 |
| The Haunter of the Dark |
Sci-fi horror literature, or horror sci-fi one, rests on a firm ground of ancient (literally) "common place," so it is often difficult to state who reworks who, or whether two writers were just referring to the same traditional imagery.
E.g., did HP Lovecraft know Bram Stoker's Lair of the White Worm? If he did, some trace may be found in his stories The Dunwich Horror; At the Mountains of Madness, with the metamorphic Shoggoths living hidden in ancient buildings, or The Haunter of the Dark, as for an alien psycho-entity dominating a man's mind.
Or again, cf. the many other "devils in disguise" in The Thing on the Doorstep, or The Whisperer in Darkness, or the hybrid creatures in The Shadow over Innsmouth.
All in all, The Colour out of Space describes a cursed land, a cursed soil indeed, and a cosmic horror based on light, colors, strange perceptions, much more than on any physical evidence.
The great difference, however, being the fact that Stoker - as he already did in Dracula - presents his monster as an outcome of unforeseen terrestrial evolution. We could avoid Cthulhuish invasions, but not the Earth's own irrational explosions. Which prospect is worse?
No comments:
Post a Comment