History Literature / TheShadowOutOfTime

* MajoredInWesternHypocrisy: Loosely speaking, if you switch the Earth-based, Mesozoic Yithian civilisation for "the West", this could apply to all the human and other sapient minds, in the (current) Great Race bodies, studying anything and everything in the Yith's current homeworld and time period. There's even a hint of the "colonised mind learning from the coloniser" dynamic that this trope implies, since most of the non-Yith minds were forced to inhabit the current Yith bodies[[note]]which, of course, weren't their original bodies either—''assuming they even had original bodies''[[/note]] without their prior consent.

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology[=/=]ArtisticLicenseGeology: At first, the protagonist accounts his strange dreams to his "common text book knowledge of the plants and other conditions of the primitive world of a hundred and fifty million years ago - the world of the Permian or Triassic age." Only the Triassic age ended 201 million years ago, 150 million years ago was the Jurassic age.

* BrickJoke[=/=]{{Unpaused}}: The narrator loses consciousness while giving a lecture at the beginning of the first chapter. At the end of the chapter and several years later he wakes up muttering about economics.

* CockroachesWillRuleTheEarth: Creator/HPLovecraft mentions a race of giant beetles that will rule the Earth millions of years in the future once humans are extinguished.

** What makes this especially interesting is that flour beetles have since been proven to have a higher tolerance for radiation than even cockroaches, although Lovecraft himself would have no way of knowing this. We think...

* EvenEvilHasStandards: The Yithians aren't evil exactly, but are definitely somewhat amoral by human standards. That said, they have strict rules when it comes to their mindswap abilities. Temporary mindswaps in the search of knowledge are common, and any "visitors" are treated like honored guests, but ''permanent'' mindswaps are only allowed in extreme emergencies (like a planetary cataclysm) and any Yithian that tries to permanently hide in another body (such as the occasional, though rare, criminal) is mercilessly hunted down and punished.
* FreakyFridayFlip[=/=]GrandTheftMe: The Yithians' entire shtick. When faced with a danger they cannot overcome, they will, ''as a group'' swap bodies with another race of beings at some other place and/or time to escape, leaving the minds of those they switch with to perish in their previous bodies.

* PuppeteerParasite: Yithians.

* StarfishAliens: The Yithians, their true form is unknown however and the physical form described in the story are native inhabitants of Earth. They have a slug-like cone-shaped body, with four tentacles emerging from the top, two of which end in pincers, one which ends in four, red trumpet-shaped tubes, and one that ends in a spherical head with three eyes, ears mounted on stalks and small tendrils hanging from the underside.

--> "No eye had seen, no hand had touched that book since the advent of man to this planet. And yet, when I flashed my torch upon it in that frightful megalithic abyss, I saw that the queerly pigmented letters on the brittle, aeon-browned cellulose pages were not indeed any nameless hieroglyphs of earth's youth. [[spoiler: They were, instead, the letters of our familiar alphabet, spelling out the words of the English language in my own handwriting.]]"

--> " No eye had seen, no hand had touched that book since the advent of man to this planet. And yet, when I flashed my torch upon it in that frightful megalithic abyss, I saw that the queerly pigmented letters on the brittle, aeon-browned cellulose pages were not indeed any nameless hieroglyphs of earth’s youth. [[spoiler: They were, instead, the letters of our familiar alphabet, spelling out the words of the English language in my own handwriting.]]"

* AliensAreBastards: Surprisingly averted. The Great Race, while they continuously swap minds with other beings from across space and time without their consent, only do so as a way to learn from them and gather knowledge. They're accommodating, let their guests explore and interact with others like them, and have filled the world of ancient earth they live on full of immaculately-decorated gardens. When their five-year exploration periods are up, they return their guests to their bodies with no hassle. They are, of course, not exactly peaceful either. See EvenEvilHasStandards.

* AliensAreBastards: Surprisingly averted. The Great Race, while they continuously swap minds with other beings from across space and time without their consent, only do so as a way to learn from them and gather knowledge. They're accommodating, let their guests explore and interact with others like them, and have filled the world of ancient earth they live on full of immaculately-decorated gardens. When their five-year exploration periods are up, they return their guests to their bodies with no hassle.

* AliensAreBastards: Surprisingly averted. The Great Race, while they continuously swap minds with other beings from across space and time without their consent, they only do so as a way to learn from them and gather knowledge. They're accommodating, let their guests explore and interact with others like them, and have filled the world of ancient earth they live on full of immaculately-decorated gardens. When their five-year exploration periods are up, they return their guests to their bodies with no hassle.

* AliensNeverInventedDemocracy: The Great Race of Yith described as having "a sort of fascistic socialism".
* AllJustADream: The narrator desperately wants this to be true, as he cannot handle the idea that the half-formed memories and mad fits he suffers from are actually true. He has zero physical evidence that any of what he remembers ever happened at all, but cannot shake the experiences.
* AncientAstronauts: Sort of, the Yith didn't physically travel here, but transported their minds across space into an alien species living on Earth, leaving the original beings to die along with the Yith's bodies in some unknown cataclysm. Once on Earth, the Yith built a new civilization until another approaching disaster forced them to flee into the future.

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology / ArtisticLicenseGeology: At first, the protagonist accounts his strange dreams to his "common text book knowledge of the plants and other conditions of the primitive world of a hundred and fifty million years ago - the world of the Permian or Triassic age." Only the Triassic age ended 201 million years ago, 150 million years ago was the Jurassic age.
* AsYouKnow: The narrator doesn't cover much of what "he" did during the years of the timeskip, because apparently it was quite a news story and was heavily covered by the newspapers, so the narrator assumes the reader is familiar with the story already.

* ChinaTakesOverTheWorld: In the year 5000, the empire Tsan-Chan takes the place of America as the world's one super-power.

* EldritchAbomination: Played straight with the flying polyps, which were said to be only partly material and temporarily visible, but averted with the Yithians which are organic beings that evolved on Earth.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: The Yith aren't evil exactly, but definitely somewhat amoral. That said, they have strict rules when it comes to their mindswap abilities. Temporary mindswaps in the search of knowledge are common, and any "visitors" are treated like honored guests, but ''permanent'' mindswaps are only allowed in extreme emergencies (like a planetary cataclysm) and any Yith that tries to permanently hide in another body (such as the occasional, though rare, criminal) is mercilessly hunted down and punished.
* FreakyFridayFlip / GrandTheftMe: The Yithians' entire shtick. When faced with a danger they cannot overcome, they will, ''as a group'' swap bodies with another race of beings at some other place and/or time to escape, leaving the minds of those they switch with to perish in their previous bodies.
* GrayAndGreyMorality: The morality focuses mostly on the aspects of survival, as one species will inevitably try to survive at the expense of another, by any means necessary.
* HumanoidAbomination: After his three-year memory lapse, the narrator is told that almost everyone he meets instinctively rejects him as "wrong", like there was something about his behavior and speech that was just inherently revolting. For his loved ones, it was even worse, as his wife refused to accept that he was himself, and divorced him. His oldest and youngest child also rejected him, with only his second-oldest child remaining faithful that his real self would one day return (which it did). Even after the narrator becomes himself again, the rest of his family refuses to ever see him again.

[[caption-width-right:337:[[EekAMouse Eek, a human!!]]]]

** The "polyps", Eldritch Abominations that don't fully exist in the corporeal world.

* WhamLine: At the end, when the narrator remembers what exactly he saw in that tome he pulled from the ruins in the desert.

* RealAfterAll: All evidence disappears by the end, but it's heavily implied that yes, the protagonist's experiences and half-forgotten dreams are true.

* AllJustADream: The narrator desperatly wants this to be true, as he cannot handle the idea that the half-formed memories and mad fits he suffers from are actually true. He has zero physical evidence that any of what he remembers ever happened at all, but cannot shake the experiences.
* AncientAstronauts: Sort of, the Yith didnt physically travel here, but transported their minds across space into an alien species living on Earth, leaving the original beings to die along with the Yiths' bodies in some unknown cataclysm. Once on Earth, the Yith built a new civilization until another approaching disaster forced them to flee into the future.
* ApocalypseHow: Little is known about the Yiths' original homeworld, but its implied to be a five or six. A three at the very least awaits in mankind's future.
* ArtisticLicensePaleontology / ArtisticLicenseGeology: At first, the protagonist accounts his strange dreams to his "common text book knowledge of the plants and other conditions of the primitive world of a hundred and fifty million years ago - the world of the Permian or Triassic age." Only the Triassic age ended 201 million years ago, 150 milion years ago was the Jurassic age.

* BeneathTheEarth: The remains of the Yiths' civilization lies hidden deep beneath Earth's substrata, with only a scant few cracks allowing entry.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: The Yith aren't evil exactly, but definetly somewhat amoral. That said, they have strict rules when it comes to their mindswap abilities. Temporary mindswaps in the search of knowledge are common, and any "visitors" are treated like honored guests, but ''permanent'' mindswaps are only allowed in extreme emergencies (like a planetary cataclysm) and any Yith that tries to permanently hide in another body (such as the occasional, though rare, criminal) are mercilessly hunted down and punished.

* NothingIsScarier: When the narrator is exploring the ruins of the Yiths' city beneath Australia, he encounters what is implied to be the polyps, but the reader never gets to see them as the narrator flees blindly through the darkness back to the surface.

* TimeSkip: In-story, the narrator recalls feeling ill one day, then awakening in a sanitarium five years later with no memory of the years past. Its only through the retellings of others that he pieces together what "he" was up to in all that time.

* RealAfterAll: All evidence disappears by the end, but its heavily implied that yes, the protagonists experiences and half-forgotten dreams are true.

It has been adapted into a radio drama by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society for their ''Dark Adventure Radio Theatre'' series and twice as a ComicBookAdaptation, once by I.N.J. Culbard and again by Matt Howarth in ''Graphic Classics: H.P. Lovecraft''. Elements of the story were also present in the video game ''VideoGame/CallOfCthulhuDarkCornersOfTheEarth''.

* FreakyFridayFlip / GrandTheftMe: The Yithians' entire shtick.

* AncientAstronauts: Sort of, the Yith didnt physically travel here, but transported their minds across space into an alien species living on Earth, leaving the original beings to die along with the Yiths bodies in some unknown cataclysm. Once on Earth, the Yith built a new civilization until another approaching disaster forced them to flee into the future.
* ApocalypseHow: Little is known about the Yiths original homeworld, but its implied to be a five or six. A three at the very least awaits in mankinds future.
* AsYouKnow: The narrator doesnt cover much of what "he" did during the years of the timeskip, because apparently it was quite a news story and was heavily covered by the newspapers, so the narrator assumes the reader is familiar with the story already.
* BeneathTheEarth: The remains of the Yiths civilization lies hidden deep beneath Earth's substrata, with only a scant few cracks allowing entry.

-->After man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world. Perhaps these entities had come to prefer earth's inner abysses to the variable, storm-ravaged surface, since light meant nothing to them. Perhaps, too, they were slowly weakening with the aeons. Indeed, it was known that they would be quite dead in the time of the post-human beetle race which the fleeing minds would tenant.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: The Yith arent evil exactly, but definetly somewhat amoral. That said, they have strict rules when it comes to their mindswap abilities. Temporary mindswaps in the search of knowledge are common, and any "visitors" are treated like honored guests, but ''permanent'' mindswaps are only allowed in extreme emergencies (like a planetary cataclysm) and any Yith that tries to permanently hide in another body (such as the occasional, though rare, criminal) are mercilessly hunted down and punished.

* NothingIsScarier: When the narrator is exploring the ruins of the Yiths city benath Australia, he encounters what is implied to be the polyps, but the reader never gets to see them as the narrator flees blindly through the darkness back to the surface.

** The "polyps", Eldritch Abominations that dont fully exist in the corporeal world.

* AllJustADream: The narrator desperatly wants this to be true, as he cannot handle the idea that the half-formed memories and mad fits he suffers from are actually true. He has zero physical evidence that any of what he remembers ever happened at all, but cannot shake the experiences.
* AsYouKnow: The narrator doesnt cover much of what "he" did during the years of the timeskip, because apparently it was quite a news story and was heavily covered by the newspapers, so the narrator assumes the reader is familiar with the story already.

* SealedEvilInACan: Earth was originally inhabited by half-corporeal beings resembling polyps that the Yith sealed away inside the Earth under great stone seals, which they eventually broke free from, leading to the destruction of the Yith's original civilization. They're still down there now, waiting... and its implied they will one day escape again...

* TimeSkip: In-story, the narrator recalls feeling ill one day, then awakening in a sanitarium three years later with no memory of the years past. Its only through the retellings of others that he pieces together what "he" was up to in all that time.

* AncientAstronauts: The Great Race and the flying polyps.
* ApocalypseHow: Implied class five or six regarding The Great Race's native planet Yith is destroyed. Class three with the minds of the creatures the Yith inhabit on Earth regarding their current form and the future arachnids, as well as the destruction of their civilization by the flying polyps.

* GrayAndGreyMorality: The polyps arrived on Earth first, and when The Great Race arrived and imprisoned them for millions of years. On one hand the Yith themselves are not evil, but they wiped out the minds of an entire species when they arrived on Earth. On the other hand the polyps will probably wipe out humanity when they emerge from beneath the Earth.

* MentalTimeTravel: The Great Race of Yith can't physically time travel but they can swap bodies with beings from any age.
* SealedEvilInACan: The Yith trap the flying polyps BeneathTheEarth, but they later escape and wipe out the Great Race, before returning underground to rise again some other time.

* ToTheFutureAndBeyond: When the Yith are inevitably defeated and their civilization destroyed by the flying polyps, they transport their minds into the bodies of arachnids at Earth's final era to escape them.

* TheCollector: The Yith are alien librarians, who telepathically collect knowledge on every civilization that was, is, and will be storing the knowledge in their endless city-sized libraries.

[[quoteright:337:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shadowoutoftime.jpg]]

* StarfishLanguage: The Yith communicated by clicking their pincers.