Denise, post 12 is dead-on. Wish I could have read Lovecraft in the thirties. (Without seeing the cover of the pulp magazine I was holding, I guess. (Which hits on what's so cool about the net--no covers.))

Hi, jonl!

You're missing the real point: we're having Cthulhu for dinner... (parboiled).

Hey! It's "NeT"! You gotta get with it, or you're not gonna be able to hang wit these crazy, happening kids.

CynicalRectumMan doesn't exist becuase I saw him on the net.

I had not heard of H.P. Lovecraft and I didn't rely on my existing knowledge base as a tool for establishing fact from fiction. I used Google and I asked Marc.

By "if that place really existed", I meant the mountains of madness in Antarctica, not the university.

Look, I'd like to believe that place was true. Not knowing that the writing was fiction, I honestly read that story thinking that it might have been a real article that was later discredited by science and that's why I had never heard of those mountains in Antarctica. That's why I said, "Science ruins everything". Back in 1931-32, it would have been very difficult to prove or disprove this story. Now we just take a satellite photo of an area in question.

Well now you've gone and touched a nerve. And yet...since I too read S.T. Joshi's scholarly LOVECRAFT: A FUCKING TWIT, I can take it on the chin. In fact, I am determined this will be the most scathing, hotly contested, eye-watering, no-holds-barred "At the Mountains of Madness" thread on the entire internet! Go for it! No troll shall go unanswered!

What a fuckin bunch of plebian morons! Lovercraft was a fucking twit! Like most of his fans... Only a fucking twit would believe what they see on the NeT!

Denise, you said - "my only suspicions were the name of the university and the fact that if that place really existed i would have heard of it before now." Yet, you seem to have never heard of H.P. Lovecraft.

In the future (and for your own sake), I would recommend you not using your existing knowledge base as a tool for establishing fact from fiction.

it was exactly the right frame of mind to read that story! heh. my only suspicions were the name of the university and the fact that if that place really existed i would have heard of it before now. science ruins everything.

thanks for exposing me to the author.

The eye has been added.
The original can be seen here:
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=5...reviousRenderType=2

Mountains of Madness was the first Lovecraft I read. "Scared" is the wrong word for how it made me feel. "Infused with horrific bleakness" perhaps.

I can only imagine that was probably the best possible frame of mind in which to encounter "At the Mountains of Madness" for the first time. Lucky. A lesser author than Lovecraft, and you'd never have doubted for a second that you were reading fiction.

Don't be embarrassed. I was once taken in by the ludicrous prologue of Lin Carter's ghastly Jandar of Callisto. Now that is embarrassing.

uh, nevermind. i did a search on the author. i am assuming the eye was added. i told you i was gullible.

i may be missing a joke here. i read the entire story from your previous link. long-winded but compelling. is that supposed to be a true account from a real person or fiction? was the eye photoshopped on or off? i'm gullible, so don't tease me! i really want to know about the image and the history of that story.

Remember, Vote Cthulhu in 2004!

Don't settle for the lesser evil!