From its great opening line ('I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why') to its closing shrieks of 'Tekeli-li!' Lovecraft's story powerfully explores existential horror marked by the following: -monstrous forbidden books -opalescent skies -imminent marvels -secrets beyond human penetration -grotesque squawking penguins -curious configurations of dots -tentacles, wings, and obscene odors -careful butchery and inexpert dissection -an appalling account of the creation of life on earth -a pre-human megalopolis -disturbing gigantism -alien geometry -blasphemous antiquity -communicative bas-reliefs -cosmic beauty and cosmic horror The novella is the attempt by Dyer, a professor of geology at Mistaktonic University, to dissuade future scientific expeditions to Antarctica by telling what really happened to the disastrous one he led there in 1930.

Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness (1931/36) is, of course, that our world is abnormal. 'Such things did not happen in any normal world'

Beyond the mountains of madness