H.P. Lovecraft

In Chapter VI Dyer and Danforth investigate the art and reported history of the cyclopean city and its inhabitants.

Venturing through the ancient building, Dyer and Danforth come across regular patterns on the walls, Hieroglyphic murals bordered by arabesques line the entirety of the walls, only with brief pauses in the patterns of dots. These dot patterns hint at a rhyming form alien to all cultures of man.

They two delve deeper and study these murals, which evidently depict the history of the the barrel-like creatures. The rooms are notably unfurnished, though murals depict contents of these old rooms. This leads Dyer and Danforth to conclude that the city was abandoned. The pair both arrive at a conclusion that they try their hardest to deny, until they are presented with an unambiguous mural.

These barrel-like creatures are in fact an alien species who have lived on many worlds, and arrived on Earth a billion years ago. Indeed, these creatures are evidently the "Elder Things" fearfully written of in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon. The mural further depicts that these creatures are at least partially responsible for life on earth.

Dyer and Danforth franticly take photographs of the murals and take to drawing pictures when they run out of film. Dyer reveals that on later study, Danforth suffered from a mental breakdown which Dyer blames on the revelations of their research. Unfortunately this was unavoidable, as Dyer and Danforth must warn against further expeditions.

This is an important chapter in the story. The revelation of spacefaring precursor races is noted by some Lovecraft scholars as Lovecraft's attempt to frame the creatures of his short stories through a more scientific lens, rather than leaving them as supernatural earthly entities. Enigmatic entities such as Cthulhu were now justified as ancient colonists of earth rather than god-like entities.

Those of you more seasoned in Lovecraft's work may have heard the term "Cthulhu Mythos", coined by a friend of Lovecraft, August Derleth. Derleth, while a confidant of Lovecraft, was a proponent of viewing the collected works of Lovecraft as a collective mythos with an overarching theme of good versus evil, which suited his catholic sensibilities. Lovecraft being an atheist rejected the notion of such a meta-narrative and firmly rejected Derleth's attempts to consolidate his works under a collective "Mythos" label.

Following Lovecraft's death, Derleth became the publisher of Lovecraft's unpublished works via Arkham House publishing. He is in part responsible for the widespread publication of Lovecraft's work today. Be that as it may, he is responsible for some decisions which many Lovecraft fans dislike. The two most controversial decisions were to go against the express wishes of Lovecraft and propose that the collection of stories be viewed under the banner of a single connected "Cthulhu Mythos"; and Derleth publishing a large number of "posthumous collaborations" with Lovecraft as a co-author, decades after Lovecraft's death.

Chapter VII concerns Dyer's interpretation of the colonisation of Earth by the Elder Things, and their subsequent wars with later colonisers.

The bas-reliefs of the building depicts the Elder Things as flying to Earth without the aid of a vessel. Though affected by extreme weather, they apparently survived the vacuum of space by imbibing herbal preparations. Their curious bodies make them masters of land, air, and sea, thus they established many land and sea cities.

In the deep sea the Elder Things fashioned from inorganic material their ancient slave race of the Shoggoths, which were previously believed to never reside upon Earth. The Elder Things commanded the Shoggoths via psychic manipulation. The Shoggoths eventually developed some manner of independent thought as a side effect of excessive mental manipulation by the Elder Things; this prompted a war of subjugation which was eventually won by the Elder Things. Around the time that the Elder Things created the Shoggoths, they also produced early Earth life. Rather than the deliberate genetic manipulation applied to Shoggoths, the Elder Things were content with allowing other life to develop naturally, only interfering when a certain species potentially posed a threat. This was the age of the Elder Things on Earth.

The next great colonising force was the Star Spawn of Cthulhu, a race of bipedal reptilians with tentacled faces, reminiscent of Dread Cthulhu though much smaller. The Star Spawn waged war against the Elder Things for dominion over Earth. The war eventually ended in a peace deal, where the Elder Things retained all their ancestral land, and with new unsettled land going to the Star Spawn. Eventually, an apocalyptic event struck the Star Spawn, as worldwide their cities sunk to the bottom of the ocean, including their capital of R'lyeh.

The third colonising force was the Mi-Go from Pluto, also known as the abominable snowmen of the Himalayas. These two waged war against the Elder Things and proved the stronger force, eventually forcing the Elder Things back to their underwater cities and their sole remaining land city in Antarctica, where they first landed on Earth. The Elder Things attempted to use their powers of space travel and biological engineering to assert dominance over the Mi-Go, only to discover that their technological knowledge had decayed and was lost to them.

Like the previous chapter, Chapter VII does a lot of work to establish some form of plausible sci-fi explanation for the weird creatures on Earth, rather than leaving origins unexplained and open to supernatural interpretation. He puts a nail in the coffin for Cthulhu here by explicitly stating that R'lyeh was deliberately built by a spacefaring culture who resemble Dread Cthulhu.

Of note from this chapter was the descriptions of the Mi-Go and Star Spawn relative to the Elder Things. While the Elder Things had fixed forms, the Mi-Go and Star Spawn appear more plastic in nature, capable of altering their forms to suit their needs. This again is explained away as the Elder Things originating from a point in space-time not unlike our own, while the other two races originate from some deep and distant abyss where our conventional knowledge of the sciences need not apply.

Chapter VIII concerns the further decline of the empire of the Elder Things.

Dyer is now convinced that this great city is no other than the evil Plateau of Leng, of which even the great occult scholar Abdul Al-Hazred was fearful. The carvings of the Elder Things speak of the geography surrounding the city, including a much vaster mountain range which was the source of the great river that spanned the city. Even the Elder Things feared those mountains, for any who built near that range found their constructions falling to ruin. They even came to fear that which the river bore down from the mountains. Dyer recalls Kadath of the Cold Wastes mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts, and is thankful that he has not seen that range.

Though the Elder Things were hardy folk, the approaching ice age originating at the poles caused ever decreasing crop yields, resulting in a population crisis. The Elder Things determined to build a new city, in the vast depths of an underground ocean which would be uniformly heated by the planet itself. To this end, they fashioned a new breed of intelligent Shoggoths. These new Shoggoths were capable of verbal communications, following complex instruction, and forming intelligent questions.

Dyer ponders on this underwater city and whether it still stands. He wonders whether it is possible for the Elder Things to have survived uncontacted for long millenia, and is then disturbed by the thought of the remarkably preserved specimens which disappeared after the slaughter at the camp.

It sounds to me like we have in fact found Unknown Kadath. While it lies in Antarctica in the waking world, it lies far to the North of the world of Dream. It is also notable in both worlds for its proximity to the Plateau of Leng and it's incredible size compared to other mountain ranges. A brief thought I had is that perhaps the fables of these locations are the cause for their representations in the Dreamlands. After all, these fables can lead to many dreams of these horrific places.

In Chapter IX Dyer and Danforth seek out an entrance to the abyss which houses the "new" city.

Using the bed of the ancient river to orient themselves, Dyer and Danforth use the murals to sketch a map to some of the closest entrances to the abyss. They have spent much of their battery power in studying the murals, and so they can only safely check two entrances.

The two head out towards the closest entrance to the abyss, hoping that the passageway has not collapsed or been blocked by debris. Unfortunately, the passageway is blocked, but they recognise some disturbing scents. The first scent is a disgusting and unnerving scent, similar to that of the dissected specimen which the two unearthed from a snow coffin. The other scent is that of gasoline.

Following the scent of gasoline, the pair find odd swaths through the ancient debris, hinting at recent disturbance. They soon find a puddle of spilled gasoline and remnants of some gear taken from the camp, including some crumpled papers and food cans that have been opened in an odd manner.

Dyer smooths out some paper to inspect its contents. He finds that whoever passed by previously had also drawn a hasty map for navigating the city. This map depicts another entrance by the ruins of a circular tower that Dyer and Danforth spotted from the air. The detail of this map is disconcerting; there is a level of detail to the maps such that, though the maps were hastily drafted, appear superior to the depictions of the city on the murals. Evidently these maps were not simply copied from murals. Also on the paper is the odd dotted script found throughout the buildings.

The duo follow this new map to the circular tower which is surprisingly well preserved, considering its long exposure to the weather. Searching the interior, they find three missing sleds from the camp. They are drawn to a conspicuous pile covered by a tarp. Underneath the tarp they find the frozen remains of the missing scientist Gedney and the final sled dog.

I loved this chapter and found it rather chilling. There's a surprising amount of tension packed into following the trail of the Elder Things, hoping against hope that at the end of the trail they will find Gedney, only to have their worst fears realised.

In Chapter X Dyer and Danforth finally begin their descent into the abyss.

The pair are pulled from their shocked stupor by a familiar sound, altogether disconcerting in this location. Despite being hundreds of kilometres inland, the pair hears the squawking of penguins. Dyer and Danforth follow the squawking and find a previously undiscovered species of penguin, gigantic in proportion, albino, and eyeless. They briefly recall images of penguins dotting the murals. The penguins stand outside an entrance to a subterranean vault, from which vapour billows.

The pair descend into the depths, which grow warmer and warmer until the two are forced to remove their outerwear. They eventually enter a vast entrance hall. They turn on their torches to inspect the halls and its art, only to discover that the craftwork of the Elder Things has sharply decayed. Stalactites hang from the ceiling. Carvings appear more crude. While the geometric patterns are clearly inspired by earlier art, there is something clumsy and careless to the carvings.

A new odour begins to assault their nostrils, an odour which overpowers the foul stench of the Elder Things. Ahead, the two see apparently lifeless obstructions in the hallway. They continue.

We saw in a previous chapter that the Elder Things experimented with intelligent Shoggoths for the construction of the new city. Could these crude new carvings be the product of these new Shoggoths, acting upon instruction of the Elder Things but without direct supervision?

In Chapter XI Dyer and Danforth are confronted with a horror in the depths.

The lifeless obstructions in the hallway are in fact the bodies of four of the eight Elder Things, clearly dispatched recently. Green ichor pours from the stumped where their heads should be. Inspecting the bodies further, the pair realise that each body has had its head torn off, and that a pungent black ooze surrounds the stump.

Both recognise this method of killing as the method employed by the Shoggoths in the war of re-subjugation. Danforth is so shocked that he screams; the nightmarish Shoggoths are "known" to not exist on this world. A response comes from deep within the cavern. The sound was noted by Lake in his radio transmissions; Danforth and Dyer were subconsciously aware of the sound while travelling the city; and Dyer is aware of the inspiration for an odd utterance described in Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym.

From the abyss comes the repeated cry "Tekeli-li!" which the pair associates with the Elder Things. They believe that they see a wounded Elder Thing approaching and they immediately flee. The two run with only dim torchlight in hopes of losing the Elder Thing in the vast honeycombed network of tunnels.

Oddly enough, the scent of the Elder Thing does not grow stronger as it must surely be catching up to them. Instead, that second foetid odour becomes unbearably strong. The two look around out of morbid curiosity and nearly succumb to madness. They are being chased by a black ooze that squeezes through the incredibly vast hall, wider than a subway car. It screams "Tekeli-li!" in a mocking tone.

The Shoggoths, only given intelligence to serve the Elder Things and having no language of their own, could only imitate the language of their masters.

I find it odd but not uncharacteristic of Lovecraft that he has sympathy for the Elder Thing slavers in this chapter. The "poor Old Ones" who built their empire off the backs of engineered slaves had their final city usurped by their former slaves. I definitely fall on the side of the Shoggoths who are so engineered that they can't even devise their own language and must resort to a half-intelligent mockery of their masters' language.

In Chapter XII Dyer and Danforth escape the Plateau of Leng.

The duo eventually reach the surface and make a mad dash through the city to their plane. They have one last glimpse of the city, and finally spy the colossal peaks of Kadath of the Cold Wastes, burning purple in the midnight Antarctic sun.

Danforth is the trained pilot but his nerves are so shot that Dyer, with no training, proves the more competent pilot in the moment. As they fly over the mountain pass of the Mountains of Madness, the scientists are audibly assaulted by haunting sounds, which makes Dyer wish for wax plugs for his ears. Relieved of his piloting duties, Danforth glances back towards Unknown Kadath and begins shrieking anew. Of the horror he saw, Danforth will reveal very little to Dyer. He speaks only of a second mirage over the peaks of Kadath. In later ramblings he will make mention to various entities including "Yog-Sothoth" and "The Colour Out of Space".

Again to me this parallels Unknown Kadath where Carter escapes the trap of Nyarlathotep while being hypnotised by the unearthly piping of the Other Gods.

The two main references in this section, other than Unknown Kadath, are to Yog-Sothoth, first introduced in Charles Dexter Ward, and the eponymous Colour Out of Space from the short story of the same name. While we haven't covered the latter story in this book club, I highly recommend reading it.