At the Mountains of Madness is H. P. Lovecraft's Antarctic novella: a geologist's plea that no one return to the ice, and his account of what his team found. Serialised in Astounding Stories in 1936, it reads like a field report slowly losing its composure. A university expedition arrives with drills, aeroplanes and sled dogs, then a survey party radios in a find that upsets the history of life. It has lasted because it treats horror as a scientific problem, and because its fear carries an unexpected sadness.
Plan on slow reading: twelve chapters of nearly unbroken first-person report, thick with geology, aviation and drilling terms, in sentences often past thirty syllables. One long stretch reads like a history textbook. Radio bulletins from the field bring some relief. Rank shows in small words: anh Lake, giáo sư Pabodie, the young cậu Danforth. Watch the pronoun for the city's builders, which moves late on from chúng to họ.
