I remember the first time I read Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. It was summer, and Ann and I were at the beach. We sat there in our beach chairs, our toes sinking into the soft sand, while the sun’s rays pressed against our faces like a hot iron. In front of us lay the riotous, wave-riddled ocean, from which the occasional merciful breeze would provide enough relief for us to fool ourselves into the belief that we weren’t becoming the next in a long line of skin cancer victims.
Squinting against the light, I read my Lovecraft, set in a frozen wasteland. And when I got to the giant, vicious penguins, I started to laugh — and I did not stop laughing until the end of the book. Lovecraft sure wasn’t an ornithologist, or he would have realized the dangers of using penguins for menace.
И если бы только пингвины...
