Imagine a world where your house talks to you, it makes your bed, it makes you breakfast, it reads your newspaper and it even flies. Imagine returning from an interstellar journey into a world like this after a 200 years - lost, alone, without any recollection of what has happened to you. Or maybe not so alone?

Andrew Blake has been found frozen in a life pod between the stars. Nobody knows who he is, where he has been or what has happened to him - the only clue he has about the time of his departure is that there were no such “houses” before he left. He has no memory, he is perfectly healthy - except maybe for the strange episodes when he turns into something else, something not so human. And why does the goblin tell him that he is not alone in there?

An exciting book by Clifford D. Simak, a “must read” for all real Science Fiction fans. Slow as it is at times, this book is an exciting description of three entities that are not human: a thinker, a wolf and a not so human, as they are looking for the supreme intellect of the Universe, or just a way to live happy and free. And the book holds an unexpected twist at the end… read it, find out for yourself.

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 The publication of the following narrative of Dr. Walter T. Goodwin has been authorized by the Executive Council of the International Association of Science.

An interesting book about an interesting (strange, horrible, beautiful, marvelous, frightening) world and its interesting (strange, horrible, beautiful, marvelous, frightening) inhabitants. There is something in the Moon Pool, something evil, When the moon is full, he / she / it comes out of the pool and goes for a hunt. A monster? A fairy? The Devil himself? Or maybe herself?

As we find out (through the adventures of the good doctor, Larry O’Keefe, Olaf and the Russian scientist Marakinoff), he/she/it is some kind of god for the people living in the underground countri of Muria. They love it, they fear it.

Eventually there is a great confrontation between Good and Evil, between Lakla, the golden-eyed servant of The Silent Ones’ trinity and The Dweller of the Moon Pool.

An interesting antithesis: the worshippers of the Dweller are beautiful women and strong, manly dwarves, using technology as their weapons, whereas the servants of the Silent Ones are strange creatures, clearly produced by a different evolution, and they use their claws and their living weapons against their enemies.

His reputation has not stood well over the years among speculative fiction fans and critics (with the singular exception of The Ship of Ishtar, a universally hailed classic of the fantasy genre), but at one time he was a major influence on H.P. Lovecraft and highly esteemed by his friend and frequent collaborator Hannes Bok, by then a noted SF illustrator.

Merritt’s stories typically revolve around conventional pulp magazine themes: lost civilizations, hideous monsters, etc. His heroes are gallant Irishmen or Scandinavians, his villains treacherous Germans or Russians (depending on the politics of the time) and his heroines often virginal, mysterious and scantily clad.

What sets Merritt apart from the typical pulp author, however, is his lush, florid prose style and his exhaustive, at times exhausting, penchant for adjective-laden detail. Merritt’s fondness for micro-description nicely complements the pointillistic style of Bok’s illustrations, and often serves to highlight and radicalize the inherent fetishistic tendencies of pulp sf.

(Wikipedia)

The Moon Pool is a really interesting novel. I recommend it for all Sci-Fi fans.

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