The Shadow Out of Time
During an economics lecture, Professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee’s body and mind are
taken over by a being who can travel to any time and place of his choice, and during the
next five years the being studies us, all of which Peaslee pieces together after his
return.
Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi says that Lovecraft saw the movie Berkeley
Square four times in 1933, and “its portrayal of a man of the 20th century who
somehow merges his personality with that of his 18th-century ancestor” served as
Lovecraft’s inspiration for this story.
The projected mind, in the body of the organism of the future, would then pose as a
member of the race whose outward form it wore, learning as quickly as possible all that
could be learned of the chosen age and its massed information and techniques.