Shadows Out of Time

And then, of course, there are the Lovecraft stories which are, or border on, science fiction, which address the cosmos of space-time directly. Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, and their compatriots are all revenants out of time. They transcend the “natural laws” which imprison mankind. At the Mountains of Madness could indeed have been entitled The Shadow Out of Time if Lovecraft had seen fit to do so, because it is about that which lingers for millions of years in ancient ruins in Antarctica, survivals from a whole different cycle of life and civilization on the planet. Most transcendent of all of course is The Shadow Out of Time (the actual novella of that title), with its Great Race of body-swapping aliens who have conquered both space and time and range up and down the millennia, collecting the minds of humans and other beings, to learn what they know and induce them to write down histories of their own times. The hero, an economics professor from Arkham, blacks out in the middle of a class one day and spends five years inside the body of one of the Great Race of Yith, where he meets fellow captives ranging from the Cimmerian Crom-Ya to post-human entities. What he learns about the final fate of mankind is too shocking to put down.

That’s a lot of territory to cover. That’s what this book is about. That is why it is not necessary for writers to pastiche or imitate Lovecraft, but merely to expand on his themes, which go on forever.

Darrell Schweitzer

Dec 20, 2021

SHADOWS OUT OF TIME

A Dream of Years ANN K. SCHWADER

A dream of years…Or was it? I awoke

adrift in my own senses: sound & light

alike too strong, too alien & bright

for subtle understanding. When I spoke,

another’s tongue resculpted every thought

to suit language I half-recognized

as elder to this planet. Yet disguised

within those words, I found—& then forgot—

a thousand premonitions. Futures passed

like phantoms through my outstretched fingers. Strange

& small they seemed, both fate & digits changed

to fit the limits of this form.

At last,

one nightmare limned the source of my despair:

in distant waters fringed by primal fronds,

I glimpsed myself as I had been beyond

the prison of this present. When or where

my mind had voyaged, it returned to me

in horror at my own humanity.

After Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Out of Time”

The Cave of the Immortals DON WEBB

I was struck by three things the day I met the angel. First that she had the biggest, gaudiest diamond ring I ever saw; second, that she had the sickest looking upright human I ever saw as a husband, and third, that she was a natural blonde. I saw these things in reverse order. Two gentlemen (with whom I had a philosophical difference) had lifted me from my bar stool and tossed me out of the doorway of the hotel bar. I slid on the polished tile into the hotel lobby and came to rest at the angel’s feet, looking up her short skirt at her neatly coiffed pubis. Her elderly husband was in the midst of a coughing fit by her side, and as she reached down (improving my view) to help me up, her big-ass diamond grazed my sweaty forehead. I struggled to my feet focusing first on her beauty, secondly on her warm brown eyes, and thirdly upon the orange and black tacky Halloween decorations that dominated the lobby of the Lakeview Holiday Inn.

The coughing man extended his pale, wrinkled right hand, and said the line he had no doubt been practicing all morning. “Mr. Livingstone, I presume?”

Like I hadn’t heard that joke before. But my eyes were on the angel. I made an affirmative grunt. I also noticed the two gentlemen from the bar were staring at me with undisguised hostility. I didn’t know if it was because I was black, or because (unlike them), I had an IQ in the triple digits. The angel was blushing because she had just realized what I had seen.

“I am Dr. Nathan Mortlake and I hope to reverse your current financial difficulties. This is my wife, Angela Mortlake.” The angel nodded, her face a lovely pink. “Perhaps,” he continued, “We can talk in the lobby.”

We talked. He had been looking for me for a few months, ever since my discharge. I had gone home to Detroit only to find my wife had A) changed her gender preference and B) removed every last penny from our joint bank account. This led to point C), that I no longer had a job waiting for me at my father-in-law’s Ford dealership. This had led to point D), returning to my earlier trade of selling small packets of dried cannabis to middle class white people in St. Louis, MO.

Dr. Mortlake was in touch with all of these facts. But these were not the facts of note for him. Of note was the fact I had spent three days hiding from Taliban shooters in a small, dank cave in Chemia al Den in Why-the-Fuck-am-I-hereistan. And I had seen the statues.