Lovecraft vs. Campbell?

[Kryptych]

I recently wrote an e-mail to S.T. Joshi via his website regarding At the Mountains of Madness and John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Who Goes There?, which we all remember was adapted as The Thing from Another World in '51 and as John Carpenter's The Thing in '82. Here is the bulk of the e-mail, which I am posting because I'd like to know what you all think.

I'm a fan of horror and science fiction, and John Carpenter's film The Thing is often considered Lovecraftian, which certainly makes sense given the atmosphere and its similarities to AtMoM. Carpenter, of course, makes it a point to emphasize that it is based on the John W. Campbell story of Who Goes There?, which I have read (if only once). The similarities in the basic details of the story can't be denied, but I do wonder...
Not knowing much of Campbell or his work, but having heard that he was occasionally outspoken in some of his views (though specifics escape me)... and looking at the publication history - At the Mountains of Madness being published in Astounding Stories in 1936 (February - April), John W. Campbell taking over as editor of that publication in 1937/1938, and then Who Goes There? being published in 1938 (August).
Is it possible that Campbell wrote Who Goes There? as a reaction to At the Mountains of Madness? Perhaps either as an homage or perhaps as an attempt to simplify the story into something more... I supposed "commercially viable" would be the term, or at least more marketable to the masses? As if to say, "I can tell the same story, only better."
 
I'm curious as to your thoughts on this, or if there is any publication that actually touches on this.

[TheFolklorist]

In his anthology The Antarktos Cycle Robert Price says that he thinks that Campbell's story was probably inspired by Lovecraft's.

However, this may well not be the case. Remember that the continent of Antarctica had only just been discovered in 1820 and dubbed "Antarctica" in the 1890s. The first expeditions to the continent took place in 1911 and 1912. The first flight over Antarctica took place in 1929.

The mystery surrounding this "lost continent" served as inspiration for a great many sci-fi authors long before the advent of Lovecraft. Both Jules Verne (An Antarctic Mystery! The Sphinx of the Ice Fields) and Edgar Allen Poe (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym) wrote  stories about Antarctica, the later of which greatly influenced Lovecraft who borrowed the shoggoth's cry - "Tekeli-li" - from Poe.

Pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs put dinosaurs and primitive human tribes at the South Pole in his Caspak trilogy (serialized in 1918, published in book form in 1924) followed by John Taine who in 1929 also put dinosaurs in Antarctica albeit ones that were genetically engineered by aliens!

So by the time Lovecraft and Campbell both come along the trope of setting sci-fi stories in the arctic was pretty well established. No one needed to be ripping off or trying to one up anyone else necessarily, though we do know that Lovecraft was drawing inspiration from Poe. Literary critics Robert Price and Allen Debus also argue that it seems hard to believe that Lovecraft was not influenced by Taine.

Writers still routinely set sci-fi stories at the South Pole to this day. Superman's Fortress of Solitude is there as is Marvel's the Savage Land; in an obvious nod to Burroughs. One of my favorite anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, starts out in Antarctica. Both X-Files: Fight the Future (you know the good X-Files movie) leads Mulder and Scully to the South Pole as does Alien vs. Predator.                       

[Robert R.]

I'd suggest that the Hawks/Nyby "The Thing from Another World" borrows from Lovecraft, in making The Thing a vegetable creature. There's definitely some cross-pollination of ideas going on in both adaptations of Campbell's story.

[Kryptych]

In response to Robert R.:
I do agree that "the thing" certainly does have Lovecraftian properties in both films, though I tend to favor the more protoplasmic/Shoggoth-like formation of Rob Bottin's creature in Carpenter's film. Something about the amorphous and gelatinous, occasionally tentacled shapes Bottin's creation exhibits really brings Lovecraft to mind.

In response to The Folklorist: I would never suggest that Campbell was ripping Lovecraft off; the details between the two stories are diverse enough, along with the two writers' different styles, that I don't think one could be mistaken for the other. The similarities in the basic framework and tone of the two stories did strike me, so I had to beckon the question. True enough that Antarctica is an attractive locale for the unknown on Earth, especially back then for many other authors before and besides Lovecraft.
I'll have to read more of Price.

[Jimmythehat]

Dammit, my brain was in left field on that one. I was thinking it was Lovecraft vs. BRUCE Campbell. My bad.

[MartinRonnlund]

Dammit, my brain was in left field on that one. I was thinking it was Lovecraft vs. BRUCE Campbell. My bad.

You're not alone, friend.

[Unruhe]

And now we have "The Terror" by Dan Simmons. I own it but have not cracked it open yet. It gets very mixed reviews.
 Has anyone here read it?

[Boneworm]

And now we have "The Terror" by Dan Simmons. I own it but have not cracked it open yet. It gets very mixed reviews.
 Has anyone here read it?

I have.  It's set nearer to the opposite pole, and doesn't owe much to either Lovecraft or Campbell (be it John W., Ramsey, or Bruce).  It's pretty good if you like historical fiction mixed in with your horror, but it gets a little goofy nearer to the end.