where “At the Mountains of Madness” goes wrong

I was reading it again on the flight yesterday, and my opinion remains the same.

For the first 40 pages or so, I think it’s Lovecraft’s best work. But then it goes wrong midway through Section V, with the following sentence. Dyer and Danforth have just finished surveying the startling Cyclopean city in the Antarctic from the air:

“So far we had made no landing, yet to leave the plateau without an attempt at entering some of the monstrous structures would have been inconceivable.”

No, inconceivable only because Lovecraft feels like giving a 60-page description of the two Miskatonic University researchers walking around the interior of that super-ancient, unknown city.

And while those 60 pages aren’t completely devoid of nice passages, in my opinion they turn into sheer pulp, replacing the true mysterious horror of the first 40 pages with excessive literal detail about the history and culture of a non-human race from the stars (impossibly grasped from murals in just a few hours of walking around).

The pop culture equivalent, in my opinion, was when George Lucas forever ruined the Star Wars franchise by replacing the perfectly effective vague notion of “The Force” with a comically detailed theory of tiny creatures living in our blood and creating the Force, or whatever it was.

In short, I don’t want to know that the Elder Ones are just like us deep down, that they’re civilization rose and then fell, that they took pride in their achievements, that they feared other ultra-ancient species and fought battles with them, etc. It sounds like a good Dungeons and Dragons campaign that someone came up with, but I would rather the horror be left vague and compelling, just as it was during the first 40 pages.

What he should have done is, plausibly enough, had Dyer and Danforth react so hysterically to the sight of that massive city that, combined with the horror they found in the camp, they immediately turn the plane around and return to the others, exclaiming with horror that they all need to leave the Antarctic as soon as possible, etc. The effect of the story would then have been perfect.

Incidentally, it’s been noted before, but that Miskatonic University faculty has a very interesting life.