As early as February 1936—three months after the writing of his last original tale, “The Haunter of the Dark,” and several months before the contretemps over his stories in Astounding—he was already admitting: [At the Mountains of Madness] was written in 1931—and its hostile reception by Wright and others to whom it was shewn probably did more than anything else to end my effective fictional career. The feeling that I had failed to crystallise the mood I was trying to crystallise robbed me in some subtle fashion of the ability to approach this kind of problem in the same way—or with the same
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