Just read: The Moon Pool by Abraham Merritt
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.
The Moon Pool is a really interesting novel. I recommend it for all Sci-Fi fans.
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November 7th, 2007 at 9:23 am
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