Some of the ancient civilizations that populate the universe of the Mythos Circle appear as “Artifact Age” civilizations in the Voidpunk Universe, including the Yith from “Shadow Out of Time.”

H. P. Lovecraft wrote “The Shadow out of Time,” his last major story, from November 1934 to February 1935. It was originally published in Astounding Stories in June 1936. As related by S. T. Joshi in “The Genesis of ‘The Shadow out of Time’” (Lovecraft Studies No.33, Fall 1995), Astounding’s editor Orlin Tremaine had accepted the story “apparently without reading it,” but then set his copyeditor(s) on it. The story appeared heavily edited and severely abridged, the same fate At the Mountains of Madness suffered at about the same time with the same editor in the same magazine.

Lovecraft was less enraged about it than he was about “Mountains of Madness,” where he referred to Tremaine in a letter as “that god-damn’d dung of a hyaena.”

Perhaps Lovecraft was less enraged because he had never been sure about the quality of “The Shadow Out of Time” in the first place, whether “to type it up or tear it up.” Its third draft, according to Joshi in I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, was eventually typed up by R. H. Barlow, who introduced a whole bag of errors already, and then found its way to Astounding through friends from his circle. They gave it to his agent, who in turn submitted it to the magazine.

In case you expect a happy ending—no. “The Shadow Out of Time,” later to become one of Lovecraft’s signature stories, initially bombed with readers and critics.

Here, you have everything, like a 4-in-1 value set of writer’s nightmares. A tortured writing process; a typed-out manuscript riddled with errors; a severely abridged, edited, and reparagraphed publication; and a brutal reception by critics.

After Lovecraft’s original manuscript was rediscovered (that’s an adventure story of its own), the first publication of “The Shadow Out of Time,” as Lovecraft originally wrote it, appeared in H. P. Lovecraft, The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories. Ed. with introd. & notes S. T. Joshi. New York: Penguin, 2004. 300–34.

That’s the edition you want to read and enjoy!