by H. P. Lovecraft
Free Online Text
“Primal myth and modern delusion joined in their assumption that
mankind is only one—perhaps the least—of the highly evolved and dominant races
of this planet’s long and largely unknown career. Things of inconceivable
shape, they implied, had reared towers to the sky and delved into every secret
of Nature before the first amphibian forbear of man had crawled out of the hot
sea three hundred million years ago. Some had come down from the stars; a few
were as old as the cosmos itself; others had arisen swiftly from terrene germs
as far behind the first germs of our life-cycle as those germs are behind
ourselves. Spans of thousands of millions of years, and linkages with other
galaxies and universes, were freely spoken of. Indeed, there was no such thing
as time in its humanly accepted sense.”
Probably the best of Lovecraft’s science fiction stories. Its
tone, its flair, its literary panache keeps a reader gripped throughout the
entire tale. It is an amazing mystery with a twist that you will never see
coming. It is quite ingenious and original for its time at least. Yet, despite
it’s brilliant crafting, the story has never been developed much into other
mediums, except as a radio drama.
The story concerns a young man who loses five years of his life.
He goes to sleep one night, only to wake up and find himself half a decade
later. His wife has divorced him and his children refuse to see him. During his
subsequent investigation of the past, he discovers that someone had taken
possession of his body traveled all over the world, met strange people, and
collected many obscure tomes - including the dreaded Necronomicon. Eventually
his search leads him to a startling conclusion.
This story introduces my favorite of the Cthulhu races, The Great
Race of Yith. An intelligent race that died out in the various millennia that
makes up Earth’s pre-history before the dawn of man. This is the earliest of
these recorded intelligent races, predating the Elder Things by millions of
years. They are capable of projecting their minds through time to the future
and past into the brains of other sentient beings and swap consciousnesses.
This is how they gather their vast repertoire of information. Eventually the
entire race travels through time as their civilization is about to be destroyed
by a race of flying polyp creatures from another planet. They eventually
inhabit the race which will inherit the Earth after mankind has gone extinct.
The Great Race, it is hinted, may be the actual writers of the
Pnakotic Manuscripts- a series of tablets which predate humanity. In my mind, I
still believe the Elder Things to be the ones who wrote these particular pieces
of forbidden lore. This is simply due to the fact that the manuscripts make
references to the Outer Gods and Azathoth, which the Elder Things are known to
worship.
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| The Great Race of Yith |
As I said above, there is almost thing done with this story in
other mediums, so I will include an audio version of the story below. Enjoy and
Caveat Emptor.
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