At the Mountains of Madness [Blackstone Edition]

Lovecraft is outstanding and singularly unique, but this story lacks a solid arc and conclusion. Despite this, it's still very much worth reading: the concept and premise are fascinating and quintessential Lovecraft - also, as an academic myself, I enjoyed the first-person perspective from that of a researcher.

It's a quick read, and while I finished the book wanting something more, the kindle edition was so cheap I would recommend giving it a try. (but please do not let this be the only Lovecraft you read!)

I do not claim to be a literature aficionado, but I sort of felt like I was in a nightmarish geology lecture that would not end and at the end of which, I would be eviscerated or some other sort of mutilation. Maybe that was the point of this book? I have to admit, I skimmed much of the text about peaks and spires, after about the first 15 pages. The creatures were creative and interesting and the story-line was spooky, but I felt like I was dying a (glacial-paced) death with all the imagery.

Well read and unabridged. Listening to this novella enables one to gain some insight into the flow and poetry of HPL's writing. Rather than being a word hack, I believe his narrative style really worked. Maybe I'm an aural learner...I don't know, but being able to lie back in bed with the lights out, listening to this really drove what I already considered a classic home to me. It's a great audiobook at a great price.

This is a frustrating book. Most of it reads like a boring, overlong encyclopedia entry explaining mythical creatures with no action whatsoever. The detail gets mindnumbingly stupid. Do I really want to read about how the Old Ones arranged the furniture in their houses? No, I certainly do not. The overall background given for the ancient creatures is pretty great, though, but then almost nothing is done with it. The narrator misses almost all the limited action and only describes the aftermath aside from a momentary bit of excitement at the end. The general structure is also annoying, but it seems to be how Lovecraft does things in the small number of stories of his I've read. The book is not a description of things as they are happening but instead presented as an after-the-fact recollection of events that happened some time ago. Why does Lovecraft do this? It certainly seems to worsen the flow of things. In this case, it also comes off as kind of idiotic. It's supposedly a plea not to explore further the things he discovered, but if this actually happened and was described this way, there would be a thousand expeditions underway immediately to find out more.

An interesting story, but definitely trapped in its time. (As in, this would not likely get published today.) The word usage (and over-usage) and pacing may strike some as stilted, but if you let it unfold at its deliberate pace, it is worth it. I can definitely see why many have wanted to make this into a movie and I can see why it is stuck in turn-around hell. A necessary read for those who want to understand the history of the genre, but don't be shocked if you are not actually shocked by anything.

This book reads like a thesaurus exploded. I've been hammering away at this book for almost 3 months now. My Kindle says I just hit 70% of the way through it...and it's not like it's a long book! I downloaded it around Halloween-time...it doesn't make for good Christmas-time reading.

I feel like it's one of those examples of that just because a book or author is influential does not mean they age well.

This book is amazingly awesome the only problem that I had is that it seems someone must have done a report on it as sections are highlighted and marked, Im not sure if that was in the description or not but it isnt too troublesome.

One of Lovecraft's best, full of interesting developments, and heavy on the dark and otherworldly descriptions, while not as over the top on thesaurus-busting adjectives as some of his stories. I don't know why some people are having trouble reading this (maybe it's the reader they're using, or maybe the formatting errors have been straightened out since they read it?), but I had no problem reading it as of Aug. 2017.

Although I enjoyed the story itself, this deluxe edition really didn't do anything for me. The book is 9.5 x 13 which makes it awkward to handle, hard to read and difficult to store. Fernando Duval did the illustrations and are alright at best. Supposed to be limited to 1000 copies. The book is autographed by Duval but not numbered. Not that it would make any difference. Overpriced, stick to the regular hardbound edition unless you are into odd-sized books.

Considering all the fans of Lovecraft and popularity of Cthlulhu, I was surprised at how boring I found this book. Although this is all that I've read of Lovecraft, and I may read more, I have to say that I prefer the stories of his contemporary and creator of Conan, Robert E. Howard.

Dude what the eff?! I was inexplicably perplexed by this book. I know that it is a work of classic, atmospheric horror, but it just isn't for me. I am thankful for Lovecraft and all that he inspired but I just couldn't get into this.

First of all, beware that this book looks like someone printed a file off the Internet without bothering to proofread it. Having said that, I don't for the life of me understand why Lovecraft has as much of a following as he does. His style is so turgid, with so many excessively long descriptions and useless details, and then in many scenes characters are horrified by things that are suddenly too incredible to be described.

I found Lovecraft's writing to be dry, boring and fairly difficult to immerse myself in. I've been told that this was not the best place to start in regards to his writing, but I don't think I'll be giving him another go.

The first thing you'll notice when picking up this issue of H.P. Lovecraft's cult classic is that there's some kind of yeti and a weird portal on the cover. Clearly the illustrator read something different than the rest of us.

Apparently you have to be a Lovecraft fan to really enjoy this book. This was my first and last Lovecraft reading. It was so detailed and so bogged down with technical terms and archaic wordage that by the time he actually got to the part where he described the "monster", I couldn't have cared less. The really scary thing was how the story dragged on and on and how often I had to stop and look up a word I had never even seen before. As an example, the narrator and his companion find some beings drenched in green ichor and there is an unexplained fetor so they run past Permian Age palimpasest carvings to escape from something that lived in the Cyclopean water city that he didn't want to describe because he would risk seeming puerile. I am generally a wimp when reading horror stories and this book was so tedious that the only thing that horrified me was the thought it would never end. I only gave it two stars because it was written in 1935 and maybe that's how horror stories were written then.

This is a terrific book, but unfortunately, this cheap, newly printed edition has a tacky cover design that completely undermines the entire structure and concept of this fiction classic. I dont mean to get too far into this issue, just trust me and buy another edition...

If you thought reading HG Wells was a chore, wait until you read this! My God, GET TO THE POINT! Paragraphs and pages of superfluous babbling just to describe something that could be summed up in a single sentence!

This book started off great. The first chapter sets the story up to be really interesting and you're waiting for it to take off. However, by Chapter 6, I was bored to death. I had never read a Lovecraft novel but always heard good things. However, while the writing here is really good, it is incredibly, painstakingly, and minutely detailed. So much so that it's just overkill and it just brings the story to a grinding halt. It's as if our boy HP was constantly rifling through a thesaurus looking for yet another adjective to use to describe ancient stone dwellings, etc. An editor could trim this a bit so that the story doesn't suffer. It's not an 'attention span' problem, it's just that so much detail is completely unnecessary and it becomes distracting. I'm thinking that it should come with a 6 pack of 5-Hour Energy drinks. It reads as a "this is what happened" rather than a story that's going on as you read it. Almost like some kind of report or something. Pretty dull.

The Modern Library edition (2005) calls itself "definitive," which one would assume means that their edition leaves nothing to be desired. This is far from the case. Being Lovecraft's most complex tale, written as if it were a scientific paper, "At the Mountains of Madness" is very difficult to read or understand without footnotes. Yet there are none to be found. Contrast this with the 111 footnotes to the story contained in Penguin Classics' "The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Stories" (2001). Plus, Modern Library could have included some recent, revelatory essays by Lovecraft scholars about "Mountains," since it isn't long enough to fill an entire book. Instead, they opt for yet another reprinting of Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," which is irrelevant to the story and easily available elsewhere.

The only good decision was the cover photo, which captures the mood of "Mountains" perfectly. But I'd still recommend the Penguin title over this.

I decided to try a Lovecraft book after hearing my son talk about them for years. Reviews on the store were mixed but favorable enough for me to give it a shot. I made it about a quarter of the way in and just couldn't read anymore. I like sci-fi but Lovecraft's style of writing annoys me and this story line has been done so many times that it's too predictable. Others may find this to be a great book but it was a dud for me.

Review originally published at:

This book narrates the strange events during an expedition to extract minerals in the Antarctic. The members of the expedition find strange creatures and the places where they dwelled. Unfortunately not all of them make it back.

I always like to review classics. I was especially interested in this one, since I remember 'The Call of Cthulhu and other weird stories' with great fondness. Lovecraft has a unique talent for suspense and scare his readers without showing but just suggesting. His descriptions are very powerful in evoking horrendous feelings in the reader. He uses a rich language, while keeping his style scientific.

Having this upfront, I want to clarify that I think Lovecraft's style works best for shorter works, like the ones  he is most prolific at. The part about exploring the old city felt really long without having much new information. We also have to take into account that the book was originally published in 1936, and writing style has suffered an evolution since then. I find other styles aging better but we cannot deny that Lovecraft's writings are unique.

Another issue I found is that, despite Lovecraft's abilities in suggesting without showing, here we get an ample report about the creatures they found. It would have been nice to see these creatures in action, but then it would not have been Lovecraft.

The characters were not very developed, and everything is shown from the point of view of the same person. The book is written like if it were a diary, so this explains the lack of character's depth.

Even though these minor issues, Lovecraft's prose kept me hooked and intrigued, which I consider a success, since I understand these were part of his main goals.

Ron Welch's narration was superb. I find difficult to narrate diaries written in a scientific way, to make them compelling and inflict the right amount of emotion to certain parts. And Ron Welch has made it here. The audio production was also correct. I am not able to review Welch's voice range since the book is written from the point of view of just one character.

I received a free copy of this book in audio format from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I knew almost nothing about At the Mountains of Madness before starting it. Basically I knew that it was by Lovecraft and it was the story of a scientific expedition to Antarctica and the horrors they found there....see, almost nothing. After reading the novella, I read up on it a little more because I wanted to know where it fit in with some of Lovecraft's other stories. This book is one of his later works, written 5 years after his more famous Call of Cthulhu. I was curious about the publication chronology of his stories because, similar to some of his other stories, there is a great effort given to the scholarly veracity of his tale. Specifically, this story involves researchers from the Miskatonic University (as referenced in many of his other stories) and references some of his other writings as well known books present in the university library. The Cthulhu Mythos and the "Elder Things" is well known by the characters in this story and it is presumed to be well known to other researchers and readers of this report.

The story is told hesitantly by a member of an expedition to Antarctica that happened in ~1930 and made some amazing discoveries. The narrator, William Dyer, explains that the reader is likely aware of some of the official reports that came by means of wireless transmissions during the early portions of the expedition but very few people know the entire story. Dyer says that he would much rather let the true story remain hidden forever but he feels like it must be told now in an effort to prevent subsequent expeditions from trying to pick up where his left off. He is afraid that additional expeditions will encounter the same sort of disasters as happened to him or, worse yet, they could set in motion larger scale horrors to the world.

Lovecraft, through Dyer, gives a very detailed account of the expedition in a manner that is both very scholarly and very accessible. Specific and minute descriptions are given of the purpose of the expedition, the tools and processes to be used and the findings made by the team through their various samplings and experiments. The group consists of geologists, biologists and other scholars with high-tech equipment used to bore deep into the frozen wasteland and excavate samples in the hopes of studying rock, soil, plant and animal fossils, etc. They have numerous small airplanes at their disposal as well as dogsled teams.

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[CAUTION: minor plot spoilers -- Skip the next ~2 paragraphs to avoid the spoilers]

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One day, a team of researchers led by Professor Lake makes a scouting expedition inland via airplane to identify good locations. Over the radio, they describe a massive mountain range with strange formations high up that seem somewhat unnatural. After landing, they discover the remains of some ancient life form with both animal and plant characteristics. They set up camp and begin studying the specimens, sending reports via radio to Dyer's team back near the coast. The reports are met with growing curiosity and excitement. Lake also indicates that his sled dogs seem hatefully distrustful of the specimens and have been barking and snarling ever since discovery. Sometime through the night radio contact is lost and Dyer's team back on the coast nervously waits to decide what to do next, hopeful that perhaps a storm or other natural occurrence is to blame for lost communication.

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[CAUTION: slightly larger plot spoilers]

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The next day Dyer flies to find Lake's team and determine what happened. When they arrive, they find Lake's camp in ruins; most of the men and dogs are violently dead while others are missing. Some of the ancient life forms have been ritualistically buried under star-shaped mounds. The remaining ancient life forms are missing. In the center of the camp they find a man and a dog laid out as though undergoing what appears to have been an autopsy or biological dissection experiment. Ever the scientists they don't want to jump hastily to any conclusion and so, in spite of the horrific scene and any fear they may have, they set out to find the missing man. Dyer and a fellow researcher named Danforth fly a plane up into the mountains and discover that the formations seen by Lake and his team proved to be buildings from some ancient civilization. They find a place to land and begin exploring the city. The huge buildings are filled with statues and ancient carvings through which they gain some knowledge of the history and makeup of this ancient civilization. They recognize similarities to the stories they've read in the Necromonicon and other books talking about Elder Things and the Cthulhu.

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[END OF SPOILERS]

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In terms of a horror novel, this book is not a "slasher" story filled with a ton of action or gore. The scenes of destruction and violence happen "off screen" such that the reader is presented with an almost clinical or crime-scene description of the area rather than an action packed sequence outlining the struggles. Dyer frequently asserts to the reader that the horrors he encountered are too terrible and should not be shared with humanity but that he will share what he can in an effort to prevent others from experiencing the horror he discovered. There is a feeling of foreboding and suspense but it's was kept at a distance by Dyer's desire to shelter the reader and by the overly scientific tone of the writing.

Having read some, but not all of Lovecraft's stories, I found this novella especially interesting. It went into significant detail on the Cthulhu mythos and the history of the Elder Ones. It detailed their arrival on Earth, the inner workings of their cultures and civilizations. I don't know how much of this is outlined in his other stories. Based on previous stories I've read, this felt like the most complete almost "end-to-end" history I'd seen...perhaps it pieces together elements created in his other books. And yet, it still leaves a lot unknown and left to further exploration. Dyer and Danforth made many discoveries and unraveled many threads but the final horrors they faced were still left somewhat nebulous and there was much they were unable to explore.

Overall I enjoyed this story. I've expressed before that I'm not a big fan of the overly graphic or gory horror genre with its sometimes overly violent tendencies. As such, I found this particular "horror" story right in my wheelhouse. I will admit that it was a little dry at times but it's short enough that it was easy enough to keep pushing through. I'm really enjoying exploring Lovecraft's imaginative worlds and seeing the influence he made on future storytelling.

***
3.5 out of 5 stars

From a teenage student!: Hp Lovecraft has truly created a horror masterpiece in this novel, it is written with a clear image in mind, but not at the loss of any complexity. It's twists and turns always came with a great impact (I usually see twists coming from a mile away, but not in this book). This isn't even considering the amount of world building this book has which is phenomenal, showing a vivid world, while still living much to be discovered and desired. I can't wait to continue his works and dive deeper into this world filled with horrors and a wonderful history. I would recommend this book to any and all who enjoy Poe or King (as Poe influenced Lovecraft and Lovecraft influenced King) truly a masterpiece well worth your time and money.

Highly reminiscent of "The House on the Borderland," written by Lovecraft's predecessor, William Hope Hodgeson. In both, humanity runs up against ancient evils; in this instance, the narrator is part of an Antarctic expedition, which discovers an abandoned city of the Old Ones.

It's sort of a who's who of Lovecraft. References to his other works fly hot and fast, giving readers the suggestion that his terrible mythos could all be in one fictional universe.

While I can't see myself reading or listening to this story again, it was enjoyable enough. My biggest complaint is that it falls to the particular rambling storytelling style that's very typical of Lovecraft's time period. As if everyone is being paid by the word, and they only have so many good ideas to write upon, so they'd better drag things out.

Available as a free audio production from Tales to Terrify.

H. P. Lovecraft lived from 1890 to 1937. This Modern Library edition includes Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness [1931] and Supernatural Horror in Literature [1925-27]. The copyright page mentions that these editions were “edited and prepared by J. T. Joshi.” The book also includes a Chronology of the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, from the non-extant “The Noble Eavesdropper” [1897?] to “The Night Ocean” (with R. H. Barlow) [1936]. The Introduction is by China Miévelle.

Supernatural Horror in Literature is given the dates 1925 to 1927 (Biographical Note: page vi), and when comparing these years with the development of Lovecraft’s fiction in the Chronology, we see “The Call of Cthulhu” written in 1926, and “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” written in 1927, immediately following “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath”. So Lovecraft’s work on Supernatural Horror in Literature very likely inspired his later fiction. It may have been more useful to Lovecraft to write this than it is for us to read it. It does tell us what he felt was worth mentioning, and it gives us some sense of how he evaluated other authors; but it doesn’t go deep.

As an aside, it may be interesting for those who don’t know this: that MS Word’s spell checker sees ‘Cthulhu’ as a properly spelled word. I’ll mention here also that I believe Lovecraft or his recent editor Joshi misapplies semi-colons at times in this work. See, for example, page 166, eight lines from the last, and page 168, two, four and twelve lines from the last. This continues on page 169, four and eight lines from the first. I’ll leave the rest for others to discover. Once a reader reads with an eye to semi-colon placement in Lovecraft, a shadowy, creeping dismay overcomes one. I wonder if there have been debates among Lovecraft aficionados about the semi-colon in his texts. Perhaps there is a survey even now in press – A Critical Examination of the Semi-Colon in the Works of H. P. Lovecraft: An Arkham Roundtable Discussion, edited by Abel Punctilious, Wilmarth Professor of Literature at Miskatonic University.

At the Mountains of Madness [1931] tells of the unfolding discovery by an expedition to the Antarctic that intelligent beings predating the existence of humans lived there prior to the coming of the ice. The narrator, leader of the Miskatonic University Expedition, which made the discovery, has written this report in warning. “If the plain signs of surviving elder horrors in what I disclose be not enough to keep others from meddling with the inner arctic – or at least from prying too deeply beneath the surface of that ultimate waste of forbidden secrets and unhuman, aeon-cursed desolation – the responsibility for unnamable and perhaps immeasurable evils will not be mine.” (39) “Certain lingering influences in that unknown antarctic [sic] world of disordered time and alien natural law make it imperative that further exploration be discouraged.” (59)

Section VII of the report summarizes the “salient high lights [sic]” of what the author learned about these ancient non-human beings, which he calls “the Old Ones”. The “full story, so far deciphered,” was announced within the report to appear in “an official bulletin of Miskatonic University”, which see for further details. This section also refers to other non-human beings “shaped like octopi and probably corresponding to the fabulous pre-human spawn of Cthulhu” which warred against the Old Ones. (63)

At the Mountains of Madness will frustrate readers looking for a storyline with characters, conflict, and resolution of plot. Lovecraft is only interested in his developing mythological history of the cosmos.

“It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.” (101)

Only 10 years after the publication of this book Europe had been nearly completely destroyed, the Soviet Union controlled most of the east, America controlled the rest, the atom had been split, and the technology needed to take men to the moon only needed perfecting. Computers, radar, jet engines, women in the workplace, a Jewish state inside Palestine, the neutering of any meaningful monarchies in England and Japan ... a total change in civilization. All within about 10 years.

There's a scene near the end of this book that stood out for me more than almost any other and that is when they first hear and them come upon those albino penguins. The image is at first somewhat comical, then a little sad, too. The scene stood out for me because those penguins seemed to make for a wonderful metaphor for our own existence - blind, pale, helpless, easily frightened chattel to be trampled over by far, far greater powers. The birds were totally indifferent to their surroundings, utterly incapable of comprehending their fate or that anything of any greater importance was going on around them, aside from the inconvenience of being disturbed.

I felt as if Lovecraft had somehow felt the pulse of the times and was able to create a vision of what we as a species were about to do to ourselves during the late 1930's and into the 1940's. That dread that is on every page of the book is palpable and captures what some, but not nearly enough people, must have felt when visiting Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia before war broke out: a terrible helpless feeling of unease all around that nobody could escape from and a feeling that tragedy was about to happen again.

And the book's warning to all future adventures to leave well enough alone and to not explore to deep into regions that are best left unexplored, though a theme that crops up in science fiction very often, is more than just a trope here. Lovecraft seems to be intuiting the dangers of man meddling with things he can't control by foreshadowing nuclear war with those terrible visions beyond the mountains. Lovecraft is saying that the old way of life will forever change if man proceeds on its current course, that poking our noses where they don't belong will, though not unleash the darkest horrors of the ancient universe, somehow corrupt us from within.

Lovecraft is saying that science and reason can only take us so far before we get lost in a labyrinth of confusion, causing us to splinter as a society and species, forcing us from one extreme to the other, slowly eroding our own sense of self and art and culture, that all the greatest learning will eventually lead to an even greater forgetting; a forgetting of ourselves. Lovecraft seems quite content to stay put, to not pass that terrible boundary we charged right over in the 10 years after this book was written.

It's very pessimistic in its conclusion, however, I can't say I blame him either; he knew which way the wind was blowing. And I should be careful in reading too much into this book because after all he was trying to just write a damn entertaining page turner with some first-rate horror that Hollywood is still trying to copy to this day (either great films like Carpenter's 'The Thing' and Darabount's 'The Mist', or failures such as Ridley Scott's beautiful but deeply flawed 'Prometheus'). Yet the best stories, the ones that resonate with each generation are more than just fun reads, there does have to be something more to the pie than just a pretty pie crust.

Lovecraft writes very simply, clearly, and is a master at teasing out splinters of information at just the right time as to build the for boding. And even when there is really not much actually happening, he still manages to fascinate, such as the telling of the strangeness of the Old Ones and their life on early, ancient Earth. He doesn't bog us down with needless emotional scenes, rather, he uses Danforth as the emotional sounding-board to juxtapose with Dyer's cool, clinical, detachment. The rest is all supreme imagination and, honestly, horror so well written that I was genuinely scared and kept looking over my shoulder. It's really quite uncanny.

But there is much more here than a writer's wonderful imagination creating a mythos just for fun, Lovecraft has tapped into a vein that still resonates because he not only knows how to write a great story, but also because he knows what frightens us and because he intuited so much of what was just about to happen to the world in the coming years. Lovecraft is sort of a mile marker, a sign post, a line in the sand on which one side is all that came before and on the other is all that he warned humanity not to cross over less it destroy itself.

And so here were are looking back at a base camp we can never return to; only madness awaits us ahead.

At the Mountains of Madness is considered a horror story, but it could just as easily be classified as science fiction. The unnamed narrator is a scientist; the novella itself is his report of a scientific expedition. The narrator struggles to maintain a researcher's detachment and objectivity, rather than flying to wild conjecture. This cool, professional tone makes the suspense all the greater as the tale builds to its climax.

Lovecraft published At the Mountains of Madness in 1931 at a time when most of Antarctica was still unexplored and unknown. The story is the report of an expedition to penetrate a small portion of that unexplored vastness to take core samples for geological and paleontological study. The team uses aircraft to penetrate hundreds of miles into the interior at a bound. There they find a previously unknown range of mountains higher than the Himalayas. Behind and beneath those mountains lies a vast and terrible secret that brings death and madness as it stands all their previous scientific knowledge on its head.

At the Mountains of Madness is not horror in the popular sense. There is nothing supernatural in it. It won't make you afraid of things that go bump in the night. Its horror is more philosophical than corporeal, more like Shelley's Frankenstein than Stoker's Dracula. It is the manifestation of the void that science opens up when it overturns our comfortable assumptions. The story is, I believe, a response to the cumulative upsettings of previously fixed ideas by such as Darwin, Freud and Einstein. What make it horror rather than science fiction is the narrator's final reaction: stay away, explore no further, we can't bear to know any more.

The narration of this classic Lovecraft book took me a little while to adjust to, but once I did I was drawn in. Ron Welch has a little slower pacing than I normally like, but the depth and character he adds to the story sucked me in after about 30 minutes. I found myself getting lost in his languid reading because the energy and enthusiasm in his voice conveyed the story so well. I would recommend this story and this version to anyone who is interested in Lovecraft or stories like this.

I received a free copy of this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left my review.

I saw this new dust jacket illustration and groaned in dismay. How could Arkham House do this to Lovecraft, give him a jacket illustration that looks like it belongs on a horror comic cover? Thankfully, I have the editions with those fabulous and beautiful and eerie jacket illustrations by Raymond Bayless. Ah well, once you open the book, you are in one of the finest realms of all time. A photo of Lovecraft is opposite the title page, and he looks so severe, with his dark eyes and his oddly-clamped mouth. The eyes look haunted, as if they have looked on secret terror.

In "A Note on the Texts," editor S. T. Joshi explains the process of his correcting the texts of hundreds of errors introduced by earlier editors. For "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," "The Dreams in the Witch House," "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," and "Through the Gates of the Silver Keys" the surviving autograph manuscripts in Lovecraft's handwriting served as major textual source. The introduction for the book was written by James Turner, is informative and moving.

The contents of the book has been questioned by some, but I rather like it. First we have Lovecraft's two longest works of fiction, "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." They are followed by two very singular haunted house tales, "The Shunned House" and "The Dreams in the Witch House." The book ends with four tales of Randolph Carter (whom some have said in Lovecraft's fictive alter-ego), "The Statement of Randolph Carter," "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," "The Silver Key," and "Through the Gates of the Silver Key." "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" is my favourite tale by Lovecraft (S. T. Joshi has worked on a definitive annotated text that will hopefully be published as single volume this year). It astonishes me that this work is, as we have it, an unrevised first draught. The story mesmerizes from first page to last. It contains some of the creepiest passages of pure horror that I have ever read. "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" was also left unpublished and unrevised at the time of Lovecraft's death. It is an exercise in pure phantasy, with moments of fascinating weirdness in the horror tradition.

"The Statement of Randolph Carter" was entirely based on a dream, and it remains an extremely popular tale, especially with amateur film-makers -- there have been several delightful film adaptations shewn at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. It is a simple tale that contains a fabulous Gothic atmosphere that is peculiar to Lovecraft's early works, such as "The Hound" and "The Unnamable"; and, much later, "Pickman's Model."

Too many unimaginative and clueless "critics" have taken Lovecraft to task for what they call his "art-for-art's sake" pose. The worst assault that I have seen came from Lin Carter, in his LOVECRAFT: A LOOK BEHIND THE CTHULHU MYTHOS. Reacting to a letter that HPL wrote to Frank Long in which Lovecraft laments writing for "a boarish Publick," Carter responds, "In that passage you have much of what I would call the worst of Lovecraft, his weakness and his folly: . . . the ludicrous self-delusion of thinking himself an 'artist' . . ." This clueless attitude is also expressed by de Camp in his biography of Lovecraft, in which he condemns HPL for his "pose" as an artist. In his intelligent introduction to this Arkham House book, Jim Turner addresses this.

"If indeed Lovecraft had become a more positive, socially minded man after his New York experience, evidence of this emergent humanization should be apparent in the macabre fiction. His imaginative tales had never been an idle divertissement for Lovecraft but rather rose from an inner compulsion: 'Art is not what one resolves to say, but what insists on saying itself through one,' he explained in a 1934 letter. 'The only elements concerned are the artist and the emotions within him . . . Real literary composition is the only thing . . . I take seriously in life.'"

Lovecraft had fun writing his weird tales, no doubt -- but their composition was far more than a matter of fun. HPL was an extremely serious artist, one who strove for perfection in his work. He did not always achieve that perfection, but he often came close. I find it incredible that Lin Carter and Sprague de Camp and other ignorant critics cannot see for themselves, in works such as AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS or THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, or even in something as simple as "The Silver Key," Lovecraft's very serious "artistic" intent and marvelous achievement.

This Arkham House book also includes the early "The Statement of Randolph Carter," which is one of Lovecraft's stories that had its roots in his vivid dreaming. Writes S. T. Joshi, "This story, as is well known, is an almost exact transcript of a dream that Lovecraft had in December 1919, as recorded in a letter of December 11. In the dream, however, the setting seems to be New England; in the story Lovecraft has apparently transferred the locale to Florida, if the mentions of the Gainesville Pike and Big Cypress Swamp are any indication. Lovecraft introduces Randolph Carter in this tale; his colleague, Harley Warren, is a stand-in for Samuel Loveman, the poet and amateur journalist, who figured in Lovecraft's dream. Lovecraft also introduces the element of the 'forbidden book'." The book mention'd in this tale, many agree, is not the Necronomicon. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS publishes four of the Randolph Carter tales: "The Statement of Randolph Carter" (1919), "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" (1926-27), "The Silver Key" (1926), and "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (1932-33). The last tale is a collaboration with E. Hoffmann Price.

This is an excellent collection of some of the finest writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Two of the long works (THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD and THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH) were never polished or published during Lovecraft's lifetime, and thus we have them in rough draft form. Still, the haunting novel of dark sorcery in Providence stands as one of HPL's great masterpieces.

H. P. Lovecraft is considered the father of modern supernatural horror stories, and I can see why from this novella. This is the first "modern" horror story I've read and it held my attention throughout. I don't know that it will inspire me to read more recent horror fiction, but I expect to read more from Lovecraft. His style and plot acknowledge the influence of Poe, and this leads to my one criticism: the power of the horror of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is in no small part due to what is left unknown, and that the horror is of the earth. Lovecraft's narrator, on the other hand, while writing as if he's leaving much unknown, reveals quite a lot; and the horror itself is extraterrestrial in origin (though its arrival predated humans by millions of years). I find this less horrific than if the horror is plausible in the world we know - the more familiar the sources of the horror, the more horrific, since it puts it closer to our doorstep. In this way, Lovecraft's invented mythology is not as powerful a source of horror as are, for example, the vampire legends used by Stoker, or the "golem" as reinvented by Shelley. Nevertheless, At the Mountains of Madness is an eerie and entertaining story.

This is not one of Lovecraft's most popular works, most likely because it lacks the aura of Innsmouth and Arkham and the creatures mentioned in those seaside towns. At the Mountains of Madness takes place in Antarctica, a frozen wasteland -- or, well, they thought it was Antarctica, a frozen wasteland. Essentially, a scientific expedition to the southernmost continent makes a surprising, culturally unique, world-historical discovery there. Ah...but it is Lovecraft's consummate skill as a writer to build an environment out of nothing, and to make it so ultimately menacing in every detail. Once the geography of the place is established, a pall of dread hangs over every word, right to the final sentence. Very few novels of the fantastic create such a total story environment, but Lovecraft did it with strict continuity. It is one of the most well-written works of fiction he produced, and when you read this terrifying story, you'll understand why he is considered a master of modern horror / fantasy fiction.

I'd seen somewhere recently that his story "Mountains of Madness" was the base upon which the movie "The Thing" was created. John Carpenter's 1980's remake was the first hardcore horror movie I ever saw as a kid, and still lives in a dark, shadowy, and very cold place in my memories.

"Mountains of Madness" was written in the '30s. The early 20th century represented a golden age of exploration and discovery. Both poles were "captured"; jungle pyramids and ancient hideaways were discovered galore. Newspapers, newsreels and books were filled with adventure and the promise of something new that tended to be very old. It's in this context that Lovecraft's narrator visits Antarctica and makes a discovery of something of incomparably ancient. It tells the previously untold story of an Antarctic scientific mission gone horribly wrong and is crafted from the perspective of a scientist who was involved in the mission and who's desperate to warn off future efforts to investigate the strange goings-on.

A fascination and passion with exploration and discovery comes clearly through Lovecraft's writing. Lovecraft repeatedly refers to the "Cyclopean" sized objects in the Antarctic...a term used by Hiram Bingham in describing the first Inca-carved stone blocks he discovered in Peru. He even compares one of the ancient discoveries as looking like Machu Picchu.

The richly detailed story is thick with mood- and scene-setting. The story builds slowly and Lovecraft incorporates well-timed and teasing foreshadowing that frames a downright creepy story. More than once, I found myself jumping with shock at a startling noise when reading the story alone at night.

Lovecraft's myth-building is very realistic, and goes a long way to feed the terrifically detailed story which builds the characters well and includes deftly developed foreshadowing that intensifies the drama and tension while avoiding details that give too much away. This terrific story is creepy, moody and satisfyingly scary.

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror collects H. P. Lovecraft's eponymous novella (originally published in 1936) and three short stories: "The Shunned House" (1937), "The Dreams in the Witch-House" (1933), and "The Statement of Randolph Carter" (1920).

In At the Mountains of Madness, an Antarctic survey team discovers the ruins of an ancient city, whose creators have conveniently left an easily-deciphered complete history of their civilization illustrated on the walls. This is one of Lovecraft's later works, and in it, he substantially demythologizes his Cthulhu mythos, which previously had often featured a supernatural focus but here receives a rather thorough science fiction explanation.

If you've read any quantity of Lovecraft before, you'll find this novella fairly predictable. And if you've read a lot of Lovecraft, you realize you can't go anywhere in his world without stumbling over some infestation of trans-worldly evil.

This is one of Lovecraft's longer works, and it's a bit of a slow builder, although it does pick up nicely as it goes. Lovecraft's strength here is the usual one: atmosphere. Because of its isolation and severe environment, Antarctica lends itself particularly well to horror, and on top of that Lovecraft does a great job of depicting the atmosphere of the lost city.

The three short stories here have considerably more in common with one another than with Mountains, and they feel like padding to make this volume book-length (Additionally, this volume's stupid cover has nothing to do with any of the stories within). But briefly, "The Shunned House" takes too long to get going and falls somewhat flat once it does, "The Dreams in the Witch-House," something of a thematic bridge between the other two stories, is a disjointed mess, and "The Statement of Randolph Carter" is a vintage second-hand account of lurking horrors.

At the Mountains of Madness is hardly Lovecraft's best story, but it may be some of the best atmosphere he's ever done. I recommend the novella, whether you get it with extra mediocre stories or not.

Despite his tooth-jarring overuse of adjectives such as "hideous" and "grotesque", and despite his utter lack of understanding of the occult symbolism he uses to decorate his stories, Lovecraft is the one horror writer I can read. Horror is the lowest common denominator of fiction, but unlike contemporary garbage such as King or Barker, Lovecraft is much more than a genre writer. He is as much a fantasist as anything, though not quite up to the level of his fellow Weird Tales writers Howard and Smith (who incidentally gets a mention in this book).

While there is much to recommend in Lovecraft's private philosophy, which would of course be considered politically incorrect today, the materialist aspect of his beliefs prevented him from reaching the higher rung of consciousness and literary achievement that his hero Lord Dunsany sat at. However, we should judge an artist by his best work, and in "At the Mountains of Madness", Lovecraft totally goes beyond what he is normally capable of and gives us a masterpiece. This one has the atmosphere that must have surrounded the early explorers of the tombs of the pharaohs, only multiplied to the cosmic scale. Lovecraft's creative side sometimes goes to the places his conscious personality could not, and it does so here - he succeeds almost in spite of himself in taking us to all those places we most long to be (though they are located inside of us, not in outer space, and the universe is perhaps more benevolent that Lovecraft thought).

There are some other good Lovecraft tales scattered throughout his collections, but this is the one story by Lovecraft that you simply must read. Everything he does well is here distilled into its essence. Easily the best horror novel of all time.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is the epitome of an "acquired taste." His prose is dense to point of being crunchy, his pacing is all over the place, his characterizations pedantic (there are few women, and most of the protagonists are quite similar to the author), and some actions and plot points fail the "dumb test." In other words, if people in a horror movie did the things they do here, you'd be yelling at the screen. And yet, once you forgive the author these flaws, you'll find yourself in the grip of some of the best cosmic horror and dark fantasy stories ever told. Lovecraft introduces concepts that are baffling in their intellectual magnitude, from the ideas of extra-terrestrials as eternal primeval forces, humanity as an error caused by failed experiments in the creation of higher lifeforms, a sympathetic vegetable race capable of supreme art and sentience, and much more. The horror here is not of the "boo" variety, it is existential. Stories range from the gothic parable (The Outsider), to science fiction (The Colour Out of Space), to rural dystopia (The Dunwich Horror), to the simply non-classifiable (The Shadow Out of Time). Some of the stories here, while fantastic, are so "out there" for the first-time reader that I fear the compounded effect of all of them would be hard to process without some serious effort. But still, these stories are unforgettable, disturbing, provokingly intelligent and even beautiful. There's a lot to enjoy here, and the only thing I can add to the new fans of Lovecraft is this: I envy you.