Arsinoe Library Edition, 2026
The Arsinoe Library is excited to announce a new publication.
In this classic H.P. Lovecraft novella (written 1931, first serialized in Astounding Stories February–April 1936), geologist William Dyer of Miskatonic University recounts the 1930–31 Antarctic expedition he led in order to deter a planned follow-up venture by the Starkweather-Moore party.
The expedition, funded by the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation, sailed from Boston in September 1930 with advanced drilling equipment, four Dornier aircraft, and a large support staff. After establishing a base near McMurdo Sound, the party conducted geological borings and aerial surveys. Biologist Lake’s sub-expedition, probing northwest of the main camp, uncovered extraordinarily ancient fossils and intact specimens of previously unknown star-headed, barrel-shaped organisms later identified as the “Old Ones” or “Elder Things.”
WARNING: Plot spoilers if you read further.
Wireless reports then ceased. When Dyer and graduate student Danforth flew to investigate, they found Lake’s entire camp destroyed, most personnel and dogs dead, and several of the specimens missing or partially dissected. Continuing beyond a previously unseen mountain range higher than the Himalayas, the two men discovered a vast, ruined Cyclopean city of non-Euclidean architecture stretching for miles.
Murals and sculptures within the city revealed the history of the Old Ones: extraterrestrial beings who arrived on a still-lifeless Earth roughly a billion years earlier, created terrestrial life (including the protoplasmic shoggoths as servant organisms), warred with other cosmic entities, and gradually declined as the climate cooled. The explorers also found evidence that living shoggoths had recently killed the last surviving Old Ones in the region.
Fleeing the city, Dyer and Danforth barely escaped a pursuing shoggoth. On the return flight Danforth glimpsed something still more horrific beyond the farther mountains, an experience that left him permanently unnerved. Dyer publishes the account solely to discourage further Antarctic exploration that might awaken or release these ancient, inimical forces.
Full Text
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MARC 21 Bibliographic Data / MARCXML
Title
At the Mountains of Madness
Author
H. P. Lovecraft
Language
English
Original print date
H. P. Lovecraft wrote At the Mountains of Madness in early 1931, but it was first published in 1936. It appeared as a three-part serial in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories.
Title image
The Southern Light (Arsinoe Library, 2026)
Arsinoe Library Edition, published by the Arsinoe Library
Arsinoe Library Edition release date
October 2026
License
Core text is US Public Domain. Any text and editing additions by the Arsinoe Library are under the CC BY-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike) license. Webpage and code is under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). The purpose of all Arsinoe Library publications is to make this work free, for everyone, forever, with proper attributions to the creators involved. Any reproduction of this work must do so under these licenses.