Like The Thing, At The Mountains Of Madness sees a group of scientists discover an ancient alien menace in the Antarctic, and both stories share a remarkable similarity in atmosphere and tone. There’s an astral chill here that’s straight out of Lovecraft’s At The Mountains Of Madness, which Campbell once admitted was a direct inspiration for Who Goes There.
When the luckless survivors, Childs and MacReady, sit utterly defeated outside the burning wreckage of their shelter, they don’t pontificate about divine providence, but simply take a swig of Scotch and wait for the inevitable end. But in his take on The Thing, Carpenter also brought something else to this chilly tale: a sense of apocalyptic doom, emphatically underlined by a conclusion that, unlike Campbell’s story (which ended on a portentous note and musings about the grace of God), was startlingly bleak.Ĭarpenter’s The Thing is an unmistakeably atheist creation, full of angst and existential coldness. Already adapted once by Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby in 1951, it was Carpenter’s rendition that hewed closer to the original story, wisely dumping the alien carrot of the Hawks’ picture and reinstating Campbell’s protean monster. It’s a well-known fact in geek circles that The Thing is an adaptation of sci-fi author John W Campbell’s 1938 novella, Who Goes There. It will introduce a whole new generation of readers to Lovecraft's fiction, as well as being a must-buy for those fans who want all his work in a single, definitive, highly attractive volume.December will see the release of The Thing (at least in the UK, it’s already out in the States), a belated prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 classic that will return audiences to the wastes of Antarctica, where an unspeakable shapeshifting menace awaits. This handsome leatherbound tome collects together the very best of Lovecraft's tales of terror, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were originally published. These astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when they were first published. Lovecraft's tales of the tentacled Elder God Cthulhu and his pantheon of alien deities were initially written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and '30s.
Lovecraft's reputation has grown tremendously over the decades, and he is now commonly regarded as one of the most important horror writers of the 20th century, exerting an influence that is widespread, though often indirect.'
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