The Moon Pool (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)
by A. Merritt
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Book Summary Information
Author: A. MerrittIntroduction: Robert Silverberg
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deluxe Edition
Published: 2001-03-01
ISBN: 0803282680
Number of pages: 287
Publisher: Bison Books
Book Reviews of The Moon Pool (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)
Book Review: Rough Poetics
Summary: 5 Stars
The American scientific romance writers were a loose assemblage of early twentieth century pulp writers. At the precise time that the American frontier was closing off and the United States was becoming more urbanized, they looked for colorful "new frontiers" as a background for breathless and garish adventures: distant planets, lost cities, hidden caverns, the jungles of Africa, the interior of the Earth or the Moon, or the electron of an atom. The foremost American scientific romance authors were Edgar Rice Burroughs, Abraham Meritt, Ray Cummings, J.U. Giesy, Otis Adelbert Kline, and Ralph Milne Farley. Burroughs has proven to be the most consistently popular of these authors. But for my money, A. Merritt was the better writer by far. He was a bestselling author in his day and for some time after his death in 1943. But now he is all but forgotten.
_The Moon Pool_ was Merritt's first novel and his first real success. It is a fixup novel based on two stories: "The Moon Pool" (_All-Story Weekly_, 1918) and "The Conquest of the Moon Pool" (_All-Story Weekly_, 1919). The first story was a novelette; the second was a six-part serial. The first part of the novel (about the first five chapters) is written in a fairly spare, realistic, no-nonsense, journalistic style. Many magazine readers wondered whether the novelette was fact or fiction. The second part-- more of an elaborate lost world extravaganza-- is written in a style that is loaded with adjectives, adverbs, ten-dollar words, dashes, italics, and exclamation points. Some critics like James Blish loathe this purple prose of Merritt's. I confess to a certain fondness for it.
The story is concerned with an evil, musical "dweller of light" that manifests itself just below the waters of a pool on a Pacific island, pulling victims below the waters to a fate worse than death. The main action of the tale involves a group of rescuers who enter the pool into an exotic underworld. Here they are in a climactic encounter with the Dweller:
Near, nearer-- a music as of myriads of tiny crystal bells, tinkling, tinkling-- a storm of pizzicati upon violins of glass! Nearer, nearer-- not sweetly now, nor luring; no-- raging, wrathful, sinister beyond words; sweeping on; nearer--
The Dweller! The Shining One! (242)
Aligned against the Dweller are a Trinity of ancient ones who originally created the monster. The heroes are here meeting the trio:
Upon the brows [of the Old Ones] were caps-- and with a fearful certainty I knew that they were _not_ caps-- long, thick strands of gleaming, yellow, feathered scales thin as sequins! Sharp, curving noses like the beaks of the giant condors; mouths thin, austere; long powerful pointed chins; the --_flesh_-- of the faces white as purest marble; and wreathing up to them, covering all their bodies, the shimmering, curdled, misty fires of opalescence! (185)
There are other strange peoples in this underground world: priestesses, dwarf warriers, frog people, zombies... and the occasional dragon:
From the rift in the tunnel's continuation, nigh a mile beyond the cleft through which we fled, lifted a crown of horns-- of tentacles-- erect, alert, of mottled gold and crimson; lifted higher-- and from a monstrous scarlet head beneath them blazed two enormous, obloid eyes, their depths wells of purplish phosphorescence; higher still-- noseless, earless, chinless; a livid worm mouth from which a slender scarlet tongue leaped like playing flames! (172)
Nor does Merritt stint when it comes to sights of the physical landscape. Here is the hero's sight of some Medusae in a vast underground Crimson Sea:
Across my line of vision, moving stately over the sea, floated a half globe, luminous, diaphonous, its iridescence melting into turquoise, thence to amethyst, to orange, to scarlet shot with rose, to vermilion, a translucent green, thence back into iridescence; behind it four others, and the least of them ten feet in diameter, and the largest no less than thirty. They drifted past like bubbles blown from the froth of rainbows by pipes in the mouths of Titans' young. (180)
There are also various wonders of super science in this underground world. Merritt sometimes interrupts the text with announcements from scientific censors that the author's technical descriptions of atomic engines and such have been deleted for security purposes. The inventions include flying machines in the shape of shells, cloaks of invisibility, whispering globes of wrath, and death rays. The priestess Yolara strikes down a dwarf with one such ray for having the temerity to say that she has an evil heart:
The [dwarf's] figure grew indistinct, misty. Tiny sparks in infinite numbers leaped from it-- like, I thought, the radiant shower of particles hurled out by radium when seen under the microscope. Mistier still it grew-- there trembled before us for a moment a faintly luminous shadow which held, here and there, tiny sparkling atoms like those pulsed in the light about us! The glowing shadow vanished, the sparkling atoms were still for a moment-- and shot away, joining those dancing others.
Where the gnomelike form had been but a few seconds before-- there was nothing! (100)
Well, perhaps it's not Faulkner. But I would argue that it's a damned sight better than Burroughs or Cummings-- and miles ahead of Kline and Farley. There is a sense of color and the exotic to Merritt's lost world that gives it a feeling of dreamlike reality. Merritt saw his world clearly. _The Moon Pool_ is one of the very best of the American scientific romances. It deserves the highest of ratings.
_Note_: There are probably several editions of _The Moon Pool_ floating about, but I particularly recommend the one by Bison Books. It is handsomely bound, and there is an excellent introduction by Robert Silverberg.
Summary of The Moon Pool (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)
On the island of Ponape in the South Pacific, the cold light of a full moon washes over the crumbling ruins of an ancient, vanished civilization. Unleashed from the depths is the Dweller, a glittering, enigmatic force of monstrous terror and radiant beauty that stalks the South Pacific, claiming all in its path. An international expedition led by American Walter Goodwin races to save those who have fallen victim to the Dweller. The dark mystery behind the malevolent force is Muria, a forgotten, mythic world deep within the earth that is home to a legendary people intent on reclaiming what was theirs long ago. This commemorative edition of The Moon Pool features an introduction by Robert Silverberg, a review of the first edition, and a glossary of the Murian language.
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