The unmistakable work of illustrator Charles Burns on the cover is your first clue that THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE: TALES OF COSMIC HORROR is something special. A glance at the contents is your next.
As editor D. Thin writes in his afterword, “The tale of cosmic horror reveals the appalling unnatural essence of nature, something positively indifferent or actively inimical to humanity, which, from the vertiginous perspective thus disclosed, find itself everywhere set apart, outside, undone.” In other words, “weird tales,” with some of its finest practitioners being H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Algernon Blackwood.
The basis of the forgotten film DIE, MONSTER, DIE!, Lovecraft’s title tale is a dialogue-free account of an otherworldly force 
that infects a small farming community. It’s one of his best, though not his best-known. By the same token, Poe has a handful of more beloved tales than “MS. Found in a Bottle,” but this is the one that best fits this collection’s theme and tone.
Ambrose Bierce is represented with three stories, the best of which is “Moxon’s Master,” detailing the narrator’s memory of a night playing chess against an automaton. You also get Algernon Blackwood, Henry James and Arthur Machen, but for me, the high point lies with Bram Stoker’s “The Squaw,” a hilariously gory story that warns against killing cats – however accidental – while playing tourist at a German castle. The violence is surprisingly over-the-top for someone who wrote the rather somber-by-comparison DRACULA, and the kick it delivers is alone worth the price of admission.
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