Wrapping up “Madness”, the Talos pastiche retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”

I wrapped up the writing today on “Madness”, the Doc Talos re-imagine of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”. A moment for letting out a deep breath…I usually write stories at a breakneck pace, but this one, literally, took decades to write.

I was writing it back in 1977, as a sequel to Mts of Madness called “Kadath in the Cold Waste”, telling it as the story of the Starkweather-Moore expedition that was preparing to follow the Miskatonic University one that so memorably uncovered a frozen megalopolis amid the tallest mountains in the world. Over and over I worked on it, in a Lovecraftian style (exquisitely slow, with ornate language).

But it just wasn’t right. I wanted to do more than strive to skillfully mimic Lovecraft. My writing interests (characterization, psychological veracity, human relatability), were — and are — in many ways the polar opposite (pun intended) of HPL’s style. “Kadath”, each and every time I returned to wrestle with it, felt hollow.

With the final decision to shift the story into the Doc Talos world, it was suddenly alive, with the character-depth of the Talos avatars of Johnny Littlejohn, and Doc himself. Instead of horror-pulp monsters (which I enjoy in their own right, but are, creatively, not really my thing), the journey became one of strange wonders (which the real Antarctica possesses in plenty) and the obsessions, frailties and strengths of people who undertake the task of penetrating the most hostile places on Earth.

All these years later, it is finally done, and is presented in four installments (Doc Talos Magazine 3, 4, 6 and 7).

Artwork by Iason Ragnar Bellerophon after Nicholas Roerich, and from archival photographs.

“There are many reasons which send men to the Poles, and the Intellectual Force uses them all. But the desire for knowledge for its own sake is the one which really counts and there is no field for the collection of knowledge which at the present time can be compared to the Antarctic. Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion. And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore. Some will tell you that you are mad.”
–Apsley Cherry-Garrard