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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
I wanted to love this, however, it was a lot of descriptions and adjectives (horrible, terrifying, etc) without a lot of action.It would make a much better graphic novel.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
4 Stars
I know that this is a classic and that Lovecraft and his work, is the basis for many in horror writing. But...… the overly descriptive wording was just TOO much. I love details and description, but damn, how much can you describe this black rock wall that is moist and crystalized??? Like, tell me what he saw!!
*breathes hard*
Anyway, I do know that at the time of this writing, lengthy descriptions seemed to be the norm. I love how the picture is painted, but why use every color. Where is the nuance?
Outside of that, it really is a great story. It is scary to think that you could go into a bygone realm, a whole other time, by simple travel. That you could fall back into a time when humans had no meaning and more than likely were the bottom of the food chain. It sparks interest and an obsession to always know more. I feel like I must read all of the Cthulhu/old ones/Shoggoth mythos and works. I think The Call of Cthulhu is my next read of the mythos.
Oh, and this was NOT 116 damned pages. like WTF or Who the hell said it was??? I know I am reading slower lately, but it only takes me an hour or two to read 116 pages! Damn!
I know that this is a classic and that Lovecraft and his work, is the basis for many in horror writing. But...… the overly descriptive wording was just TOO much. I love details and description, but damn, how much can you describe this black rock wall that is moist and crystalized??? Like, tell me what he saw!!
*breathes hard*
Anyway, I do know that at the time of this writing, lengthy descriptions seemed to be the norm. I love how the picture is painted, but why use every color. Where is the nuance?
Outside of that, it really is a great story. It is scary to think that you could go into a bygone realm, a whole other time, by simple travel. That you could fall back into a time when humans had no meaning and more than likely were the bottom of the food chain. It sparks interest and an obsession to always know more. I feel like I must read all of the Cthulhu/old ones/Shoggoth mythos and works. I think The Call of Cthulhu is my next read of the mythos.
Oh, and this was NOT 116 damned pages. like WTF or Who the hell said it was??? I know I am reading slower lately, but it only takes me an hour or two to read 116 pages! Damn!
starts off interesting and with really good idea (writing about his experiences to deter a future expedition) but unfortunately execution was not the best i guess
really interesting at the start for me and the build up to the horrors of the mountains and its unknown was good too but it is toooooo descriptive and got too repetitive towards the end.
really interesting at the start for me and the build up to the horrors of the mountains and its unknown was good too but it is toooooo descriptive and got too repetitive towards the end.
I read it for my book club. I think that if I have read this earlier in life, I would have liked it better. I found myself reading the same paragraph over and over again, unable to grasp its meaning, but it is probably my brain that is used now to instantaneous satisfaction rather than to delated gratification. I can not discount, however, the enormous contribution of Lovecraft to the horror and sci-fi genre, regardless of my personal views about its writing style.
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Great idea, horrible execution. Took me 18 months…
Yes, it's mostly description. Yes, it has massive issues as a conventional story. Yes, it could use a lot of trimming. Yes, the plotting has numerous absurdities. Yes, Lovecraft would have been better off designing this as a D&D dungeon (if the concept had existed while he was alive).
And yet, it's absorbing. The slackening of the tension in the outer horror tale mirrors the narrator's own unconsciousness of his situation as he dives deep into the history of the Old Ones. That history holds the same appeal as an RPG lore manual, prompting us to imagine stories and concepts which can't fit inside the page, the same quality that makes Lovecraft one of the most copied, extended and re-interpreted authors of recent history. The ideas of Mountains of Madness are now fully absorbed within the scifi collective consciousness, but the original is still worth a read, one of the most influential works of a flawed but singular artist.
Though the protagonist is initially horrified by a mirage-vision of the city, and shocked by its physical existence and antiquity, he eventually comes to an extremely shocking conclusion: The Old Ones, though alien, are not monsters. He recognizes in their history the same motivations that drive humanity, and comes to realize that their slaughter of the human encampment was the result of beings that were awakened into a harsh and alien world, suddenly attacked by predatory animals. Their dissection of man and dog was no more than what was originally intended for them. Their theft of the camp's books suggests an understanding of humanity's intelligence, and by the end, the narrator is even apologetic about possibly leaving an injured Old One to die. The horror is not that the Old Ones have awoken, but that what caused their end never slept. Considering the many, many prejudices people have about Lovecraft's stories, and his obvious racism and xenophobia, it's a shocking twist. The revelation that "Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn—whatever they had been, they were men!", combined with the ultra-rapid summary of a thousand million years of history gives the story an oddly Stapledon-like quality. Sadly I don't think that Lovecraft was ever aware of his writings. That would have been the literary cross-pollination of the millennium.
One of my favourite parts of this book is how Lovecraft just namedrops his influences and research all over the page. Clark Ashton Smith, Dunsany, and Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket are mentioned directly in the text. He pulls all kinds of visual influences in too. It represents a weakness in the writing, since as a text it'd make more sense to describe than reference. But now with the aid of the internet, I can just look them up. The most important references are the "disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich", which he mentions no less than six times:
Mirages repeat several times in the text, including the mystery conclusion, and he specifically calls out the "wilder forms observed and drawn by the Arctic whaler Scoresby in 1820":
Natural inspirations include the "grotesquely weathered stones of the Garden of the Gods in Colorado":
and the "fantastically symmetrical wind-carved rocks of the Arizona desert":
Ancient references include the Sumerian ruins of Kish:
and the snake monument of Petra:
Most interestingly, he compares the degenerating art of the declining Old Ones and the later hideous parodies of the Shoggoths to "the ungainly Palmyrene sculptures fashioned in the Roman manner":
and even further, "[Constantine], in a similar age of decline, stripped Greece and Asia of their finest art to give his new Byzantine capital greater splendours than its own people could create." While it's certainly not a fashionable opinion, it's hard not to agree seeing the sculpture of Hadrian's era (above) contrasted with Constantine's (below):
The high art of the Old Ones, on the other hand, "find its closest analogue in certain grotesque conceptions of the most daring futurists." Obviously Lovecraft was a contemporary of the futurist movement, but the collision of the two here really threw me for a loop.
It's only fitting that a story with one of the most detailed descriptions of its aliens, and weird ones at that, got one of the best entries from Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.
I was absolutely in love with this image as a child. Even if I can see some slight flaws now (tentacles look thin and weak, the transition between the radiate body and the head/feet), this picture, along with the Sirian of Age of the Pussyfoot still sums up the concept of "alien" to me. Barlowe would have been the guy to do an illustrated version of this book.
And yet, it's absorbing. The slackening of the tension in the outer horror tale mirrors the narrator's own unconsciousness of his situation as he dives deep into the history of the Old Ones. That history holds the same appeal as an RPG lore manual, prompting us to imagine stories and concepts which can't fit inside the page, the same quality that makes Lovecraft one of the most copied, extended and re-interpreted authors of recent history. The ideas of Mountains of Madness are now fully absorbed within the scifi collective consciousness, but the original is still worth a read, one of the most influential works of a flawed but singular artist.
Spoiler
While it contains references to Lovecraft's more fantastical stories, Mountains of Madness is a legitimately science fictional tale drawing on then-recent scientific theories and discoveries, like continental drift, orogeny, and most importantly, Antarctic fossils. It centres on an inconceivably ancient alien civilization which existed on Earth before life arose here, and had its last bastion in Antarctica, before it too was frozen over. It's a serious treatment of the concepts of precursors and panspermia at a very early date, and has ideas beyond that to explore. In fact, Lovecraft treats his Old Ones with an unusually even hand.Though the protagonist is initially horrified by a mirage-vision of the city, and shocked by its physical existence and antiquity, he eventually comes to an extremely shocking conclusion: The Old Ones, though alien, are not monsters. He recognizes in their history the same motivations that drive humanity, and comes to realize that their slaughter of the human encampment was the result of beings that were awakened into a harsh and alien world, suddenly attacked by predatory animals. Their dissection of man and dog was no more than what was originally intended for them. Their theft of the camp's books suggests an understanding of humanity's intelligence, and by the end, the narrator is even apologetic about possibly leaving an injured Old One to die. The horror is not that the Old Ones have awoken, but that what caused their end never slept. Considering the many, many prejudices people have about Lovecraft's stories, and his obvious racism and xenophobia, it's a shocking twist. The revelation that "Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn—whatever they had been, they were men!", combined with the ultra-rapid summary of a thousand million years of history gives the story an oddly Stapledon-like quality. Sadly I don't think that Lovecraft was ever aware of his writings. That would have been the literary cross-pollination of the millennium.
One of my favourite parts of this book is how Lovecraft just namedrops his influences and research all over the page. Clark Ashton Smith, Dunsany, and Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket are mentioned directly in the text. He pulls all kinds of visual influences in too. It represents a weakness in the writing, since as a text it'd make more sense to describe than reference. But now with the aid of the internet, I can just look them up. The most important references are the "disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich", which he mentions no less than six times:
Mirages repeat several times in the text, including the mystery conclusion, and he specifically calls out the "wilder forms observed and drawn by the Arctic whaler Scoresby in 1820":
Natural inspirations include the "grotesquely weathered stones of the Garden of the Gods in Colorado":
and the "fantastically symmetrical wind-carved rocks of the Arizona desert":
Ancient references include the Sumerian ruins of Kish:
and the snake monument of Petra:
Most interestingly, he compares the degenerating art of the declining Old Ones and the later hideous parodies of the Shoggoths to "the ungainly Palmyrene sculptures fashioned in the Roman manner":
and even further, "[Constantine], in a similar age of decline, stripped Greece and Asia of their finest art to give his new Byzantine capital greater splendours than its own people could create." While it's certainly not a fashionable opinion, it's hard not to agree seeing the sculpture of Hadrian's era (above) contrasted with Constantine's (below):
The high art of the Old Ones, on the other hand, "find its closest analogue in certain grotesque conceptions of the most daring futurists." Obviously Lovecraft was a contemporary of the futurist movement, but the collision of the two here really threw me for a loop.
It's only fitting that a story with one of the most detailed descriptions of its aliens, and weird ones at that, got one of the best entries from Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.
I was absolutely in love with this image as a child. Even if I can see some slight flaws now (tentacles look thin and weak, the transition between the radiate body and the head/feet), this picture, along with the Sirian of Age of the Pussyfoot still sums up the concept of "alien" to me. Barlowe would have been the guy to do an illustrated version of this book.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced