In 1930, Dr. William Dyer leads a Miskatonic University expedition to the Antarctic interior. After a scouting team discovers a range of impossibly high peaks and a cache of biological specimens, a sudden massacre leaves the sub-camp destroyed. Dyer and a graduate student fly over the mountains to find an immense, abandoned stone city built by the Elder Things, an extraterrestrial race that arrived on Earth millions of years ago. Through detailed bas-reliefs, they reconstruct a history of cosmic biological engineering, the rebellion of the gelatinous Shoggoths, and the slow decay of a high civilization.
Readers of weird fiction and cosmic horror choose this novella for its clinical, scientific tone and its rejection of supernatural tropes in favor of materialist terror. It appeals to those who enjoy seeing humanity’s history repositioned as a brief, insignificant accident within a vast, hostile universe. The reader leaves with a vivid understanding of the "Great Old Ones" mythology and the unsettling concept that the creators of human life were neither gods nor demons, but merely ancient, indifferent scientists.
Balanced in tone; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Story Seeker. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1936
- Language
- EN
