Robert M. Price (ed.) - The Antarktos Cycle

[andydecker]

Robert M. Price (ed.) - The Antarktos Cycle: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Chilling Tales (Chaosium, 1999, 572 pages)

Content:

Robert M. Price - Introduction: Lovecraft's Cosmic History
H. P. Lovecraft - Antarktos (1930), poem
Edgar Allan Poe - The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)
Jules Verne - The Sphinx of the Ice Fields (excerpt)
John Taine - The Greatest Adventure (1929)
H. P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness (1936)
Colin Wilson - The Tomb of the Old Ones (1999)
Arthur C. Clarke - At the Mountains of Murkiness: or, From Lovecraft to Leacock (variant of At the Mountains of Murkiness 1940)
John W. Campbell, Jr. -The Thing from Another World [Who Goes There?] (1952)
John S. Glasby - The Brooding City (1990)
Roger Johnson - The Dreaming City (1987)

With 572 pages this is one of the largest of the Chaosium tomes in tiny font. Arguably either the most interesting or the most head-scratching of the Chaosium series. Does the layman really need an excerpt of Jules Verne, an obscure novel by John Taine which may have inspired Lovecraft or not? Not to mention John W. Campbell - who (I think) would never ever have published something like Lovecraft in his Astounding/Analog - just because his story is situated in the cold?

On the other hand, as most introductions to At the Mountains of Madness inevitably mention Poe and Verne as inspirations it is kind of practical to have all in one book.