Customer Reviews

The Moon Pool (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

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

 

 

I gave this five stars because it deserved it. It's still a classic and still a lot of fun to read. However, readers be warned. You must remember it was written in 1919. Stereotypes abound. Women are voluptous, wear very little clothing and are either totally good or totally evil. If you can make allowances for all that, then it's a thoroughly enjoyable romp and the author's imagination is stunning. Today, he would place his adventure on an alien planet. In 1919, the vast uncharted regions of the Pacific were vast and alien enough to contain lost races, lost civilizations, unimaginable science, etc. My recommendation is to suspend all disbelief and critical judgment and simply enjoy.

A. Merritt's masterful first novel, "The Moon Pool," originally appeared in the magazine "All-Story Weekly," as a short story entitled "The Moon Pool," in 1918. Its full-length sequel, "The Conquest of the Moon Pool," followed in that pub the following year. The first book publication, later in 1919, combined these two works into a unified whole, and the result is an astonishing piece of fantastic fiction. And it would seem that Orson Welles' radio rendition of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" on 10/30/38 was not the first piece of fantasy to dupe the public, either. Readers of "The Moon Pool" in 1918 were so convinced of the book's veracity that they wrote to "All-Story Weekly" wanting more information. I can easily understand their confusion, as this novel is told in a very realistic style, purportedly from notes that the famous botanist Dr. Walter Goodwin had submitted to the International Association of Science. Goodwin had been en route from Port Moresby, New Guinea to Melbourne when he encountered an old associate, Dr. Throckmartin, who told him a remarkable story. It seems that Throckmartin's entire scientific party had been abducted by a being of light, while they were exploring the (actual) Nan-Matal ruins off Panape, in the Caroline Islands. Throckmartin himself is abducted before Goodwin's eyes, leading to Goodwin's exploration of those same ruins. Throckmartin's tale is eerie and quite suspenseful; indeed, those first 30 pages of the book are so very intense that the reader will be amazed to realize that there's another 250 pages in this novel yet to go! En route to Panape to effect his investigation, Goodwin, through a series of somewhat forced coincidences, encounters a Norwegian captain whose family had been abducted by the strange light entity; a visionary, somewhat fey, Irish fighter pilot; and a duplicitous Russian (German in the original magazine version!) scientist, all of whom accompany him on his adventures. And this is just the introductory setup in what turns out to be a long, involving, at times hallucinatory, and all in all quite remarkable tale. Underground civilizations, invisibility cloaks, giant jellyfish, disintegrating beams, good and evil priestesses, battles involving thousands, frogmen, shell-shaped flying cars...Merritt's imagination seems to be bursting loose in this, his first work. Much has been said regarding the fact that Merritt, a newspaperman for the most part (for many years on "The American Weekly"), could switch so easily from dry journalese to the florid, purple prose that soon became his trademark. This book would not be what it is without his dense, adjective-heavy, hyperimaginative prose, with its wide range of reference and yearning lyricism. Just take this example, in which the author describes the flora of the underground world that Goodwin & Co. discover:
"...moss veils like banners of a marching host of Titans; pennons and bannerets of the sunset; gonfalons of the Jinn; webs of faery; oriflammes of elfland! Springing up through that polychromatic flood myriads of pedicles--slender and straight as spears, or soaring in spirals, or curving with undulations gracile as the white serpents of Tanit in ancient Carthaginian groves--and all surmounted by a fantasy of spore cases in shapes of minaret and turret, domes and spires and cones, caps of Phrygia and bishops' mitres, shapes grotesque and unnameable--shapes delicate and lovely! They hung high poised, nodding and swaying--like goblins hovering over Titania's court; cacophony of Cathay accenting the "Flower Maiden" music of "Parsifal"; bizarrerie of the angled, fantastic beings that people the Javan pantheon watching a bacchanal of houris in Mohammed's paradise!"
Despite the reader's desire to flip through the pages breathlessly to see what happens next, prose such as this almost demands a more leisurely pace. I found myself rereading many such passages, just reveling in Merritt's ability to conjure up dreamlike word pictures. But strangely enough, although he is extraordinarily good with these descriptions, sometimes Merritt overreaches himself, and then his attempts to picture things fall flat. I defy any reader to fully visualize Goodwin & Co.'s means of descent into the Murian underworld, for instance, or the geography of the bridge leading to the Portal. But for the most part, Merritt's prose is extremely effective at conveying a sense of alien wonder, and "The Moon Pool" does indeed live up to its reputation as a fantasy classic. I recommend it wholeheartedly to all amazon.com readers.

One of the most popular science-fiction writers in the early 1900s, Merritt had the reputation of the Lord of Fantasy. "The Moon Pool" evidences the "baroque complexities that Merritt introduced into his fairly standard plots through his use of elaborately contrived creatures, technologies, and settings," as the editor Levy remarks in his Introduction. The Dweller reawakened on the island of Ponape where an ancient civilization once existed by a Dr. David Throckmartin and his group of scientist explorers is a vampire seeking new souls to devour. Merritt's fantasy about the Manichean struggle between good and evil is colored by his interest in the mystic Madame Blavatsky. Looked on unfavorably by some leading critics of the time, Merritt never gained much notice outside of the field of science fiction. For later generations, his ornate style limited his appeal. But he holds considerable historical interest in this genre of popular literature for opening it up to diverse elements such as developments in the sciences of physics and biology, figures from folk literature, literary references of all types (e. g., Celtic literature), and philosophical and religious ideas and themes like Blavatsky's mysticism which were all a part of his eclectic erudition. One sees such effects not only in today's fantasy literature, but also the popular fantasy movies.

This novel sags in the middle with what appears to be padded material to lengthen it out, but the beginning and ending chapters are breathtaking fantasy in a beautiful style. Merritt was a genius and one should simply ignore the padding and enjoy the brilliant parts.

abraham merritt: a great writer from the age before the far corners of the world had been explored. when there was still a sense of innocence about what the world contained. it is gone now that we have investigated the whole world. there are no strange islands in the south pacific; no metal monsters in outer mongolia; no bridges to valhalla above the artic circle in scandinavia. there are times when knowing too much hurts the ability to dream. from pat taylor

Ponape and Nan-Matol ARE still mysterious islands in the South Pacific - despite much archaeological speculation, Easter Island is too! This wild tale combines the mystery of these islands with hollow-earth theory and techno-occultism to produce a fantasy epic only Abraham Merritt could conceive.

The Moon Pool is a 1919 "lost world" fantasy novel by Abraham Merritt based on two of his short stories. Here, a scientist leads a small band beneath the surface of the Earth in pursuit of others abducted by an evil entity called "the Shining One," whereupon they discover a lost civilization on the brink of war.

Merritt's writing is wonderfully imaginative and extraordinarily detailed. His ideas, his places, his devices, and his underground world are enthralling. The Moon Pool does have a certain charm. And yet the writing has a lot of problems.

Pacing is the most egregious issue. The book crawls in many places, and for long stretches. This shouldn't be; there's plenty happening in the story, but Merritt's writing ranges between verbose and extremely verbose. The storytelling is further hampered by a cast of flattish characters spouting corny dialogue, a great deal of which neither develops the characters in meaningful ways nor moves the story along.

Merritt devotes paragraph upon paragraph to his vivid descriptions of subterranean wonders, and yet the reader's sense of place is often poor, as Merritt can scarcely ever be bothered to tell the reader where, specifically, his characters are, or where that might be in relation to the other places he's depicted.

There are other issues. It's painfully convenient how quickly all the characters learn the subterranean language. Much of the mystery of the underground world isn't resolved until much too late in the book, and then by way of a massive expository dump. The book's climax, an epic clash between warring factions, should be exciting, but the resolutions are clichéd and predictable.

The Moon Pool has been cited as an influence on Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu." As far as horrific creatures emerging from lost cities beneath the sea to ravage humanity go, that seems reasonable. Beyond some basic thematic similarities, however, there's really no comparison.

Merritt isn't read a great deal these days, and now you know why. On the whole, The Moon Pool feels like a missed opportunity, and it's too bad. As it is, there are no doubt plenty of better books in the genre. And yet...The Moon Pool would probably make a pretty good film.

The following comments and observations are directed towards individuals who are curious about author Abraham Merritt or who are contemplating reading the Moon Pool. This title, a fantasy novel, was first published in 1919. The story line, farfetched as it is, is easy to summarize: good and evil fantasy beings and their followers live in caverns far underground that can only be entered through mysterious ancient ruins located on as island in the South Seas. Several explores enter the underground realm and become caught up in the supernatural goings on. The resolution, good triumphant over evil is never in doubt.

The curious may ask then why is this 90-year-old novel by an unfamiliar author reprinted so many times? In my opinion it is the stylistic, ornate way Merritt describes supernatural events and everyday occurrences that rates this book a classic of fantasy. If you find the following quotes from The Moon Pool fascinating and enticing than you should read the book. If on the other hand you find them stuffed with quirky affectations then you should skip it.

"We were enveloped by a silence; a silence so intense, so - weighted that it seemed to have substance; an alien silence that seemed to cling and stifle and still stood aloof from us - the living. It was a stillness that might have followed the long tramping of millions into the grave; it was - paradoxical as it may be - filled with the withdrawal of life".

"There issued apparently from the air around us, a peal of sound that might have been the shouting of some playful god hurling great suns through the net of stars. It was like the deepest notes of all the organs in the world combined in one summoning, majestic, cosmic! It held within it the thunder of the spheres rolling through the infinite, the birth song of suns made manifest in the womb of space; echoes of creation's supernal chord! It shook the body like a pulse from the heart of the universe - pulsed - they died away."

I gave the book five stars so onward with the "supernal chord" and bring me another book by Abraham Merritt! By warned you may get hooked and want to read his other novels.

A loose association of adventurers penetrates the lost kingdom that lies far beneath a South Pacific island, where opposing religious factions teeter on the brink of war and a being of living light threatens to conquer the surface world.

Abraham Merritt's verbose and adjective-heavy prose varies in its effectiveness. At times, he does such a good job of describing settings that they appear effortlessly in the mind's eye. This is particularly true of the first part of the novel, which is set on and around the island of Ponape. On the other hand, once our heroes descend into the bowels of the earth, things become rather murky. Even after paragraph after paragraph devoted to depictions of his otherworldly settings, I was more often than not mystified as to their physical layouts and it made some of the action confusing.

The pacing is problematic as well. The first part of the novel is riveting and mysterious, so much so that I thought this would be a 5-star book. The story slowed down considerably once the action moved underground, with those confusing descriptions and too much uninteresting characterization. I was particularly annoyed by the character of Larry O'Keefe, a stalwart pilot whose superstitious Irish nature is way overblown. However, things pick up considerably at the end, with an exciting, apocalyptic climax that features some extraordinary imagery.

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.