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The Moon Pool

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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 SETUP
Set in the early 1900s in the Western Pacific, an "alien creature" ("The Dweller" or "The Shining One") is able to use beams of moonlight like Startrek transporters to snatch human beings with which it "dances"--extracting their life force. The nominal narrator of the story is Walter T. Goodwin a botanist who is searching for his associate Dr. David Throckmartin, his wife, and her female companion who were taken by the "Dweller". Olaf Hendrickson, whose wife and daughter were taken, join him. The party is also joined by Larry O'Keefe, a pilot in the Royal Airforce. They discover an entrance into an underground world, in which "The Shining One" is revered as a god. That's the setup, albeit it takes half the novel to get that deep.

COMMENTS
Yes, it is virtually a Startrek episode--albeit written nearly 100 years ago. The plot is rather predictable to science fiction buffs, but then (unfortunatly) neither plot nor character development (nor acting ability) have ever been high priorities in science fiction. (Fortunately, that's getting better)

In the best science fiction tradition, Merritt describes holograms and much other technology long before their time. He discusses "atomic power", albeit it isn't clear exactly what he means by the term. Unfortunately his overdrawn explanations of some technology sounds like the nonsense that it is.

CRITIQUE
Merritt strains to sound "Jules Vernish"--sorta Oxfordian-pseudo-academic-speak, using vocabulary and phraseology which was surely obsolete when Jules Verne was in knee britches. It gets a little tiresome.

COMPLAINTS
The cover of the 1930s Penguin paperback, featuring a nearly naked woman and a huge frog---which I first read in the 1950s---was far more "inspiring".

THE VERDICT
If you are looking for modern science fiction, you'll probably be disappointed. If you like Jules Verne, you'll love A. Merritt. If you are a student of the history of science fiction, this is a classic not to be missed. An excellent free audioversion is available from librivox. Free pdf print versions are available from Google or Project Gutenburg.