Antichi (Elder Things)

Literary invention
Scritti febbraio-marzo 1931 · «Astounding Stories», 1936

Antichi (Elder Things) — an extraterrestrial civilisation of radial symmetry: a barrel-shaped body about two and a half metres tall, starfish-like appendages, five eyes, membranous wings, reproduction by spores.

First appearance

Elder Things, also called Old Ones in At the Mountains of Madness.

What is told

An extraterrestrial civilisation of radial symmetry: a barrel-shaped body about two and a half metres tall, starfish-like appendages, five eyes, membranous wings, reproduction by spores. They are biological beings, not deities.

In the corpus

Lovecraft treats them with explicit sympathy — «they were men!» — at the point where the characters reconstruct their civilisation and its fall. It is the passage in which his cosmicism becomes almost compassion.

Publication data

At the Mountains of Madness, «Astounding Stories», 1936.

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