Weird Fiction discussion

We are down to our last six Lovecraft group reads now. We finally finish this long project after June 30, 2023.

Our next story was written in 1931, but rejected by the editor of Weird Tales that year for being too long. Therefore, H. P. published it in 1936 serialized in three installments of Astounding Science Fiction, a better venue for the story in any case since more people consider it SF than horror or weird.

I am really excited about this story because I think it's going to tie into my favorite story in our recent group read, The Prisoner Of Carcosa & More Tales Of The Bizarre. The third story in that book, "Yuletide Mementoes: A Tale of Lovecraftian Horror" by both authors, is in my opinion the best story of the collection. In it, a grand-uncle geologist makes a trip to Antarctica, makes startling Lovecraftian discoveries, and brings back two chests that no one gets around to opening. The expedition leader's descendant rediscovers the chests in the attic years later and opens them. What he finds does not disappoint. I love how shoggoths and Lovecraft's Elder Things make their way into this story and how they are accounted for. This was a really scary, imaginative tale with a strong ending.

I predict by reading this story of Lovecraft's, which also takes place in Antarctica, I'm going to see the precedents for the latter story we already read. That's taking things a little out of order, I'll grant, but should be good fun nevertheless.

Please feel free to share your impressions here as you read the story too. Cheers!

I just read the following on Wikipedia:

Lovecraft submitted the story to Weird Tales, but it was rejected by the editor Farnsworth Wright in July 1931. Lovecraft took the rejection badly and put the story to one side. It was eventually submitted by Lovecraft's literary agent Julius Schwartz in 1935 to F. Orlin Tremaine, the editor of Astounding Stories.

The novella was serialized in the February, March, and April 1936 issues, and Lovecraft received $315 (equivalent to $6,151 in 2021)—the most he had ever received for a story. The story, however, was harshly edited, with alterations to spellings, punctuation, and paragraphing, and the end of the story had several lengthy passages omitted. Lovecraft was outraged and called Tremaine "that god-damn'd dung of a hyaena [sic]". Lovecraft's own hand-corrected copies of Astounding Stories formed the basis for the first Arkham House edition, but this still contained over a thousand errors, and a fully restored text was not published until 1985.

Man! (Julius Schwartz sure had a long career. He was my favorite editor over at DC Comics in the 1970s. Adam Strange....) Okay, back to Lovecraft's story. My version, since I doubt the editor of the book I am reading Lovecraft from paid that fellow who did all that work in 1985, is probably the bastardized one. What to do...?

Okay, I pulled up the old Astounding text, compared it to the one I have and to other texts. Apparently no one uses the old Astounding text any more. I can't address what it left out of Lovecraft's story or what it spelled wrong. My examination was not that word for word minute. However, I do see the Astounding text uses on average two or three paragraphs for every Lovecraft paragraph. Frankly, it looked like an improvement to me. The paragraph breaks in Astounding were logical and Lovecraft's breaks are too few.

Anyway, like I said, the Astounding text no longer seems to be in use. Rather, it's the Arkham text everyone seems to have. I'm not sure if it's the one that has "over a thousand errors," or not. Honestly, that sounds too hyperbolic to possibly be true. Unless another member has a different opinion and can convince me of it, I think I will just not worry about the text I have and enjoy reading whatever it is instead. I'm just glad for Lovecraft Schwartz was able to land the text for him at all.

If you don't have a copy and plan to acquire one, the text edited by S.T. Joshi for the 1985 Arkham edition is no doubt the way to go. An ISBN for one of these Joshi edited texts is 9780870540387, though you get other Lovecraft works included with it. You can go to the Internet Archive, if you want, use the ISBN I provided and borrow that book for an hour. I did in order to compare that text with the one I have. It's identical. Yours probably is too, but you might want to check to make sure.

I've read The Mountains of Madness twice.
You can see that this book is an inspiration for many sci-fi movies of the 50s!

Wow! I have twenty pages, about the last quarter of the story, yet to read before I finish this beast. I read some fairly negative reviews of the story on GoodReads and must admit to finding myself largely in agreement with them. Reading this story has been more work than pleasure. I'll wait until I finish, hopefully today or tomorrow, before commenting further.