At The Mountains of Madness

The 1930s were a time of great exploration - there were still white spaces on the map and none more enticing than the Antarctic.

So what better place for pulp writer HP Lovecraft - with his fascination for science, exploration and the unknown - to set, what I consider to be, his finest work: At The Mountains of Madness.

Although written in 1931, it didn't see print until its serialisation in Astounding Stories in 1936, but now stands as a cornerstone of his Cthulhu mythos cycle.

The story charts a pioneering exploration of this white wastes by a team of academics, their discovery of a giant, uncharted chain of mountains and the horrors that lay beyond.

While there is some gore when our protagonists discover the aftermath of a stomach-churning massacre of their colleagues, the main horror comes from the building sense of mystery and terrors lurking in the shadows, the anticipation of things to come.

All this has been perfectly captured by the ever-professional HP Lovecraft Historical Society - who brought us the 1920's style, silent movie version of Call of Cthulhu - in its first radio play, now available on CD and for download.

Presented in part as War of The Worlds-style news reports and then concluding with the account of the expedition's only sane survivor, At The Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft as he might have heard his work had it been dramatised while he was alive.

Genuinely gripping, evocative and oozing atmosphere - this is a fantastic piece of theatre and hopefully lays the groundwork for future radio/CD adaptations of the great man's stories.

As an added bonus with the CD you also get some replica props - newspaper clippings, sketches, photographs etc that make this a genuine 'must have' for Lovecraft fans.