The Distortion Out of Space

"The Distortion Out of Space" is a short story by the late Canadian author Francis Flagg, a.k.a. Henry George Weiss, a correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft.
==Synopsis==
A pair of men camping on a mountain witness a meteor fall one evening, and travel to investigate the next morning. They discover that whatever was inside the meteor has occupied the homestead of their friends and created some kind of spatial distortion, within which the wife is lost.
The first man, Jim, enters the distortion but quickly becomes lost, and after a while the narrator, Bill, follows him, also losing his way. Eventually, in frustration, Bill fires his pistol at a shimmering cloud which turns out to be the alien entity. In its death throes, it communicates to Bill the story of its journey through the stars and its landing on Earth, making it known to him that it was not its intention to harm or upset the humans. When Bill realises that he has killed an innocent, sentient creature, he breaks down in tears.
==Characters==
*Bill, the narrator.
*Jim Blake, Bill's friend, a local physician.
*Henry Simpson, a rural homesteader.
*Lydia Simpson, Henry's wife.
*The Distortion Out of Space, a highly-intelligent alien entity.
==Publication History==
"The Distortion Out of Space" was first published in Weird Tales in August 1934, and has been reprinted in The Magazine of Horror (1965), Weird Legacies (1977), The Monster Book of Monsters (1988), and Crew's 13: Classic Tales of the Macabre & Fantastic (1997).
==Behind the Mythos==
Francis Flagg was a self-confessed fan of H. P. Lovecraft's works (as he stated in a letter to Weird Tales in September 1937 titled "The Genius of Lovecraft"), and it would appear that he took at least some inspiration for "The Distortion Out of Space" from "The Colour Out of Space", particularly the story's setup.
While Donald A. Wollheim suggested that the inspiration for the story was his own "The Man From Ariel" (1934), Flagg responded that the original story (albeit with a different ending) had been presented for consideration to several publishers two years before the publication of Wollheim's story, in 1932.
==Gallery==
The Distortion Out of Space (H R Hammond).webp|Accompanying Weird Tales artwork by H. R. Hammond
Category:Mythos-Inspired Works
Category:Francis Flagg works