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At the Mountains of Madness is a novella by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was originally serialized in Astounding Stories in 1936, and has been reproduced in numerous collections since Lovecraft's death.
The story is considered by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi to represent the decisive "demythology" of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Synopsis
The story is written in first-person perspective by Professor William Dyer, a geologist from Miskatonic University. On an expedition to Antarctica, the narrator's colleagues discover the remains of ancient half-vegetable, half-animal life-forms, completely unknown to science. Their extremely early date in the geological strata is problematic because of their highly-evolved features. Through a series of dark revelations, violent episodes, misunderstandings, and insanity-producing events, the narrator learns of Earth's secret history and legacy.
Significance
According to S. T. Joshi, who included this novella as the central story in the first volume of his Annotated Lovecraft series, Mountains reveals Lovecraft's true feelings on the so-called Cthulhu Mythos that subsequent writers attributed to him, and "demythologizes" much of his earlier work.
Many of Lovecraft's stories involve features that appear to be supernatural, such as monsters and the occult. However, Mountains appears to explain the origins of such elements—from occult symbols to "gods" such as Cthulhu—in rational terms. Mountains explains many elements of the "Cthulhu Mythos" in terms of early alien civilizations that took root on Earth long before humans appeared.
The story has also inadvertedly popularized the concept of ancient astronauts, as well as Antarctica's place in the "ancient astronaut mythology".Jason Colavito, The Cthulhu Comparison
Connections to other Lovecraft stories
At the Mountains of Madness has numerous connections to other Lovecraft stories. A few include:
- The formless shoggoths, mentioned in "The Thing on the Doorstep" (1937), are shown to have originated as slaves of the Elder Things, as is the Shoggoth mentioned by Zadok Allen in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."
- The expedition is sponsored by the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation, a reference to two major names in Lovecraft's fiction: Derby and Pickman.Anthony Pearsall, The Lovecraft Lexicon, p. 326. Edward Pickman Derby is the protagonist of Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep" and is also one of his literary alter-egos.Ibid, p. 146.
- The Elder Things record the coming of Cthulhu to Earth and the sinking of R'lyeh which ties into the events narrated in "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928).
- Identification of the Elder Things' city with the Plateau of Leng, mentioned in innumerable tales.
- Many members of the expedition have read Miskatonic University's copy of the Necronomicon, an event that seals their doom.
Trivia
- Director John Carpenter's Lovecraftian tribute movie "In the Mouth of Madness" (1995) bases its title on this story, although the plot is unrelated.
- The book Mountains of Madness: A Scientist's Odyssey in Antarctica (2001), by John Long, is an account of a real-life expedition to Antarctica that searched for fossils near the location in the story, but fortunately without the disasters that befell Lovecraft's scientists.John Long, Mountains of Madness: A Scientist's Odyssey in Antarctica
- Deconstructivism is a recent architectural movement that has produced buildings not unlike the ruins in Lovecraft's alien city.
- Late in the story, one of the characters recites a series of subway stops to calm himself; all of the stops still exist today on the Red Line subway in Boston.
- This story was rejected by Weird Tales Magazine editor Farnsworth Wright on the grounds of its length. The story eventually appeared four years later in Astounding Stories.
See also
References
Books
Web sites
Footnotes
Berge des Wahnsinns | Hulluuden vuorilla | At the Mountains of Madness | Vansinnets berg
"At the Mountains of Madness"