The Miskatonic University is organizing an expedition to Antarctica, to explore regions yet unknown to any other expedition before. What the scientists will discover there will exceed their wildest expectations, bringing upon them unspeakable horror, death, and madness.
While Howard Phillips Lovecraft was fascinated with Antarctic expeditions since childhood, it was likely a mundane event that inspired him to write Mountains of Madness. The November issue of "Weird Tales" in 1930 featured an infantile story by Katharine Metcalf Roof, A Million Years After, about a prehistoric egg from which a dinosaur hatches. Lovecraft was particularly incensed because for years he had urged Frank Belknap Long to write a story based on a similar idea, but Long rebuffed him, claiming that H.G. Wells had already written similar things.
Another inspiration for Mountains of Madness was Lovecraft's visit to a New York museum, where he saw Himalayan landscapes painted by Russian painter, philosopher, and writer Nicholas Roerich. Literary influences include Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The cry "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" was taken directly from this novel.
Series: Cthulhu Mythos
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