The Shadow Out of Time (annotated)

This is one of Lovecraft's best and most fascinating (and longest) stories. It tells the story of a scientist who faints in class one day, only to wake up without any memories of who he is. As the story goes on, the incredible, awful and mindboggling truth is revealed. It begins on a small scale (an individual with memory loss) and ends on a cosmic scale. Less horror story and more some kind of cosmic SF/Fantasy I think... Well, this shouldn't be discussed in advance, just read it. The Shadow out of Time is included in other Lovecraft collections. This edition, though, is not only beautiful (with original cover art) but also includes the corrected text with many commentaries made by Lovecraft-scholar Joshi.

When Professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee is seized by a sudden mental transformation, the psychologists diagnose it as the advent of a second personality. But, it is a strange personality, interested in dark and forbidden occult studies. And when Professor Peaslee returns to his own mind, some six years later, he must pick up the pieces of his shattered life. However, when dark dreams begin to haunt him, dreams that take the form of impossible memories, Prof. Peaslee begins to study himself, so that he can shake off these strange pseudo-memories. However, when archaeologists discover a ruin in the Australian Outback, a ruin of impossible antiquity, Prof. Peaslee's memories begin to haunt him all the more. This is the first Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) book that I have ever read, and I must say that I am quite impressed. The author did an excellent job of creating and sustaining in the reader the horror that the main character felt throughout his adventure. Pretty much all my life I have heard of H.P. Lovecraft and his horror stories, and I found this one to be a great book to read. I really enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it.

While this story wouldn't be the entry I'd recommend to Lovecraft, it is definitely one of his major works. And this edition is worth reading for the beginning and hardcore fan. The editors' introduction details how long Lovecraft had been considering this story, his inspirations, and how he, as before in his great creative year of 1927, undertook a reading program to sharpen his style and improve his writing before starting it, his most science-fictional, tale. They also offer some intriguing observations about the specific dates in protagonist Peaslee's life and their significance to Lovecraft's. As to the annotations, it's not the largely unnecessary vocabulary lessons that Joshi and Schultz offer that are valueable, but how they point out similarities in motifs and language to other Lovecraft works, specific factual sources Lovecraft used, and the many links between this and other Cthulhu Mythos stories of Lovecraft and his friends. Even fans who have read this story more than once will probably learn something new in these notes. I can't say as I noticed any difference between the corrected text and earlier versions of the story, but then I didn't look at the appendix showing all the textual variations. But it's there for the really hardcore Lovecraft fan and scholar.

Unlike most recent Lovecraft fiction offerings, "The Shadow Out of Time" focuses on Lovecraft's final tale concerning Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, a professor at the infamous Miskatonic University who undergoes an amazing personality change that leads to a mysterious expedition under the deserts of Australia. Working from Lovecraft's own handwritten manuscript along with the common versions, the result is "The Shadow Out of Time" as Lovecraft himself must have visioned the final product. Along with the corrected text, there are the marvelous detailed notes, appendices and history that readers have come to realize as the hallmark of a Joshi/Schultz collaboration. And like other Joshi/Schultz edited volumes, "The Shadow Out of Time" is a must have item for the complete H.P. Lovecraft library. Hopefully many other volumes devoted to other Lovecraft classics will follow.

This is the definitive edition of "Shadow out of Time", based on the recently discovered typescript created by Robert H. Barlow in the 1930s from HPL's own manuscript copy. It's also been annotated by S. T. Joshi. However, there isn't anything substantially different from the previously available versions of "Time". There are minor changes in punctuation, spelling, and such, but that's all. This isn't like "At the Mountains of Madness", which had some 5,000 words excised from its manuscript when first published. That said, it's still one of HPL's best (THE best, in some eyes) stories and a worthwhile volume to have if, like me, you appreciate the annotations Joshi has been making to Lovecraft's work in recent years. If you don't have "Shadow out of Time" in any other edition, this is the edition to get.