From Beyond (short story)

"From Beyond" is a short story by science fiction and horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1920 and was first published in "The Fantasy Fan" in June 1934 (Vol. 1, No. 10).

Inspiration

S. T. Joshi, in "The Sources for 'From Beyond'", traces the philosophical underpinnings of the story to Hugh Elliot's "Modern Science and Materialism", a 1919 book read by Lovecraft that deals with such themes as the fallibility of the senses, the existence of colours that are impossible to see with the human eye, and the fact that matter mostly consists of empty space. [S. T. Joshi, "The Sources for 'From Beyond'", "Black Forbidden Things", Robert M. Price, ed., pp. 19-21.]

Joshi also considers Crawford Tillinghast's references to the pineal gland to be a joke at the expense of René Descartes, who proposed that this gland was the point of mediation between the material body and the immaterial soul. [Joshi, pp. 18-19.]

Reaction

Joshi judges it "unlikely that 'From Beyond'...will ever be regarded as one of Lovecraft's better tales", due to "its slipshod style, melodramatic excess and general triteness of plot". [Joshi, p. 18.]

Plot summary

The story is told from the first person perspective of an unnamed narrator and details his experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast. Tillinghast creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person’s pineal gland, thereby allowing them to perceive planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality.

Sharing the experience with Tillinghast, the narrator becomes cognizant of a translucent, alien environment that overlaps our own recognized reality. From this perspective, he witnesses hordes of strange and horrific creatures that defy description. Tillinghast reveals that he has used his machine to transport two of his house servants into the overlapping plane of reality. He also reveals that the effect works both ways, and allows the denizens of the alternate dimension to perceive humans. Tillinghast's house servants were attacked and killed by one such entity, and Tillinghast informs the narrator that it is right behind him. Terrified beyond measure, the narrator picks up a gun and shoots it at the machine, destroying it. Tillinghast dies immediately thereafter as a result of apoplexy. The police investigate the scene and it is placed on record that Tillinghast murdered the two house servants.

Characters

Crawford Tillinghast

The best friend of the story's narrator, Tillinghast is a researcher of the "physical and metaphysical". Characterized as a man of "feeling and action", the narrator describes his physical transformation after he succeeds in his experiments: "It is not pleasant to see a stout man suddenly grown thin, and it is even worse when the baggy skin becomes yellowed or grayed, the eyes sunken, circled, and uncannily glowing, the forehead veined and corrugated, and the hands tremulous and twitching."

In the first draft of the story, Lovecraft called the character Henry Annesley; he replaced that name with one composed of two old Providence surnames. [S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia", p. 94.] In "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", Lovecraft mentions "the seasoned salts who manned...the great brigs of the Browns, Crawfords, and Tillinghasts"; James Tillinghast and Eliza Tillinghast are minor characters in that story.

Connections

Joshi points out that "From Beyond"'s theme of "a reality beyond that revealed to us by the senses, or that which we experience in everyday life", is continued in later Lovecraft tales, such as "The Shunned House" (1924), "The Colour Out of Space" (1927), "The Dreams in the Witch House" and others. [Joshi, pp. 21-22.] For example, in "The Shunned House", the narrator says that "scientific study and reflection had taught us that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance and energy." [H. P. Lovecraft, "The Shunned House", "At the Mountains of Madness", p. 237.]

Adaptations

"From Beyond" was adapted into a 1986 film of the same name by horror director Stuart Gordon. Gordon has also written or directed such Lovecraft adaptations as "Re-Animator" (1985), "Dagon" (2001), and an episode of "Masters of Horror" (2005) entitled "Dreams in the Witch House".

Popular Culture

The video game "" features "Aura Beasts" that are seen through one of the psychic powers the main protagonist develops, referred to as "Aura View". This ability parallels the effects Crawford Tillinghast's device has on the characters in "From Beyond", who perceive creatures from another dimension as a result of using the device.

In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Sight Unseen", an alien device is accidentally activated which allows members of SG-1 to see, but not interact with, strange insect-like creatures who inhabit a dimension parallel to our own. Though originally confined to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, the phenomenon of this "second sight" is also spread by touch, and quickly spreads to nearby populations, mostly by way of a "sight-infected" conspiracy-theorist, a former U.S. soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress, who, ironically, stumbles upon a real government conspircay concerning aliens and the SG-1. Parts of Colorado and Wyoming are "quarantined" until the process can be reversed. Hallucinogenic gas is used as cover-up story.

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/fb.asp Publication history] from The H. P. Lovecraft Archive
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091083/ From Beyond (1986)] at Internet Movie Database