Customer Reviews

The Metal Monster (Lovecraft's Library)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Abraham Merritt's second novel, "The Metal Monster," first saw the light of day in 1920, in "Argosy" magazine. It was not until 1946 that this masterful fantasy creation was printed in book form. In a way, this work is a continuation of Merritt's first novel, "The Moon Pool" (1919), as it is a narrative of America's foremost botanist, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, narrator of that earlier adventure as well. As Goodwin tells us, he initially set out on this second great adventure to forget the terrible incidents of the first; if anything, however, the events depicted in "The Metal Monster" are at least as mindblowing as those in the earlier tale. While Goodwin had encountered underground civilizations, frogmen, battling priestesses and a living-light entity in the earlier tale, this time around he discovers, in the Trans-Himalayan wastes of Tibet, a surviving Persian city, a half-human priestess, AND an entire civilization made up of living, metallic, geometric forms; an entire city of sentient cubes, globes and tetrahedrons, capable of joining together and forming colossal shapes, and wielding death rays and other armaments of destruction. As in the earlier tale, Goodwin is joined in his epic adventure by a small group of can-do individuals that he meets in the most unlikely, godforsaken areas of the world. This time around, it's a brother-and-sister team of scientists, as well as the son of one of Goodwin's old science buddies.
The sense of awe and wonder so crucial to good adventure fantasy is of a very high order in this book. Goodwin & Co., in one of the book's best set pieces, explore the living city of metal, and witness the life forms feeding off the sun, reproducing, and preparing for war. Later on, Merrittt treats us to a titanic battle between the metal folk and the lost Persians, as well as an hallucinatory cataclysm at the novel's end. Indeed, much of the book IS hallucinatory, with the metal shapes coalescing and morphing like crazy Transformers gone wild. A book by A. Merritt would be nothing without his hyperstylized, lush purple prose, and in this tale, his gift for somewhat prolix prose is given full vent. At times these incessant descriptions wear a bit thin, and at others they paradoxically fail to stir up pictures in the reader's mind eye. (I defy anyone, for example, to say that he/she was able to fully visualize Goodwin & Co.'s initial nighttime entry into the city of the metal people.) For the most part, though, these descriptions are amazing. Just take this one small sample. Whereas other writers might simply say that Goodwin entered a chamber with multicolored lights, here's what Merritt gives us:
"...a limitless temple of light. High up in it, strewn manifold, danced and shone soft orbs like tender suns. No pale gilt luminaries of frozen rays were these. Effulgent, jubilant, they flamed--orbs red as wine of rubies that Djinns of Al Shiraz press from his enchanted vineyards of jewels; twin orbs rose white as breasts of pampered Babylonian maids; orbs of pulsing opalescences and orbs of the murmuring green of bursting buds of spring, crocused orbs and orbs of royal coral; suns that throbbed with singing rays of wedded rose and pearl and of sapphires and topazes amorous; orbs born of cool virginal dawns and of imperial sunsets and orbs that were the tuliped fruit of mating rainbows of fire...."
Almost like prose poetry, isn't it? With writing like this, a well-thought-out plot, exotic settings and some great action sequences, "The Metal Monster" does indeed live up to its rep as a fantasy classic. There ARE some unanswered questions by the book's end, but that only adds to the aura of cosmic mystery that Merritt has built up. The book is a winner, indeed.

5.5" x 8.5" softcover book. 237 pages.

Of great important to readers of weird fiction is the first installment in Hippocampus Press' Lovecraft's Library series. Aimed at reprinting texts that H. P. Lovecraft read and admired, the inclusion of Abraham Merritt's The Metal Monster should come as a shock to no one.

Set in the Trans-Himalayan mountains, a group of four explorers uncover a lost-race, their power-crazed leader Norhala, and the metal homunculus Norhala controls. More akin to the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard than to Lovecraft, Merritt's concept of writing a "nexus where scientific theory and occult mystery intersected" seems philosophically aligned with Lovecraft's own aesthetic of the weird. Readers will surely notice certain similarities between Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and The Metal Monster.

Though The Metal Monster should feel dated, it surprisingly seems as innovative and fresh today as it must have upon first publication. The lesson learned, it would seem, is that a great author is able to create works that transcend time.

The plot is nonsense even by pulp standards. The ending is extremely unsatisfying. The protagonist is passive and reactive. THe interpersonal drama is wooden and extremely hokey.

But the book is BRILLIANT. Page after page of super-imaginative futuristic poetry -of the highest quality. It reminds me of Untameables.

I would highly recomend this book to painters, artists, and those with an interested in futurism.

This is one of the wildest and most imaginative of the early pulp novels. Though it suffers from various plot weaknesses and simplistic characterizations (I've docked it one star for a somewhat racist caricature), the visual descriptions of this hidden world and the geometric shapes that form and reform into various entities are the most mind-blowing this side of a tab of blotter acid. With the advances in computer animation today, someone could do this novel justice and make a stunning movie.

Abraham Merritt's _The Metal Monster_ (_Argosy_, 1920; 1946) is a sequel of sorts to _The Moon Pool_ (1919). The narrator of the earlier novel returns, and damned if he doesn't end up in another lost world, this time in the Trans- Himalayan mountains. _Monster_ doesn't have quite the color or dazzle of _Pool_, but I believe that it deserves a bit of attention because it is the most _science fictional_ of Merritt's lost world novels. Most of Merritt's novels-- _The Moon Pool_(1919), _The Face in the Abyss_ (1931), _Dwellers in the Mirage_ (1932), _The Ship of Ishtar_ (1949)-- are unabashed fantasies. But the creature in _The Metal Monster_ could be explained in scientific rather than mythical terms.

The monster in question is a kind of hive-mind: cubes, spheres, pyramids, and tetrahedrons of metal "given volition, movement, cognition-- thinking" (37). These molecules of metal can assemble into bridges, fighting machines, flying cars, X-ray machines, robots, and a mechanical serpent. The human scientists captured by the creature certainly attempt to explain it in scientific terms:

"If Jaques Loeb is right, that action of iron molecules is every bit as conscious a movement as the least and the greatest of our own... the iron does meet Haeckel's three three tests-- it can receive a stimulus, it does react to a stimulus and it retains memory of it" (108).

Our heroes admit that the creature's intelligence is a bit harder to explain, but that it nevertheless exists. And it has other characteristics of living organisms: "[The crystals of metal] bud-- give birth, in fact-- to smaller ones, which increase until they reach the size of the preceeding generation" (110-111). There is even a suggestion that the metal monster reached our planet by traveling through space like a cluster of spores. Certainly it has long range plans to wipe out the competitive race of man. The monster of _The Moon Pool_ was defeated largely by old magic. The monster of _The Metal Monster_ has an Achilles heel, but the arrow that slays it is more scientific than magical in nature.

But the novel is not purely science fictional. There are, almost in tension, barbarion warriors, traitorous eunuchs, and Norhala. Norhala is technically a priestess for the iron Emperor. But in practice, she is a goddess. She is beautiful, with fiery red hair. And I think that it is fair to say that she is neither deceptive nor evil. But she is imperious, powerful, and demanding. She has no real understanding of human feelings or foibles, she expects total obedience, and she is capable of ruthless vengeance. This leads to some bloody fights and spectacular battles.

Hugo Gernsback reprinted _The Metal Monster_ in 1927 in _Science and Invention_ under the title _The Metal Emperor_. Gernsback being Gernsback, he probably told himself that the value of the story was the "science" in it that would educate American youth, turning them into little technocrats. Most of Gernsback's readers knew better.

Perhaps a few words should be said about Merritt's attitude toward _The Metal Monster_: He was not happy with it (Moskowitz, 1963). But that dissatisfaction caused him to do several rewrites, and so in some ways it is a little better crafted than several of his other novels.

Reference: Moskowitz, Sam (1963). "The Marvelous A. Merritt". In _Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction_. Westport, Conn: Hyperion P, 1963.

A. (Abraham) Merritt (1884-1943) is known to experienced readers of fantasy and science fiction for his eight novels of which the "Metal Monster" was his second.

First published as a serial in a pulp fiction magazine in 1920 author Merritt refused to have it published in book form until 1941. In the introduction to my Hippocampus Press edition the reader is informed that "Merritt was dissatisfied with it's writing and revised and reshaped the story and cut 10,000 words from the text". Undaunted I have read the "restored edition" and I can well appreciate the author's dilemma. After all I was warned, even the author was dissatisfied with the story.


Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, fresh from his adventures in the South Pacific- see Merritt's "The Moon Pool", travels to the Trans-Himalayan region where he discovers "awesome beings of living metal". The author spends over 200 pages attempting to describe these metal beings that suck energy from the sun. The prose is just mind numbing, for example:
"Out from the star shapes was hurled the bolts of emerald and of purple! Out from the crosses whirled and linked saffron and scarlet flame! Forth from the disks flew the blasting globes! The crater was threaded with their lightings- the lightings of the Metal Peoples was broidered with them, was a pit woven with vast and changing patters of electric flames!"

The plot can be summarized in one sentence: Dr. Goodwin and his companions are captured by the Metal People, observe and comments upon inexplicable events and escape to tell their story to the world.

One very curious aspect of this story takes place at the very beginning. A. Merritt imports himself into the story as a minor character. He is introduced to Dr. Goodwin as a writer who will chronicle the events of the mysterious journey to the Trans-Himalayan region.

I cannot recommend this book to any but diehard Merritt fans. I found the story uninteresting, difficult to understand and over stuffed with esoteric phrases and description. New readers should instead seek out Merritt's "Dwellers in the Mirage", "The Moon Pool", "Ship of Ishtar" or "Face In the Abyss".

When Dr. Walter T. Godwin sets out to study a rare flower in Tibet, he has no idea of what adventures await him. Meeting old friends in the secluded Himalayas, he quickly finds himself fleeing from the descendents of a lost Persian Empire city right into the domain of a seemingly omnipotent metal intelligence. This extraterrestrial metal intelligence is made up of a collective composed of living cubes, pyramids and spheres. Even stranger, the intelligence seems to work through a human woman of great beauty, Norhala. This metal intelligence is beyond anything that Godwin and his compatriots can even understand--is humanity about the be replaced as the ruler of the Earth?

OK, this book is a little bit odd at times. He keeps bumping into old friends in the Himalayas, there are descendents of the Persian Empire (a whole city, in fact) that no one knows about, and the ending is something of a deus ex machina. However, for having been written in 1920, this book is quite good! Though the storyline needs a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, it is quite entertaining. Also, when the metal intelligence forms shapes out of its cubes, pyramids and spheres, I couldn't help but think that modern special effects would turn this into quite an excellent movie.

So, overall I do recommend this book.