The Shadow Out of Time is the story of Professor of Economics Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee who faints one day in the middle of a lecture and regains consciousness five years later only to find that he - or some entity inhabiting his body - has been pursuing eccentric researches in the obscure libraries and remote places of the world. As he follows the trail of this five year search - of which he has no conscious memory - he begins to dream (or remember?) cyclopean cities and the massive conical beings which inhabit them. Eventually his journey ends in the outback of Australia, amid cavernous ruins and terrifying revelations.