Well maybe it isn’t, but the phrase occurred to me a few days ago so I thought I’d try some sketching and see what emerged. In one interpretation of The Call of Cthulhu it’s conceivable that Lovecraft intended his abomination to look like this, given the description of R’lyeh in the story:

Without knowing what Futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality.

An alien monstrosity might be even more terrifying if it didn’t resemble anything organic or remotely earthly. For a more traditional impression of the Spawn from the Stars, my drawing from The Great Old Ones can be found here.

Previously on { feuilleton }

• HP Lovecraft’s favourite artists

• The Haunter of the Dark