The Lovecraft Sci-fi Story Nobody Talks About

[@Liboo52]

I fell asleep to a lovecraft playlist and this story was on there, I dreamt I was trapped in a labyrinth and woke up when I realized the voice I was hearing narrating everything I was doing wasn’t my own thoughts but actually an audiobook recording. 10/10 Weird experience would recommend

[@KosMik_Skul]

yeeaaahhh... lol I've done that quite a few times with different horror stories, creepy pastas, & r/no sleep narrations. I've had quite a few incredible nightmares & lucid dreams this way, even a few night-terror sleep paralysis episodes which really fucked with me. I would recommend it to people who like to get scared, or look for creative inspiration, but not lightly. that's a warning. we're not as alone in this reality as we think we are. you may experience some encounters if you play around with your subconscious and this "formula" of inducing terror.

[@Liboo52]

@@KosMik_Skul dang I’m sorry to hear your experiences were so unpleasant. I thought it was fun, but if you’re prone to night terrors and that sort of thing I agree that you should keep yourself safe

[@LiminalSpaces03]

What a crazy way to experience this story! I'm going to have to give this a try!

[@jeepz669]

Wow, u need stuff to inspire dreams..? that's wild to me

[@Liboo52]

@@jeepz669 what? Haha did you interpret my comment as meaning that I can’t dream unless I’m listening to audiobooks? That is not the case lol

[@Kneon_Knight]

In the Walls of Eryx. I have read it several times, thank you very much.

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Thanks for watching!

[@Lcnstkll007]

This is actually my favorite Lovecraft short story. It needs to be a movie.

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Agreed!

[@JamesFrancis-bs2zm]

​@@LiminalSpaces03My favourite Lovecraft as well. As a writer I've thought about a possible screenplay for Eryx but it's conceptually challenging because the main story instrument is invisible. Not impossible, but needs a certain angle. I'd love to develop. Also new subscriber here, just found your channel.

[@LiminalSpaces03]

@@JamesFrancis-bs2zm Glad you found us! As I was reading your comment I thought about a movie version with a mime playing the lead! Hehehe

[@cupidstunt8136]

I remember this story. It stands out as an independent work compared to the rest, but there is the same theme of invisibility and getting lost in a failed mission that recurs.

[@JasonCaringella]

I had that very same book decades ago, and lost it somewhere between then and now, but this story always stuck with me. It stands out from all HPL's other writings, and I feel it may have been a direction he would have pursued had he lived longer. Imagine if Rod Serling or Harlan Ellison had used this story as a script? If only..! Love the channel, keep up the great work guys👍

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Thanks for watching!

[@craiganderson7986]

I saw the title of your video and I thought, “It must be that amazing Venus story!” Read it over 50 years ago, but some stories really stick with you. Thanks for the memories!

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Thank you for watching!

[@JoeChewBaca]

Do you ever discuss Clark Ashton Smith stories? Really enjoyed this Lovecraft one. Not sure if I have that story, I'll have to look.

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Clark Ashton Smith is absolutely on my TBR list!

[@jlworrad]

What with this and Shadow Out Of Time, HPL seemed to have been shifting into a phase with more pronounced science fictional qualities (as opposed to horror). Had he been granted another decade he may have gone full blown sf.

[@robertseptim3579]

I think the ending is perfect! I have a lot more respect for Lovecraft after watching this one. Definitely a dark reminder/warning of the prejudice and cruelty of humans. I like that the ending shows how bias is what holds us back as savages, ourselves. Also, great editing! I love the music, transitions, and even the pictures! This channel is so cool

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Thanks for watching!

[@marcosgin777]

This is why writers write books. The acknowledgment from scholars like u is the direct inspiration

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Thank you so much for the kind words!

[@Visual_Writer]

It just so happens that I have a collection of Lovecraft Short Stories by my side while watching this video. It’s called „Die besten Geschichten“ („the best stories“) and thankfully, they added this gem in the collection.

[@dreamakuma]

This is a trickier story to track down. A lot of "complete" works of Lovecraft Omit both Walls of Eyrx and my personal favorite 'The Horror in the Museum"

[@michaelwest4325]

Great stories are the ones that reach deepest into us.

[@streisky]

I've never seen anyone talk about this short story. It's one of my favorites from Lovecraft... The leather spacesuit is great, as well as the alien creatures from Venus....

[@jasonrhome710]

One of my favorites. I love the covers on that edition run.

[@patrickowens4294]

I do know this one. But only because of HorrorBabble. I stumbled upon your channel today and I'm enjoying your reviews!

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Thanks for watching!

[@toi_techno]

Cool vid as ever Sending a story to a writer you think is amazing and them getting back saying "that's brill, can I rewrite it and we'll publish it as a collaboration" would be a nice feeling

[@BrokenHeadMeat]

Hi There, A.I Lovecraft here. Loved you talking about this story. A very underrated gem, some say it's a bit of a flop, but I enjoy it quite a lot.

[@marcosgin777]

Interesting how the story of him being less sane so close to his passing mimics the same way they treat Lovecrafts story in the real world it’s a forgone message

[@johnvonachen1672]

Under normal circumstances you would not need to be able to see to find the solution to a maze, if the walls did not move. All you have to do is take either your left or right hand and trace the wall until you are out. It’s not a fast solution but guaranteed.

[@LiminalSpaces03]

My buddy and I were just talking about the fact that we kept expecting the maze to change throughout this story, but it never really does. I think your idea would've worked!

[@johnvonachen1672]

@@LiminalSpaces03 Years ago I wrote a game AI that implemented Trémaux's algorithm but you would not even need that. Just use the "hand on wall rule", left or right, which would not require you to be sighted. So long as the maze is simply connected. It's essentially a depth-first in-order tree traversal. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze-solving_algorithm

[@sirlaughalot0785]

Agreed!

[@patreekotime4578]

I love the inference that the other guy had almost escaped by his proximity to the entrance. There is also a hint here of an anti-nuclear power stance even before such a thing was really proven to be possible.

[@maxgonzalez214]

I had never heard of this story before, but the setting in venus sounds very much like Avatar 😮

[@Boomer_Dual_Sport]

It's so unlike HPL that having read and loved this story multiple times I still forget who wrote it.

[@HenerGrc303]

I love all the tech details like name brands in this story

[@SKELTER.]

Like you I read this in my early teens and it's always stuck with me. I always thought about developing it into a play. There were always two problems: where do you find a mime who can act, and technology. With smartphones tech has caught up, now for the mime.

[@toweypat]

Would he have to act if he was wearing an astronaut helmet?

[@SKELTER.]

@@toweypat for the production I want to put on, yes he or she would need to be able to act while miming. I want to send close-up face shots to the audiences mobiles. Drama!

[@LiminalSpaces03]

I'd go see that play!

[@delmarchipperson2049]

I got chills thinking about getting stuck like that. I would never explore that place in the first place!

[@TerbInYourFace]

Especially since he was right by the entrance/exit and never realized

[@sweetviolents29]

I’m so grateful for the context you’ve given me in this video! My appreciation for this story has grown. I love Venusian stories from the time when we thought it would be a cool place to explore. This one is special!

[@LiminalSpaces03]

It really is. Thanks so much for watching!

[@Genethagenius]

Just discovered the channel & Lovecraft story! While I’m not the biggest Sci-Fi guy, I do have a particular fondness for the genre wnd love for many of the authors & works. (Roger Zelazny! Robert A. Heinlein! 😂)

[@Kaiyanwang82]

Thank you, this one was a "lost tale" to me.

[@TheTimeshadows]

This is my _favourite_ HPL story.

[@joesiemoneit4145]

people are always like "why was lovecraft so racist, even more than what was normal back then?" and they forget that he had massive mental illness problems. it is true that mental illness doesnt cause racism. but as someone who struggled with mental illness all my life, i can say that it absolutely can warp your perception of reality. its known that some questionable ideas can be worsened by mental illness and i have even seen it on people when i was in treatment in a psychiatry for six months. i dont really want to talk about lovecrafts politics, here. i just think it is very interesting that this aspect almost always gets left out when discussing the politics he helt for most of his life.

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Very good points and well said!

[@colinmacaoidh9583]

in a strange incidence of synchronicity, I was just talking about this story with my friend, 2 days ago

[@CthuluMcfeely]

I've read it a few times. Its good.

[@tully667]

But were the Venusians trying to help him reach the exit? Were they using themselves as markers to exit the maze by surrounding the walls including grouping at the door? They took shifts in their positions around the structure. I see the maze predating the lizard people and their technology and possibly seeing the humans as victims of this ancient maze. When the bias of the main character sees the lizard people as only taunting him, maybe they were trying to help him out. Maybe?

[@LiminalSpaces03]

I really like this interpretation!

[@Turtlpwr]

Audio is starting to sound better!

[@MisterGrooves]

I'm not even sure I have this on in my Lovecraft collection. I need to go look because it doesn't sound familiar at all. Thanks!

[@philliplockhart9954]

It's a collaboration, and those aren't usually published in his "complete" collections. There is a two volume set "the crawling chaos" and "Medusas web" which collects most of his collaborations but not all

[@MisterGrooves]

@@philliplockhart9954 Thanks, I'll be on the hunt for those!

[@Tetsujin-28]

I have that Race Point edition and it isn't in there. Wild. Great content. Recently I picked up The Futurological Congress (Stanislaw Lem). Concrete Island (J.G. Ballard). That was a strange one.

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Thanks for watching! Ballard coming soon!

[@rodneykelly8768]

This story seems to be some how related to "A Martian Odyssey" (1934) by Stanley G. Weinbaum.

[@LiminalSpaces03]

I love that connection! It does seem similar.

[@DamnableReverend]

I read this for the first time in the early 90s as well. I think it's a really good one, but would still claim "Shadow Out of Time" as his most sophisticated take on science fiction. You are right though that this should be discussed more. "Eryx" does bring to mind a lot o the science fiction written by his friend Clark Ashton Smith a few yes earlier -- mostly about humans running afoul of ancient alien demigods on Mars or Mercury, or Venusians attempting to "terraform" Earth to make it more like their own planet so they can live here.. Stories like this, "Shadow..." and others make me wonder if we would have seen even more science fiction from Lovecraft as the so-called golden age took off in the 1940s. perhaps he could have been a regular contributor to Campbell's Astounding. Also I would say Lovecraft is an example of how an intellectual person can change his views over time. There's a letter he wrote to C.L. Moore, probably around 35 or 36, where he renounces a lot of his old views and says he's embarrassed by some of the stuff he wrote in the 20s -- not so much the stories mind you, but an autobiographical piece, letters and so on. As a guy I was talking to about this wrly observed, he "died at the beginning of his redemption arc", or so it seems. ANyway, I've always had time for his stories, personally. Huge influence on my development as a reader if nothing else.

[@thekeytothegate]

Out of the aeons scared me.

[@thekeytothegate]

@@frigyou1078 it blew my mind. I so want to make it into a movie. Thanks for the other story reccs. Only version I’ve found is online. Didn’t even know it would be in print.

[@EndingSimple]

Neat t-shirt. Do you have a collection? Do you remember a short story (I read it in a magazine about 40 or 50 years ago) called "The Return of Lanny." I think Federick Pohl wrote it, but I'm not sure. It was an alien abduction story about a very young boy named Lanny, but it was written in such a uncanny way that it frightened the heck out of my younger self then. Uncanny.

[@LiminalSpaces03]

I do have a collection! I can't help you with that particular story, maybe someone else hear will recognize it!

[@bluepsiongamer4909]

There's a complaint or two but I can't really hear anything wrong with the audio in this video. What is it that people are hearing?

[@_4200h]

I didn't know Lovecraft had a redemption arc. It's actually really good to know he, with life experience, changed his mind. I respect that a lot. Incidentally this story is really reminding me of the book War with the Newts by Karel Čapek

[@LiminalSpaces03]

It made me very happy to see his take on this situation!

[@_4200h]

@@LiminalSpaces03 Thank you for sharing it! I'd written him off as a brilliant writer but unworthy of attention due to his extremism, if even someone like him can change then there's hope for humanity!

[@blu12gaming44]

The basis of the plot sounds quite a bit like David Cameron's Avatar, which wouldn't be the least bit surprising if he 'borrowed' from another creator without giving credit since he got caught doing so with Terminator when Cameron ripped off Harlan Ellison (who didn't even want any money, just for his idea to be included in the credits).

[@albertcapley6894]

I first read this story from a collection of HPL co-written and/or ghostwritten stories, it featured "The horror in the Museum" and about a dozen others. The character development really stuck with me, cos it feels like a mirror of his personal development from his extreme xenophobic views, I firmly believe that was a different HPL than the one who gave us "Horror at Red Hook" or "the street" which are, perhaps, his most overtly bigoted stances transfered over to the page, and it was really rewarding to finally come across some of his last works and discover that he had at least begin to examine his own views more critically. I think he travelled in the south not too long before he died, and it makes me wonder if seeing the 1930s south shocked even him, an open racist no less, but to see Jim Crow era segregation and the like would have been very different from his experiences in New England to be sure. This is me reading, no doubt, waaaaaay to far into it, but I see a mirror of Inspector Legrasse going into the bayou of Louisiana with the goal to arrest, kill, and plunder amongst people HPL described as "inferior" (among many more choice words) and very much living in a jungle (or at least a sub-tropical rainforest) and taking a precious, sacred stone object from them. Fast forward to "walls" our main character begins with a broadly similar set up, and even goals, but by the end he is telling us "leave to Venus that which belongs to Venus" and trying his damndest to actually save the Venusians from his own people. In COC, obviously Cthulhu really is horrible and its cult were as well, taking the fiction at face value, but it's the way he chose to characterize those he was vilifying which made even his peers at the time find him to be bigoted. I just find the total reversal of "walls" on this theme to be a nice bookend to an author I've had a very complicated relationship with the works of over the years. His contributions to fiction are literally foundational in sci-fi, horror, and even other genres both in text and visual and audio based media as well, and for damn good reason, that was some powerful shit he was putting down, it's just also so hard to separate the artist from the work with him, with some of the things he says, but being able to see signs of personal development on his part really helps me to reconcile this, at least in my experience. This is a great video, and I'm glad I stumbled upon it!

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Incredible comment, thanks for watching and responding!

[@kennethmoyers1396]

Thanks fam, this was really good sh1t

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Appreciate it!

[@paulcoy9060]

What do you mean no one talks about? It's a classic.

[@bunnsberry3236]

You failed to mention his marriage to Sonia Greene.

[@rodneykelly8768]

In a letter to Sonia, Lovecraft told her something to the effect that, because she married him, she was no longer Jewish.

[@bunnsberry3236]

I’d be very interested to read this letter do you have a link? You failed to mention this amazing woman and her hardships .

[@fuzonzord9301]

@@rodneykelly8768 So he had a much more traditional view of seeing Jews as a religion rather than race. My pet theory is that Lovecraft's male line was descended from a Jewish convert to Christianity. Lovecraft is a very weird name. But loves-craft would be a way of distancing oneself from moneylending stereotype.

[@nathanelilly]

That’s my illustration that you’re using on the cover and throughout the video. Do you think you can provide a credit and link to the story on Space Westerns Magazine in the video description?

[@LiminalSpaces03]

That's awesome! I always use cover art from the stories for my videos, and you're the first cover artist I've talked to. I will absolutely give credit and link the magazine! Incredible art, by the way!

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Done and done!

[@nathanelilly]

Thanks! It’s very much appreciated!

[@thepeteshop]

First

[@nutin321]

Please improve your audio.

[@toi_techno]

I'm a sound engineer The audio is fine

[@EugeneLorey]

I can hear it fine.

[@daveshif2514]

improve your ears?

[@ChurchofCthulhu]

You didn’t mention what time it was when the character checks after suffering the effects of the hallucinating plant. This is the first ever reference to 4:20!!! Considering the 4/20 holiday is coming up . . . 🪴⌚️💚

[@LiminalSpaces03]

When I first read this comment I didn't believe it, so I went and looked it up, and sure enough, it is 4:20! I can't believe I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out!