I had no idea that Lovecraft had written an actual extraterrestrial tale. But thanks to HorrorBabble, now I do.

I don't know how many innovative ideas Lovecraft came up with, but glow sticks, complete nutrition in a pill, and invisible walls like force fields resonate today. Lovecraft was popular in the 1970s with my high school buddies and pleasantly surprised when friends 40 years younger than me also enjoy him.

Playing No Man’s Sky and farming storm crystals on a small planet with toxic rainstorms while listening to this... 😳

The fact that the maze had an exit is somehow even more grim than my initial idea that it was probably actively preventing egress by the morphing of it's walls. However, the real horror of the story lies in ''We shall follow his _saner_ suggestion of *G E N O C I D E''*

8:20 so the time he escaped from the hallucinogenic venus flower was 4 20... Wow. Lovecraft truly was ahead of his time!

I half expected the ending to be the native's account about how they tried to gesture to him how to get out but he didn't seem to understand them!

This story's ending reminds me of a prospector during the Australian gold rush who dug and dug and found nothing. Disheartened, he shot himself. His colleague decided to bury him in the hole he'd been digging, and in the process found a nugget the size of a football. Just two more shovelfuls down

I've recently taken to listening to all of H.P. Lovecraft's work and I'm thrilled to find most of it here. I love the style of the readings here and the consistency it lends to it considering most of Lovecraft is written as journal entries or recovered notes.

Not only a Lovecraft story that I have never heard, but a story I have never heard OF. I am very impressed!

One of the best Lovecraft stories by one of the best readers on KZfaq. Great work.

Woah. A SPACE EXPLORATION story by the big HP... that’s actually really cool

I read this story in high school in the early 70’s. I had no idea it was by Lovecraft. I didn’t know he did science fiction like this. I’m used to his cosmic horror.

This one has such an intense sense of doom...

I’ve been reading HP Lovecraft’s work for years and somehow never read this story. I would love to hear a dramatic adaptation with Ian narrating! Maybe sometime in the future? 🙏🏻

Great story and narration! I wish he wrote more Sci-Fi. This is an excellent story that I always enjoy reading or listening to. The plot is really interesting. I have always loved the theme of exploration, especially interplanetary. Leave it to Lovecraft to require us to need a pad and paper to take notes of measurements and to perform calculations. I always chuckle when I read or listen to this and I hear the measurements and dimensions. I tried to figure the math out and make a map of the place the first couple of times I read this. I gave up and just kick back and enjoy it now without worrying about the equations, dimensions, and math. The intelligence of the creatures by creating the maze is astounding. I like how the narrator morphs from thinking they were dumb and ignorant to acknowledging how intelligent and forward-thinking they are. Great job!

This is one of the top five Lovecraft stories that I like. It's quite good.

Oooooh I love this story, it's always been a favorite, and having it read aloud makes it TRIPLY creepy. Imperialist plunderer gets his.... Oh, goodness. What a nightmare! LOVELY JOB!!

WOOOOHOOOO this was in the first Lovecraft anthology I read. Great to hear it aloud after all this time!

Who else was trying to find a way out of the maze??😂 Well done!

Yesss! Can’t wait to use this as a bedtime story tonight

Good old fashioned Carter Brand products! they just don't make xenoatmospheric equipment like they used to.

After a long day at work it was good to listen to this. Thank you.

Listening to this whilst designing a logo in Adobe Illustrator CS6 on a Virtual Windows 10 Computer on a Mac. I love listening to these stories whilst doing visual stuff such as art or graphic design. Your voice is still very cool, intriguing if you could get it insured like how some of those models get their legs insured.

I've been looking for this story for so long.❤

This story, what a fine goad to young people about the vital importance of exercising one's memory and attention to details.

'Ian Gordon' is going to be HUGE ; probably the first truly big $ audioBookNarrative STAR..... In 5years he will be making 5k-10k even 100k to narrate the "Stephen King topBestsellers"

The absolute last offering that Fate decreed Lovecraft would give the world. Beyond this, it was just "collaborations".

Fabulous offering! Lovecraft is awesome! Thanks for this! Cheers mate!

Love it! My favorite short story

I like this story because the main character is smarter than me, braver, tougher, and more a more studious note-taker. So the horror works better than a scrawny fainter.

Me:”invisible maze like structure” *thinks* My friend:”like that barrier block maze that you trapped me in, in Minecraft?” Me:”oh yeah! Exactly what I was thinking.”

When you are the grandfather of body horror, psychological horror, and modern science fiction, but people won't shut up about the name of a cat.

Once outer space becomes a reality, and not totally stupid, I'm going to love this story.

I have waited endless aeons for this! Finally!

Lovecraft: "These crystals belong to Venus, and Venus alone." Space Marine: *checks flamer, loads bolter, says a prayer to the Emperor*

I've been waiting for you to do this one. I could never remember the name of it but I really enjoyed it the first time.

Been waiting for this one for so long ... Thank You!!!

Thank you so much, this is one of my favourite Lovecraft stories. Always reminds me of a Clark Ashton Smith tale

i really enjoy your voice. thank you for the content

A truly remarkable tale and an awesome reading. I must say what a turn of events. This was a really good story.

Oh boy! This is such a good one!

Lovecraft was so far ahead of his time.... What imagination.

Love the content! Keep it up!

Perfection as always, thank you very much!!!

He could had just done the age old spelunking method when one gets lost in a cave. Hug the far-most left wall as he felt about until he worked his way out of the maze the only way this would fail is if that wall simply led him in a circle, in which case he simply could just switch to the far-most right wall at some point upon realizing the error and from there resume his efforts.

New HP! Thank you Ian

Thanks for the reading!📚📖

THANK YOU!

One of my fave stories! Thanx so much, Ian great stuff!

One of his best.

One of Lovecraft 's rare SF story (Colour Out Of Space could be considered another one). And yet it didn't make it any less horrifying in its conclusion.

Great story, supremly read!

Your channel sure has a knack for quality readings. I'm pretty sure I could listen to you reading the phone book and still be mesmerized. Have you ever considered doing "The Touch of Pan" by Algernon Blackwood? It's one of my favorites, not really horror, but definitely supernatural and wild.

Pure bliss Ian, pure bliss.

Quite a statement about life in the ending there.

Great content

Top stuff very good!!!!

Listen on Spotify has I had a long drive ahead. Once again well done all...

#1 Follow a single wall until it inevitable lets out. #2 chop up the corpse and use bits of it as markers.

Discovered this story as a teen. I'm still blown away by the originality and the horror of it all these years later. I also love how Lovecraft, who is usually recognised as a reactionary and a white supremacist author, is implicitly criticising colonialism, which still existed in his day, in this story.

Can't wait to listen!

I expected him to get to the entrance and find it closed.

loved it Ian ,great narration

that was aMAZEing! :D

Great stuff.

Alas. 😢 I was hoping against hope. 😅😅😅

Great choice

If you like Walls of Eryx check out Clark Ashton Smith's Vaults of You Vombis, The Immeasurable Horror and the Abominations of Yondo. Similar interplanetary subject and style of writing.

this tale was very alike the pit and the pendulum by edgar allan poe a great study on despair by lack of local awareness

Throw mud on the walls! Great story, thank you.

I love when KZfaq says they're 1 comment but I count 5

Us Eryx tend to be malicious and cruel...

The real horror is this man is apparently going commando in a leather space suit

I wasn't bright enough to think of this myself, but if there are invisible walls that run beneath the ground's surface, shouldn't there be ruts in the soil where the walls are? The area occupied by the wall would look empty, right? Either way, excellent narration, as always.

Funny how authors even 100 years ago imagined future where humanity mastered the new kinds of energy and traveled to distand worlds, while in fact the future is one of computers and cat pictures spread via those computers.

✌

Shades of Dune.

Love the story, found a way from left to right on your labyrinth but not from up to down...

It seems like the two deaths were more a result of hubris and panic than from the maze actually being impossible to navigate. And I don't think the natives were actually trying to help him so much as observing his death, unless, in his growing delirium, he failed to recognize certain patterns in the way they were gesticulating. I don't agree that they should be wiped out, however. That's hardly necessary.

keeping sanity is quiet hard.

Scary-as-shit cool!!!☻🖤💀☠👻🦇🕷🕸

Poor guy is playing lethal company alone

I've been binge watching these lately. I was wondering, can you tell me where you got that piano music you use for your intros and outros?

At 40:00 i realized that the invisible walls might be moving.

I never thought Lovecraft would have an anti colonialist message, but here we are

And all you have to do is consistently follow one of the walls to solve a maze like this. Makes me wonder if this trick was not commonly known at the time of Lovecraft's writing but is rather something the Dungeons and Dragons community made widespread in the latter parts of the 20th century.

the gamer word man

Is this a recommended reading order?

Why did he not use the suit/clothes from the dead guy to make markers or threads?

Its not the lizarsmen that are the true danger and devilish inteligence but the Crystals themselves

Have listen to this for many times now over the years and I have finally come to the conclusion. That this one is the most horrible way to go in any of Lovecrafts works its on high with "the Pit and pendulem" in terms of cruelty 😅

Venus is a vampire.

42:56

8:29

EVER

Sometimes your inflection falters and it mixes up the meaning when in lengthy description. Other than that i gernerally like this persona/reading voice.

Is anybody else on here familiar with August Derleth's sequel to this Lovecraft story? It was called Upstairs At Eryx. . . . Okay, okay, I was going anyway.

JUST GO LEFT BRO. STOP THINKING. JUST TOUCH THE LEFT WALL AND WALK FOWARD FOREVER.

Love his stories but this one is the only one that doesn't work for me. Mud being everywhere you should have been able to smear it over the walls until you had a visible indicator of the walls. Also mud being everywhere would have made getting out easy as you should have been able to use a stick to indicate the path used in and out. Lastly the size of the maze is too small for the intricacies described unless he would have to constantly double back across something closer to the size of a football field. Great work with the narration as usual Ian.

It's much better written than Lovercraft.