Using Antarctica as a location for science-fiction

In the conclusion of my Book of the Month review this month, I mentioned how HP Lovecraft pioneered several ideas in his story-telling. One that really struck me was his use of Antarctica as a location for a relict alien presence on Earth. (Please note, spoilers follow.)

Antarctica was still relatively unexplored when Lovecraft was writing his stories in the 1930s. A couple of decades earlier there was the much-publicised race to the South Pole but the rest of the continent was still mysterious and unsurveyed, making it the perfect place to set a story of scientists discovering a former home of the 'Great Old Ones'. 

In his story called At the Mountains of Madness, an Antarctic expedition discovers a range of almost impossibly high mountains that would rival the Himalayas in height. Beyond the mountains is a secluded plateau. On the coastal side of the mountains, some of expedition encounter ancient beings frozen in the ice. They thaw them out and then contact is lost with the explorers. The rest of the expedition arrive and discover carnage and non-human tracks leading over the mountain to the plateau. 

On the plateau they discover the massive ruins of a truly ancient city. The revived aliens they are tracking have gone inside, so they follow them. There are even worse things lurking inside the city, though. And there the story ends with the usual Lovecraft approach of dire warnings not to go exploring in the mountains of madness.

The notes on this story included how devastated Lovecraft felt when his story was rejected by the magazine where he normally submitted stories. He apparently felt this rejection marked the end of his writing career. However, another friend was able to sell the story on his behalf to a new magazine called Astounding Stories. 

And this is where we enter a game of connections. A later editor of Astounding Stories was John W Campbell, who wrote a story that feels inspired by Lovecraft's tale, called Who Goes There? It was published in 1938, seven years after Lovecraft wrote At the Mountains of Madness. I read Campell's story a few years ago in an anthology of science-fiction short novels. 

In Who Goes There?, members of an Antarctic expedition find an alien spaceship buried and frozen in the ice. They retrieve a frozen occupant and proceed to thaw it out. However, the alien turns out to be a shape-changing being that can absorb and replicate other biological life-forms on the research base. This is a similar ability to the entities that Lovecraft calls shoggoths, one of which is implied to be lurking in the foundational depths of the ruined city.

If Campbell's story sounds familiar, it's because it formed the basis for the 1982 film directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, called The Thing. The movie is a fairly faithful representation of the novella's story and the basic premise of an alien that absorbs other creatures and then extrudes replicas of them. The Thing is also notable for gory special effects which bring to life the horror element of Campbell's story.  

But The Thing wasn't the first film based on Who Goes There? In 1951 a film called The Thing From Another World was released, based loosely on the story. I haven't seen this, but apparently there were some major divergences from the story. Firstly, it was sent in the Arctic, not the Antarctic. Secondly, the alien wasn't a shape-shifter, but a blood-drinking plant-creature that is the only survivor from a crashed flying saucer. 

This version of Campbell's story seems to have influenced the Doctor Who story, The Seeds of Doom, filmed in 1976. This returns the action to Antarctica, where scientific researchers discover alien seeds buried in the ice that sprout tendrils which attack humans and turn people into plant-creatures called krynoids. In a weird coincidence I watched The Seeds of Doom a few months back as I have been working my through classic Doctor Who on the BBC iPlayer. 

And the story doesn't finish with The Thing. There was a remake released in 2011, and a sequel in the form of a video game in 2002. Meanwhile, the discovery of a prehistoric pyramid in Antarctica is the opening sequence for Alien Versus Predator released in 2004. One aspect of AvP that mirrors At the Mountains of Madness is the interpretation of carved hieroglyphics to explain the history of the pyramid, which is similar to how the explorers of the ruined city learn about its history from large carved wall friezes. 

So, while HP Lovecraft felt that the rejection of his story probably marked the end of his career, he had no way of knowing that he was sparking what would become a long science-fiction tradition of hostile alien beings frozen in the ice of Antarctica. 

Book of the Month: making a foray into the Cthulhu mythos

I have wanted to read some of HP Lovecraft's stories for some time. Last year I noticed several different collections from different publishers appearing on the shelves in TK Maxx. I didn't buy any of them, but I did add this collection to my wish-list and received it as a Christmas present. 

This collection is by Oxford University Press, published in their 'World Classics' series. There are nine stories included along with an introduction and detailed footnotes for each tale. All nine stories have been selected for their connection with the 'Cthulhu mythos', the wider world constructed across multiple stories relating to ancient creatures and races that live in more remote parts of the world. 

The term 'Cthulhu mythos' was coined after Lovecraft's death and takes its name from The Call of Cthulhu, wherein various people around the world dream of a horrific ancient entity called Cthulhu that 'sleeps' at the bottom of the ocean in a drowned city. It is probably the most famous of Lovecraft's creations with role-playing games and other activities drawing on the character.

But Cthulhu isn't the only lurking evil being in these stories, nor is it the most powerful or sinister. In fact, across the stories there are three or four different races, some older than Cthulhu, some at war with Cthulhu's kin. All of them come from other planets, galaxies or even universes, and all are much, much older than the human race. 

The introduction begins with a warning that is contains spoilers, so I skipped it and read the stories first before going back to it. (Does that make it an outroduction?) I didn't look up all the footnotes as I read the stories because doing that was time-consuming. However, I did read many of them and learned plenty of interesting details. 

Two big things about Lovecraft's writing relate to his use of 'sources'. He frequently lists obscure books full or arcane and occult lore, and name-checks those books created by contemporary authors of 'weird fiction' in their stories. At other times his protagonists consult lists of actual, real books, which are usually just a list of key writings that were listed in his encyclopaedia. Meanwhile, some of his stories were inspired by events that were happening at the time - the discovery of Pluto, for example, which becomes a home for one of his alien races.

I found the stories a bit of a mixed bag. They all follow a similar formula, with a build up by the protagonist who tells you that he has witnessed a terrible horror, so terrible he's not sure if he can tell you anything about it, but he may as well tell you because it's so horribly terrible and terribly horrible you won't believe him anyway. Then the story starts and sometimes it rattles along to a conclusion and sometimes it doesn't. The Dunwich Horror has a spectacularly poor non-ending.

But there are a couple of stories that do end well. The Whisperer in Darkness made me go 'ugh' and shudder at the end. The Shadow Over Innsmouth took an unexpected turn and ended in a way I really didn't expect. Shadow also included a tense escape for the protagonist, which was one of the few scenes that properly drew me in to the story. 

Another formulaic aspect is the way characters always seem to luckily find a talkative shop clerk or town drunk, or crazy coot from up in the hills, who will reel off several pages of exposition. Or someone will write a letter outlining several important plot points. Or, in the most contrived sequence, the Great Old Ones themselves will leave behind a series of gigantic wall friezes that provide a full history of their culture and the life-cycle of the abandoned city the characters are exploring. 

Locations vary with action taking place Antarctica and Australia, as well as places Lovecraft knew well on the east coast of the USA. Several stories take place in Massachusetts, with the fictional town of Arkham, loosely based on Salem, featuring prominently. Lovecraft paints Massachusetts as an antiquarian place, steeped in history and secrets. 

Another feature of Lovecraft's stories is his love of adjectives. Almost every description of what the protagonists are discovering is weighed down by adjectives, and he uses the same ones repeatedly. He really loved the word 'Cyclopean' to describe the temples and cities his characters discover; large dressed stones are 'Cyclopean blocks' in every story where there is a ruin. 

While Lovecraft was good at building tension and describing mysterious events with a suitable amount of dread, I've already mentioned how he often failed to stick the landing. Several of his stories end with mere hints of monsters sort of off-screen. In the introduction there is a funny comment by a critic who was very dismissive of Lovecraft's stories, saying that after wading through all the adjectives, you wanted something better than people running away from "an invisible whistling octopus". It's a fair comment and it really made me laugh.

Overall, reading this collection made me realise why HP Lovecraft is considered so important as one of the pioneers of the genre of 'weird fiction'. His Cthulhu mythos has taken on a life of its own, elevating his status as a writer and ensuring he has left a mark on popular culture. It's a huge legacy. Cyclopean, even.