A post about another invisibility science fiction story, in anticipation of the release of my non-fiction book Invisibility: The History and Science of How Not to Be Seen!
When I started researching invisibility stories, I was not only surprised by the number of stories out there that I was unaware of, but was also amazed by the number of stories that focus on the concept of invisible buildings! I haven’t written about any of these yet, but they include “The Monster God of Mamurth,” by Edmond Hamilton (1926), and “The Invisible City,” by Clark Ashton Smith (1932). Honorable mention should also be given to “The Invisible Man Murder Case” by Henry Slesar (1958), which doesn’t have an invisible building but suggests that one application of invisibility could be making unsightly buildings invisible.
The most famous of this category of tales, however, is probably “In the Walls of Eryx,” written by H.P. Lovecraft and Kenneth J. Sterling and finally published in 1939.
I only recently learned that this story was technically co-authored. Most collections in which I have seen the story tend to credit Lovecraft alone, though the story was published with Sterling as a coauthor. Lovecraft often helped ghost-write stories for authors hoping to break into the magazine market, and “In the Walls of Eryx” is one of those collaborations. Kenneth Sterling was a high-school student who sent Lovecraft a draft of a story about an invisible maze, inspired by the aforementioned Hamilton story “Monster-God of Mamurth.” The original draft was lost, but it is assumed that Lovecraft extensively rewrote it, as the prose of the tale is very much unmistakably his.
The story was rejected by most publications during Lovecraft’s lifetime, and was only published posthumously by Weird Tales two years after his death.
Story spoilers follow, so if you’ve never read the story before, you can read it here.
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Skulls in the Stars 