Geologist William Dryer, the 1st person narrator of At the Mountains of Madness, decides to write down his tale of the expedition to Antarctica he was on as a member of a group of scientists from the Arkham Miskatonic University. The reason for him telling his tale is to warn any future expeditions of the horrors Antarcita hides under its icy bosom.
Professor Lake leads a smaller group deeper to Antarctica, from where they find a high mountain range, previously unknown to humanity. These mountains, oddly shaped, seem to be higher than the Himalayas, but that's not the only notable thing about them. The mountains are riddled with tunnels, which hide ancient ruins, far older than humanity. From these ruins, Lake's party extradites hundreds of millions of years old fossils belonging to the unknown species that can't be fully identified either as animals or plants. Some of these fossils are badly damaged, but some are in pristine condition, making describing them a simple task.
The specimens are taken to the expedition camp, where Lake studies them carefully, enthusiastically reporting his findings via radio. Then, his messages stop, Dryer's party believes it to be because of the impending storm. When they are unable to contact them again the next day, Dryer leads another group after Lake. To their horror, they find the party dead, even the dogs. Only one of the members, a man called Gedney, is nowhere to be found. There's no sign of the better-preserved specimens either, only the ruined ones are found, buried under star-shaped mounds. The party believes Gedney to have gone insane, murdered the Lake party and taken the specimens with him for some unknown reason.
Dryer decides to take an aeroplane deeper to the mountains. Together with a graduate student Danforth, they locate the ruins, which they embark to examine. While they don't see any sign of Gedney, they do find larger carvings, which tell a story of a long lost civilization, the tale of the Elder Things, mentioned only in the sinister Necronomicon.
The hieroglyphs tell a tale of the Elder Things, who came to Earth from space millions of years ago. They inhabited the lands and the sea and used genetically engineered shoggoths as their servants. Other beings took an interest in Earth, the Mi-Go who had inhabited Pluto and the Cthulhu began wars of domination. While peace was eventually brokered, the Elder civilization begin its decline and once servile shoggoths gained more autonomy. Antarctica had become colder and the remaining Elder beings gradually moved to a warmer ocean beneath the continent.
By this point, Dryer and Danforth realize, that the Elder specimens Lake had found had not been dead. They had been in some sort of stasis and Lake's tempering had woken them up. They had killed the explorers and returned to their cave. A bit deeper, they finally find the body of Gedney and a group of Elder beings brutally killed. At first, the only sign of life is tall, albino penguins, who they deduced to have been used as livestock. Their expedition is cut short after they realize the underground is now inhabited by shoggoths, who show no mercy to intruders.
After some reflection, Dryer and Danforth come to a conclusion that the Elder Things weren't evil. The ones that had woken up, were most likely scared of the situation and in their fright killed what they thought was their captors. Dryer concludes, that any human would have done the same. The real threat of Antarctica, just like the Elder Beings found out as well, are now the underground dwelling shoggoths, who have destroyed the Elder civilization. While Dryer didn't witness it himself, Danforth is convinced that there are even worse things at large in the depths but isn't willing to iterate further because of his sanity. So, knowing what he does, Dryer insists on any future expeditions to steer away from Antarctica.
Prior to At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft had tackled his monstrous creations a bit differently. While the ancient beings had made appearances, even having been described, here Lovecraft goes into more detail not only on how they look like but how they lived, what their culture was like and how they originally arrived on Earth. And the dealing doesn't stop on the Elder Beings, the expedition and their equipment to their locations are described in detail. The elements of horror are drowned under a matter-of-factly detailing of the whole ordeal, which does leave a very clear idea of what went on during the expedition as well as what happened in the past.
When you contrast the excruciating, at least as far Lovecraft is concerned, detail of the narrative, the ending comes out a bit cheap, as it all boils down to a typical Lovecraft "and then there was something that was so horrible that it can't be described, but it was horrible, trust me on that"-moment. With the amount of exposition given before the end, it could have been a better idea to place some there as well, as now it all comes out a bit of a cop-out.
At the Mountains of Madness is filled with very good ideas. There's a lot of elements in the story that work very well and are on their own well written. As a whole, the way the story is narrated brings it down though, as it comes out as a bit of a rambling mess, where Lovecraft had fallen too much in love with the ancient history of the ancient astronauts who inhabited Earth long before dinosaurs or humans were even a glint on the surface of the new world. The horror frame of the tale feels like it was tacked on later when Lovecraft realized, he didn't have anything else on his long-form summary of the life and times of his fictitious aliens.
The Elder Beings aren't and weren't evil. They just lived on Earth long before there was anything else. So, in order to bring some genuine elements of horror in, he added Mi-Go's, which had been better used in his The Whisperer in the Darkness story. The same goes with Cthulhu, an evil entity that looms over the horror pantheon of Lovecraft's, which he had used in a better fashion prior to this tale. In this story, all the cosmic horror becomes turns into a bit mundane as we got to know the unknowable a bit too well. None of it is helped by the end which brings up the notion of "even more horrific thing that makes you mad."
It should perhaps be stated, that At the Mountains of Madness is more of a sci-fi story than it is horror. It perhaps is, with its strict narrative rooting to the scientific process, even a hard sci-fi setting, that explores the idea of ancient aliens. In that, it might have had worked better, had Lovecraft sidestepped the horror aspect to the story completely to favour more of a mystery setting instead.
At the Mountains of Madness wasn't well-received upon its publication either. In fact, the reception was so hostile, that Lovecraft stated it had done "more than anything else to end my fictional career.". While the story isn't quite that bad, it does have a lot of good about it, it is something of a narrative and stylistic misfire on Lovecraft's part. While it is understandable that he wanted to do more long-form writing, in the end, this is the kind of tale that could have benefitted from more mystery instead of a factual approach. Now it all gets muddled under minute details like actual location coordinates and the like.
In many ways, At the Mountains was an ambitious attempt on Lovecraft's part. His goal clearly was to give a more precise account of what his horrific beings were all about, on how they had arrived here on Earth, but by doing that, he turns what could have been a solid short yarn into a surprisingly dull tale, where none of the horrors actually feels like horror at all. Any intrigue there is, just wasn't enough to keep me hooked.
As a final note, there have been some attempts in adapting At the Mounts of Madness as a movie. Perhaps the best-known attempt was done by Guillermo del Toro, but in the end, the studio was afraid of launching a movie with no happy end or any notion towards a romantic storyline. Del Toro's insistence on making an R-rated movie was the final nail on the coffin.
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