At the Mountains of Madness and other Tales of Terror

This is the paperback Arkham hardcover collection that was in and out of print for fifty or so years until scholar S. T. Joshi corrected the texts. But, if you�re not interested in comparing the old and the new corrected texts, and you�re just interested in reading some of horror fantasy�s most influential stories by Lovecraft, then this might be a good place to start. This collection contains three short stories and one novella, and starts out with the influential �At the Mountains of Madness�, a key story in his loosely constructed Cthulhu Mythos series of weird fictions. It was a topical story of the time as Lovecraft based it on current events, as Artic expeditions were getting a lot of headlines during the early parts of the last century. An expedition, funded by the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation go to the Arctic�s Mt. Erebus and find a lost city that is older than known civilization. Lovecraft uses a nameless narrator to tell the slow, deliberate, and detailed exploration of this city. While the story can hard going at times, all of this detail begins to work in the story�s favor as the weird geometry and layout of the city, the bizarre murals, and the abnormal construction of the buildings begin to work on the reader�s imagination, especially as we, along with the story�s narrator realize the original inhabitants didn�t just leave the city, but were driven out by something that was even worse than they were. It also slowly becomes clear to all, that hidden in these isolated ruins they may not be alone . . . Next up is the ghost story �The Shunned House�. Lovecraft drenches this story in a sense of gothic ominousness. There are no stunning apparitions here, just a building creepiness. While the denouement is supposedly based on local legends, it still comes across as rather hard to believe, and is a bit of a let-down. But, there is a reason this story keeps getting reprinted. �The Dreams in the Witchhouse� is another story that has a great pulp title that it has a lot to live up to. Walter Gilman is haunted by strange fevered dreams, and they are causing him to lose his mind. A student at the Miskatonic, he�s doing this at the refurnished old Witchhouse, in the boarding room the infamous Keziah Mason, a notorious witch. This story features Nyarlathotep, one of Lovecraft�s more famous creations, . This collection ends with the short �The Statement Of Randolph Carter� and is perhaps the most traditional of the four stories here. As Lovecraft stand-in Randolph Carter, and his companion decide to investigate a crypt and find that it may not be uninhabited, and despite the fact that the expected happens, it is still a shock. Lovecraft's stories were mostly told in straight narrative, making them tough going at times for modern readers, who are often more used to today�s quicker paced, streamlined storytelling. In one form or another, these stories have achieved, major and minor, horror classic status.