovecraft's stilted, old-fashioned literary style wasn't an intentional way to contrast with his vivid, pulpy descriptions of horror and violence. Regardless of why Lovecraft did it, Shea does it for just this reason. His two old professor protagonists are hilarious, with their philosophical musings over utter insanity and constant whiskey drinking. And they're the perfect contrast to the stereotypical 80s camp goers.

The horror is also, to a certain extent, comedic...until it isn't. Because when Shea, like Lovecraft, wants to make a hard left turn into the alien terrors of the unknown, he does not shy away. The finale is wild!

This is a fantastic read. If you like Lovecraft, horror, comedy, the 80s, or stories about groups of good-natured old folgies who fight monsters from out of space and time, this is for you.

[Gareth Bk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly average Lovecraft tribute that does not really try to capture any of what made the original story great, and instead plays out as a fairly straightforward monster mash. A very Michael Shea monster at that. More like one of the demons from his Nifft books than anything Lovecraft wrote.

Somewhat redeemed by an exciting and gruesome climax that hits all of Shea's best action notes. The most interesting parts of the story - satire on American masculinity, creeping effects of the monster on sanity, a giant moth - are unfortunately fleeting. Would give an extra half star for all the bourbon and spiked coffee that the main characters drink, if I could.

Recommended only if you really want more Shea, or are in a very monster-desiring mood.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Fitting Sequel to The Colour Out Of Space

Shea never disappoints , this atmospheric tale of horror is a fine tribute to Lovecraft & illustrates Sheas’ own skills as a master storyteller. As he weaves this enthralling sequel to TCOOS, time has passed, but the colour of otherness remains to be confronted by 3 Watchers of the threshold.

[Sue Chant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very enjoyable Lovecraft homage.

[Jeremiah Dylan Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can read my review at http://www.jeremiahdylancook.com/the-...

[James Mordechai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not entirely happy with this one from Shea. Nice premises but it fails quite badly with the confusing plot and it lacks any climax.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personally, I think this was better than it had any right to be. I am also a fan of the writer.

[John Meszaros · Rating 3 out of 5]

H.P Lovecraft’s story The Colour Out of Space is, for me, the tale that best exemplifies his obsessive dread and horror at the uncaring, indifferent cosmos. For anyone not familiar with the tale, it is about a meteorite that falls onto a farm in rural Massachusetts. Something arrived inside the space stone, a bodiless presence detectable at first only as a strange color that does not fit into the normal visible spectrum that human eyes are used to. As the story progresses, the Colour slowly corrupts the unfortunate farmer and his family and lands, withering the crops, mutating the animals and eventually causing everything to grow sick and die. Throughout the tale, the Colour is unknowable, unidentifiable. It never manifests in a physical body. It’s not even clear if it’s even a living being at all. Maybe it’s a kind of radiation or an unknown element. Or something else entirely. It resembles a natural disaster more than a cohesive entity. More a flood or plague than an outsider entity like Cthulhu or the mi-go.

Michael Shea’s sequel is set fifty years after the events of Lovecraft’s story when the farm where the Colour fell to Earth has been drowned at the bottom of a man-made reservoir. The thing has been dormant for decades under the dark water, but now it is beginning to manifest once more.
Shea’s book initially exhibits that same dread of uncaring cosmic catastrophe of the original story as the mutagenic taint of the Colour slowly and subtly seeps into the environment surrounding its watery prison. His tale also shows how such a cosmic incursion continues to affect victims long after the first encounter is over, much as a natural catastrophe forever leaves a scar in the survivors’ psyches.

Eventually, however, Shea’s version of the Colour becomes increasingly more anthropomorphic. It is described as evil and hungry, scheming to terrorize and devour human life-force. At times it even seems to sadistically taunt the protagonists. A choice that, I feel, somewhat dilutes the horror of the thing.

In tone, Shea’s story actually feels closer to Algernon Blackwood than H.P. Lovecraft, primarily in the characters of its protagonists, Gerald Sternbruck and Ernst Carlsberg, who are two elderly but spry and outdoorsy travelers as opposed to the bookish homebody heroes of the Old Man of Providence. I am especially reminded of Blackwood’s river explorers in “The Willows”, who also stumble into a realm of otherworldly beings whose very nature is hostile to human life.

Gerald and Ernst are deeply familiar with each other’s thoughts to the point that each can readily guess what the other is thinking, much like amateur detectives Monsieur Dupin and his companion from Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. I feel this comparison is apropos since Gerald and Ernst are themselves amateur investigators, setting themselves the task of discovering the nature of the miasma that is infesting the lake, if initially for no other reason than that they believe it is their duty to uncover the truth behind the mystery. Though once they see what happens to victims of the thing in the lake, they turn their quest towards stopping it before it can spread.

In an interesting twist, Lovecraft himself and his stories actually existed in the world of Shea’s novel. Here the being Gerald and Ernst are fighting actually served as the inspiration for “The Colour Out of Space”. Lovecraft learned of it from Sharon Harms, a young protégé of his who witnessed its arrival on Earth and the subsequent destruction of her childhood friend and his family.

Miss Harms is the most intriguing character in the story. She has been waiting for fifty years, keeping a vigilant watch for the Colour to re-emerge so she can finally have her revenge. Her methodical planning proves critical in the final confrontation.

Thematically Shea’s book isn’t the best sequel to “The Colour Out of Space”. The being is far too anthropomorphic and malevolent. Nevertheless, it definitely stands on its own as an enjoyable story inspired by the mythos.

[Hugo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbly written in Lovecraft's style—even though, nigglingly, it doesn't at all match the '70s/'80s setting—and building on his The Color Out of Space suggestively, atmospherically, and then outright disgustingly. Could have well done without the incorporation of Lovecraft as a (historically background) character in this, creating a metafiction—easily strong enough to stand on its own as a true sequel with that little bit of writerly nonsense.

[Alan Bligh · Rating 1 out of 5]

As I like to say, 'your mileage may vary and all reviews are subjective' and there are clearly some reviewers who really like this, but sadly I found this one to be a bit of a mess; Pastiche veering into parody, trying its hand at meta-fiction and then wavering into flimsy attempted 80s splatterback territory and away again - all rather unsatisfactory. The prose is well enough executed aside from an obviously affected and hollow-ringing narrative voice, and is competent enough to not make the read actually painful, but I just found it too choppy and infirm of purpose, to ready to come up with the promise of a good idea and not follow it through, psycho-babble clogged and generally hackneyed to enjoy. I was really struggling to reach the end ...and its not a long book. I remember liking the author's fantasy stuff a lot better in the dim way-back when, but i may leave it in the realms of memory just in case.

If you're after to pseudo-lovraftian 'its in the water' mutant hi-jinks of vaguely the same era, I'd suggest Graham Masterton's 'Wells of Hell' instead, it's far from that particular author's best work either for me, but it's better than this.

My first real dud of the year! Alas

[Kip · Rating 1 out of 5]

'The Colour Out of Space' is probably the finest horror tale of the 20th Century, whereas this, an unofficial sequel, is a piss poor pastiche that shows no understanding for Lovecraft's greatness. It's vaguely enjoyable, but it's lacking any verve or spark that might raise it to the status of an exciting pulp read. Okay, I've read worse, but if you're going to position yourself against a cosmic backdrop of greatness, then you better be good. This isn't, therefore it reeks of star-fucking. I'm actually surprised that it's received the generous ratings it has done on here... All I can say is you GoodReads people are far more forgiving than I am and you all deserve to die a slow and painful death.

[Nemo Erehwon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Other-natural weirdness at a mountain lake, where a strange aura of unnatural colors and over-sized insects convince two wordy, mopey heroes that there is a looming danger.
If only the narrator wasn't addicted to the thesaurus.

On the other hand, it is a tribute to HP Lovecraft, who was the first to created such tales of weirdness. Lovecraft even has a "role" in this book.

Entertaining if you like Lovecraft.

[S.J. Arnott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a sequel to the Lovecraft story 'A Colour Out of Space' in which a toxic meteorite crashes into a New England farm despoiling the land with an evil alien entity. Years later the building of a dam has made a lake of the farm's valley, but the evil still lurks in the depths. The grotesque monstrosity has survived for long years under the water and is now very, very hungry. Two elderly professors on vacation discover this evil and do their best to thwart its horrific dinner plans.

[c5 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shea is one of my favorite authors, but I think this is one of his weaker books. The Colour Out of Space is my second-favorite H.P. Lovecraft story, and I like some of the writing and imagery here, but Shea kind of lost me when he specifically mentioned Lovecraft and his story within this story. I would have preferred a subtler tie-in.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a not-bad sequel to "The Color Out of Space". It does go off on some odd tangents and hits one of pet peeves with Lovecraftian stories of placing HPL within them as an investigator of the Mythos.

[Avis Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shea borrows H. P. Lovecraft's universe and writes a short, if genuinely chilling horror story.

[Gerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man totally loved this book
great read, short story so wont take up too much time,

A Dark story, death befalls folks staying at a camp site by evil Alien