At the Mountains of Madness
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Descripción editorial
At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft's incontrovertible masterpiece, written in February-March 1931, is a story details the events of a disastrous expedition to the barren, windswept Antarctic continent, where the secret history of our planet is preserved, amidst the ruins of its first civilization, in September 1930, and what was found there by a group of explorers led by the narrator, Dr. William Dyer of Miskatonic University. Throughout the story, Dyer details a series of previously untold events in the hope of deterring another group of explorers who wish to return to the continent. It uncovers strange fossils and mind-blasting terror.
Since it was originally serialized in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories during the classic pulp era, 'At the Mountains of Madness' has influenced both horror and science fiction worldwide. Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi describes the novella as representing the decisive "demythology" of the Cthulhu Mythos by reinterpreting Lovecraft's earlier supernatural stories in a science fiction paradigm.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lovecraft's At the Mountain of Madness opens with a newspaper announcement of a voyage to Antarctica, immediately followed by the narrator, Professor William Dyer stating his opposition to it. From there, the book launches into the story of Dyer's own, earlier expedition to the Antarctic wasteland, one that culminated in murder and horror in the aforementioned mountains. Lovecraft was a master of writing about indescribable horrors whose visages violate the laws of nature in unsettling ways. Right off the bat, this creates a problem for anyone seeking to translate his work into a visual medium: how to keep the sense of unspoken tension and dread? Artist I.N.J. Culbard addressed this concern admirably by telling the story largely through radio broadcasts, which forces the reader to feel the tense isolation felt by the explorers as they uncover progressively horrific mysteries from the Antarctic ice. Culbard also effectively threads a sense of dread throughout the book with subtle touches of the macabre, such as a glimpse of two blind penguins swimming in the foreground of an early frame. This is one of Lovecraft's most famous stories. Although it is questionable whether it needed an adaptation, this is an excellent one.
