At the Mountains of Madness (1931)By H.P. Lovecraft

Occasionally I pick up a book to read for purely escapist reasons. These are often adventure books such as The Bounty, or Voyages of Discovery, with themes of exploration. With that in mind I selected a collection of H.P.Lovecraft’s tales (an author I was unfamiliar with) because it included At The Mountains of Madness, a book written in 1931 which I thought was about Antarctic exploration. Surprise! 

Well not completely, the book is in fact about a geological expedition to Antartica, but it eventually turns into a book of science fiction.  And as I would find out later, is considered by many as the first publication of some key concepts/theories which are a staple of the sci-fi genre.  During the expedition, a side trip not on the original itinerary is made to an unexplored area of the continent named The Mountains of Madness.  The entire group of scientists on the side trip disappear from the communication grid. When found by a search party, it becomes clear they’ve been killed, not by weather, but by some unknown and decidedly unhuman entity.  The official journal of the expedition mentions nothing of this.  The purpose of the book, an addendum to the journal, is to dissuade a new exploration from taking place.

Embedded in this story are a couple of sci-fi creation myths “fathered” by Lovecraft now used and expanded on by numerous other sci-fi writers.  These include The Call of the Cthulhu, about the occupation of Earth by intergalactic beings at war with each other; The Elder Things, which went underground in the aftermath of the wars; the Shoggoths, created to serve the Elder Things (and includes six-foot penguins); and the Necronomicon (aka: Book of the Dead) an ancient history text. All of these myths are also plot topics in several other Lovecraft short stories from the 1930s included in this Library of America collection of his works.

This short animated video is not bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wLC_vByu0k

Recommendation:  Yes, fun.