At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft – Free eBook

I read Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness years ago and several times, but I am so enamored of the novella that I love revisiting the eon-haunted mountains of Antarctica and reliving the wonder and then the horror of the doomed Professor Lake and the rest of his sub-expedition.

Yet, it is when William Dyer, professor of geology at the Miskatonic University and graduate student Danforth travel on into the Mountains of Madness to solve the mysterious deaths of the Lake expedition, the reader is treated to Lovecraft’s full descriptive prowess as an author and travel guide to a weird, alien world that is both hauntingly beautiful and nightmarishly terrifying.

Written in 1931 when Antarctica was still mostly unexplored, At The Mountains of Madness is obviously dated as a work of science fiction, but as work of horror with its slowly growing mood of terror, it still succeeds after eighty decades.

Though the body count is quite high, do not expect the splatterpunk of what passes for modern horror. Lovecraft was a master of the art and knew that horror and awe are close companions and he didn’t need the cheap trick of the grossout to reach his goal.

Enjoy a world long gone. It’s a quick, but memorable visit.

C. Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/