The Greatest Adventure

A scientifically-precipitated, out-of-control tale of evolution set in Antarctica—it predates Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness—by a mathematician of note who also wrote science fiction.


In The Greatest Adventure, an expedition to Antarctica discovers remnants of an elder race with advanced technology. These ancients had discovered the secret of developing new life-forms… but when the mutations threatened to run amok, their creators entombed their entire civilization in ice. Intrepid aviatrix Edith Lane and her comrades must flee through caverns inhabited by the mutated monsters… and when frozen spores begin to thaw out, the planet is threatened by malign plant life! A tale of horror by John Taine—the pseudonym of mathematician Eric Temple Bell—that is not without moments of humor.

Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) was a mathematician who taught at the California Institute of Technology. The eponym of Bell polynomials and Bell numbers of combinatorics, his 1937 book Men of Mathematics would help to inspire Julia Robinson, John Forbes Nash, Jr., Andrew Wiles, and other future mathematicians. Writing as “John Taine,” he published many proto-sf novels.