Review on the “Mountains of Madness” by H.P. Lovecraft.

1.1.1. For years the only kinds of texts I have been reading have been technical or scientific.

1.3.1. Not even mentioning Russian Lurkmore, which has been, seemingly, much more of a cultural phenomenon than the English one, his motives are very widely spread in modern media.

1. Consider, for example, the omnipresence of tentacles in horror and lewd cinema.
   

1.5.1. I am not claiming that it is in any way compete or impartial.

1.5.2. I was, however, reading it in good faith, and even enjoyed it a bit, so hopefully, this review might help someone.

2.1.1. “Mountains of Madness” is telling a story about an imaginary expedition to the heart of the Antarctic continent.

2.1.2. The places and the events described there are fictional, however, Lovecraft exhibits strenuous effort in trying to maintain the connexion with reality.

1. He is, for example, mentioning the mountains Terror and Erebus, which had already been discovered by the time the novel was written.
   
2. He is mentioning various kinds of fossils, including dinosaurs, seemingly, proving that he has done his reading about the times he is writing about, at least to the degree possible at the beginning of the 20 century.
   
3. He is describing their exploration equipment, including aeroplanes, drilling equipment, sledges, and the rest, as if he has researched how such expeditions have been conducted before.
   

2.1.3. The expedition is exploring the Antarctic for fossils, as well as for geological samples.

2.1.4. They are traveling over the continent on airplanes, which allows rapid and long-distance jumps in the plot.

1. How realistic is this? I don’t know.
   

2.1.5. At some point the crew splits into two, solving different tasks.

1. Narration is done from the point of view of the expedition head, working in the first group.
   
2. Most of the events of the first part of the book happen with the second group, which transmits it’s reports by radio.
   
   1. Interestingly, they transmit their reports directly to the University which has sent them. A very American thing.
      

2.1.6. The second group discovers a lot of interesting artifacts, including traces of prehistoric life and some mysterious, very tall mountain chain.

1. In particular, they discover several examples of a so far unknown life form, somehow different to both animals and plants.
   
2. They also do some crude experiments on them, at least, autopsy.
   

2.1.7. At some point, however, the contact with the second group is lost, and the narrator has to investigate.

2.1.8. The investigation shows that the group is all dead, including sled dogs.

2.1.9. Even so, the first group considers it important to explore the mountains that the second group was so excited about.

2.1.10. In those mountains they discover a rift, which allows them to penetrate the mountain chain even on the light aerolanes they have.

2.1.11. The mountains seem to be circular and contain a forebode city enclosed.

2.1.12. They explore the city and find out a building, which, in a very vivid manner, by the means of bas-reliefs and frescoes describes the city’s history, as well as the history of the whole civilization of aliens who have built it.

1. The building must really be a museum.
   
2. Every so, it seems hard to believe that they manage to understand that much about a city claimed to be abandoned millions years ago and whose history claimed to have lasted for nearly as long, in a few hours.
   

2.1.13. The building is telling them that the civilization had to eventually recede into the depths of the Earth, in order to be kept warm after the global cooling, by the Earth’s mantle.

2.1.14. The entrance to the underworld seem to be in the city.

2.1.15. They decided to find the entrance and explore the underworld.

2.1.16. At the entrance they find the body of one of the members of the second group, who had been killed by the unearthed aliens.

2.1.17. They enter the long cavernous passage to that hypothetical underworld city, and go quite deep.

2.1.18. At the very bottom of the passage they find decapitated corpses of some of the aliens, and are driven out to the surface by a mysterious creature, vaguely similar in looks too the aliens, but not quite.

2.1.19. The rest of the story consists of them returning back to their ship, and agreeing to withhold the details of the expedition from the authorities.

2.2.1. Lovecraft is considered to be one of the masters of American literature.

2.2.2. He has numerous influencees, both literary, and in other fields of art.

2.2.3. As mentioned before, in 2.1.2, Lovecraft tried to do his best in researching the background for the book.

2.2.4. In my profane opinion, he can be considered a direct successor to Edgar Allan Poe.

1. He is also considered to be writing “horror” fiction.
   
2. His horrors also seem to be generally coming from a laboriously crafted atmosphere, rather than on detailed depictions of brutality.
   

2.2.5. However, it can’t be ignored that by modern standards the book can be seen as quite naive.

1. There are quite a few Deus Ex Machina tropes, such as reading the city history from frescoes, which can’t be believed by even a tiny bit critical reader.
   
2. The most ridiculous tool of his expressive repertoire is just saying “horrible” and “of madness” again and again, as if it should really evoke the feeling of terror in the reader. It won’t.
   

2.2.6. By modern standards I wouldn’t even call this book “horror”.

2.2.7. However, I generally liked it, but but as much for it’s attempts to scare, but rather for his sincere, although, perhaps, unreflected, attempt to continue the similarly naive, but captivating stories of the Great Geographical Discoveries, such as those written by Fenimore Cooper, Mayne Reed, Louis Boussenard.

2.2.8. It’s self-evident that in the age of aeroplanes, oil wells, chemical weapons, and radio, an author cannot really avoid the necessity to introduce alien (supernatural) elements into the story to provide the same level of challenge as the one observed in the classical exploration novels.

2.2.9. It is symbolic that he had to resort to the last under-explored continent of the world, the Antarctic, in order to provide at least in part the fascination of discovery, previously available to the explorers of such nowadays mundane places as California.

2.2.10. He really tried his best, his language is vivid and colourful, and he really made me learn quite a lot of new English.

2.2.11. But if you really look at the plot and the style with a naked eye, you really start seeing that the feeling of the end of the civilization (of the aliens), and the frontier for exploration (for the Man), elicits an emotion really much stronger than that of horror from encountering the Chtonic. The feeling of The End.

2.3.1. There is at least one more book called “Mountains of Madness”, written by a guy who would had become so fascinated with Lovecraft that he gained a degree in geology and spent a long time working in Antarctica.

1. This guy is a real gigachad, and should be admired.
   

2.3.2. He does mention Ctulhu, Necronomicon, and some other members of his legendarium.

1. I am not sure that this book is really the one to start learning his Lore though.
   

2.3.3. As already mentioned, mountains Erebus and Terror do exist, and there is a book about Antarctic exploration on the ships of the same name.

2.3.4. Forgotten city is a fairly classical trope in fiction.

2.3.5. The image of a scientist who is so curious that this curiosity makes him blithely disregard all danger is also quite pervasive

1. I am not sure that Lovecraft is the first one to invent this emploi, but big thanks to him for popularising it with the broad audience.
   
2. I am finding a bit of smell of Gordon Freeman in the main heroes.
   

2.3.6. I can’t resist the feeling that there is a second bottom to the main narrator’s claim that he is only disclosing his adventures because he wants to prevent a new expedition.

1. Of course a story like this would only encourage more and better equipped incursions into the Mountains of Madness.
   
2. After all, who would really be afraid of the slimy shapeshifters while having flamethrowers, carpet bombers, and ships of high explosives and 152 mm artillery shells at one’s disposal?
   
3. There must be one hegemonic species on this Earth, and that is us, the Man.
   
4. “The Last Republic”, if you know what I mean.
   

2.3.7. I am also impressed by the references to Nicholas Roerich. Didn’t know Lovecraft was aware of that obscure Russian living in India.