Further Beyond: A Lovecraftian Science Fiction Novel by Brian Stableford

[Gray Raven]

Brian Stableford expands upon Lovecraft's story From Beyond, first published in The Fantasy Fan in June 1934 (Vol. 1, No. 10), with this short novel Further Beyond.

Stableford's short novel, published in 2017, captures the Cosmic Horror of the original while utilizing the insights of modern science to bring it to a richer and deeper feel of tangible and terrible reality.  I can't praise this novel enough for evoking Lovecraft's cosmic horror.

From the website dedicated to the writings of Stableford, I present a review of his novel.

http://www.philsp.com/stableford/novels/further_beyond.htm

Review by Sally Startup
In a novel that takes places shortly after the events of H. P. Lovecraft’s story, ‘From Beyond’, another chilling tale develops.

Crawford Tillinghast’s house and its contents have been left to his estranged widow, Rachel. Tillinghast’s friend, who was also the narrator of Lovecraft’s tale, tells the reader more about himself in this one.

The police have given up searching for Tillinghast’s missing servants, and have accepted that David, the narrator, did not murder his best friend. David would prefer not to return to the scene of the tragedy, yet finds himself unable to refuse Rachel’s request for his help.

It turns out that the damaged remains of Tillinghast’s terrifyingly uncanny machine are of huge interest to other scientific and occult investigators. In order to protect Rachel from the unscrupulous attentions of three such men, David agrees to return to the house. There, after enduring an apparent attack of migraine while trying to understand Tillinghast’s previous researches, and in fear of what could happen if the machine were to fall into the wrong hands, David takes an incredible risk.

Out beyond the known boundaries of scientific knowledge, our actions might easily have consequences too terrible for most of us to contemplate. Through his own exploration of knowledge, David reaches a position in which he has to make a horrifying choice. The result is hauntingly poignant.

For an online copy of the story, go to 

https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/fb.aspx

"That Crawford Tillinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator, for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair if he fail in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed."