The People of the Pit (1918) is a short story by American writer A. Merritt.
Plot
Two gold prospectors are in Alaska to investigate a mountain range known as The Hand, which is supposed to have gold running down the middle. One night, when it is in sight, a beam of light shoots into the sky, and an injured man crawls into their camp. He was also a prospector, and tells them a fantastic tale of his experience with the People of the Pit.
Setting
The story is set "three hundred miles above the first great bend of the Kuskokwim toward the Yukon", in the Kuskokwim Mountains.
A travel book titled In the Alaskan wilderness had been published the previous year by George Byron Gordon, with maps and photographs of the region.In the Alaskan Wilderness. (George B. Gordon). 1917. John C. Winston Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Influence The story has been cited as a possible inspiration of Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness.Joshi and Schultz, p. 11.
Publishing history
All-Story Weekly, January 5, 1918 Amazing Stories, March 1927, illustrated by Martin Gambee. The Third Omnibus of Crime, 1935 The Fox Woman and Other Stories, 1949 Masterpieces of Science Fiction, 1966 The Fantastic Pulps, 1975 The Road to Science Fiction, Volume 2: From Wells to Heinlein, 1979 Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown, 1993 The Weird, 2011
References
External links
The People of the Pit at Project Gutenberg Australia