From the depths of the universe

The narration takes place in the first-person style of an unnamed narrator. He shares the details of communication with his friend Crawford Tillingast, who lived on Benevolen Street in East Providence. The scientist locked himself in a laboratory and changed terribly in two and a half months. He managed to create an electronic device that emits resonant waves that stimulate the pineal body, thereby allowing a person to perceive the planes of existence outside the sphere of accepted reality. The doctor turns on the car and a translucent, alien environment that intersects with reality becomes visible. Hordes of strange and terrible creatures emerge from this dimension. The experiment has begun:

It seemed to me that I was in a kind of huge and exotic temple of the long-dead gods, a kind of building woven from fog with innumerable columns of black stone, flying from the base of wet slabs to cloudy heights that extend beyond my vision. This picture kept distinct for some time, but gradually turned into an eerie feeling of complete, absolute loneliness in the middle of an infinite, invisible and soundless space, in the void.

The housekeeper turned on the light, despite the doctor’s ban, and current fluctuations in the power network resonated with radiation. Creatures from another dimension killed the servant, leaving only their clothes. The effect works in both directions, allowing alien beings to perceive people too. The doctor explains that while you are not moving, you are safe.

The space was filled with indescribable living and inanimate forms, intertwined with each other in disgusting tangle, and near each familiar object crowded host of incomprehensible alien creatures. It seemed that all earthly objects entered into complex interactions with aliens and vice versa. Among living objects, jelly-like, ink-colored monsters stood out, wriggling in unison with the vibration of the machine. They circled in frightening abundance, and I was horrified to see how they poured into each other their fluidity allowed them to seep through anything, even through bodies that we axiomatically take for solids. These creatures did not stand still, but swam relentlessly in all directions, as if they were obsessed with some sinister target. At times, they devoured each other: the attacker rushed to the victim quickly and in the next instant the last disappeared without a trace.

The narrator tries to reason Tillingast, but this infuriated him. Tillingast admits that the creatures are now hunting him, and they digested his servants instantly. Instead of himself, he decides to give his friend to them and says that the alien is right behind him. The narrator scooped up a gun and shot the car. The police heard gunshots and found that Tillingast died as a result of apoplexy immediately after the destruction of the car. At the inquiry, the doctor concluded that the narrator was under the hypnotic influence of the vengeful and thirsty maniac. The investigation found that Tillingast himself killed the servants, despite the fact that their remains were not found. The narrator cannot bear the acquired ideas about space and get rid of the oppressive sensation of someone's presence behind him.

• Narrator

Narrator - The best friend of the scientist Tillingast, is a researcher of the "physical and metaphysical." Described as a person of "feelings and actions." He did not take part in the crazy experiments of his friend, for which he was almost sacrificed to alien creatures. In the first draft of the story, Lovecraft named it Henry Annesley, combining in one name two ancient surnames from Providence.

• Crawford tillingast

Crawford Tillingast is a scientist who created a machine for moving creatures from a parallel world. Emaciated, emaciated, with a sickly yellow complexion, with a restless gleam in his sunken eyes. On his forehead and neck came out, and veins pulsed nervously, wrinkles covered his whole face, and a slight trembling beat his hands. Vanity, arrogant, untidy, neglecting all the rules of hygiene. This man, previously distinguished pedantry and accuracy. Now he was behaving like a trembling and shaking, ghost-like creature, constantly looking around, as if it was afraid to detect the presence of something invisible in his solitary home. Tillingast lived on Benevolen Street in East Providence.

In the novel “ The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, ” the families are mentioned: Browns, Crawford and Tillinghast, and James Tillingast and Eliza Tillingast are minor characters.

In the story Kurgan, formless creatures from another world penetrated the underworld and destroyed the inhabitants of Enkai from the civilization K'nan.

In the story " Trap ", the student finds a mirror of the sorcerer Alex Khlm in the teacher’s room and gets through it into the Looking Glass, where he is locked.

The story “The Evil Priest ” describes a mirror through which worshipers travel using a magic lantern that can illuminate the contours and projections of other worlds.

In the story “ Daydreaming in a Witch's House ”, the witch Keira Metzen stole a baby traveling through portals that are described as non-Euclidean geometry that led into an old room.

In the story “The Music of Erich Zann, ” the student discovered a street that never existed, where the musician Erich Zann lived in the house, who opened a portal to another world playing the viola .

The story “The Unnamed ” describes an old house in Meadow Hill in Arkham , where a family was harassed for several generations, and the attic had access to other dimensions.

The story “ Window in the attic ” describes the old house of Wilber Aykley in Dunwich County, which with the help of glass in the attic opened the passage to other worlds.

The story “ The Secret of the Middle Span ” describes the old Septimus Bishop house in Dunwich County, which opened a passage to other spaces through the bridge support.

The story " Observers " describes the old house of Eberag Waitley in Dunwich County, which traveled to other worlds through a fireplace.

The story “ A Tree on a Hill ” describes the Nadel Satan hill near Hampden, where in the year of the Black Goat you can see a tree, which is a portal to another dimension.

The Dunwich Horror story describes the house of the sorcerer Waitley, who called on Yog-Sothot through a portal on a hill, resulting in a giant flame that destroyed all the vegetation.

S. T. Joshi points out that the theme of the story is “reality that goes beyond the perception of our feelings or that which we experience in everyday life” - it continues in later stories, such as “ Abandoned House” (1924), “Color from other worlds " (1927)," Daydreaming in a Witch's House "and others.

The book "Science Fiction: The Early Years" writes about the concept "From the depths of the universe" as "very interesting, despite the rigidity and immature style."

S. T. Joshi wrote: "it is unlikely that" From the depths of the universe "will be considered the best story, because of the sloppy style, melodramatic excess and the general pettiness of the plot." S.T. Joshi said that the mention of the pineal body jokingly hints at Rene Deckard , who considered this organ a point of mediation between the physical body and the intangible soul.

The plot from the outside was adapted for the 1986 film of the same name by horror director Stuart Gordon . In the film, Dr. Crawford Tillingast ( Jeffrey Combs ) does not play the main role, but the assistant of the crazy doctor Edward Pretorius.

The story also served as inspiration for the 2013 horror film Banshee Chapter, which also uses the ideas of the 1986 Gordon movie.

• In 1998, the science-fiction video game Half-Life depicts an event known as the "resonant cascade" that occurs during an experiment with foreign geological materials. During the cascade, alien creatures from other dimensions appear and disappear randomly in our world.
• A similar concept is used in the video game 2015 Bloodborne , where, having assembled a collection called "Insight", various creatures begin to become visible in your world.
• Sleep's American band stoner doom metal fans lovecraft and therefore included the song "Outside" in their 1992 album Sleep's Holy Mountain.
• Charles Stross’s novel Jennifer Morgue has an electronic device similar in function, known as the Tillingast Resonator, which allows the user to see invisible objects.
• American death metal band Massacre released a Lovecraft horror album in 1991.
• In the video game Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy , creatures “Aura Beasts” appear, which can be seen using the psychic powers possessed by the protagonist and calls them “Aura View”.
• In the series Stargate , in the episode Sight Unseen, they activate an alien device that allows SG-1 to see but not interact with monstrous creatures like insects that inhabit a dimension parallel to ours.
• Des metal band Ripping Corpse recorded the song "Beyond Humanity" inspired by Lovecraft's story and Gordon's film.
• Dark ambient and Halloween themed band Nox Arcana founded the Blackthorn Asylum album in 2009, according to this story, with some changes.
• The heavy metal band Manilla Road adapted the song to the story in the 1990 album The Courts of Chaos.
• The movie The Secret Experiment (2013) has a similar plot, including medicinal dimethyltryptamine and ultraviolet light, and Lovecraft’s story itself is mentioned.
• In Star Trek: The Next Generation, in the Phantasm episode, there are interphase parasites that are not found under normal conditions, that feed on cellular matter and are described as surreal dream objects.
• The ninth edition of the comic Providence Alan Moore is very similar to "Outside."

• From the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• “ Outside ” on hplovecraft.com

EF Bleiler and Richard Bleiler. Science-Fiction: The Early Years . Kent State University Press, 1990. (p. 544). ISBN 9780873384162 .