The Moon Pool by A. Merritt

Hackneyed lost-world lunacy

Abraham Merritt (1884–1943), who often published under the abbreviated name of A. Merritt, was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy fiction. For many years, he was also an editor for The American Weekly, a syndicated newspaper supplement. His sci-fi novel The Moon Pool was originally published as two short stories in the fiction magazine All-Story Weekly. Merritt then combined these stories into a novel, which was published in book form in 1919.

A brief forward to the novel explains that an anthropologist named Dr. Throckmartin has disappeared, along with his wife and two assistants, while on a research expedition. Suspicion has fallen on Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, a botanist, who saw Throckmartin shortly before he went missing. The narrative of this novel is Goodwin’s written account of what really happened. This report has been edited by A. Merritt and published by the fictional International Association of Science.

Throckmartin and Goodwin, former acquaintances, are both conducting research on different islands in the South Pacific. They meet each other on a passenger steamer traveling amongst the islands, headed for Melbourne, Australia. Throckmartin had been doing research at the archaeological site of Nan-Matal, the ruins of an ancient Micronesian civilization on the island of Ponape (Wikipedia spells the actual sites “Nan Madol” and “Pohnpei”). Throckmartin tells Goodwin a harrowing story of how his wife and the other members of his party vanished on the islands. He is traveling to Australia to gather more supplies and men for a return expedition. Not long after telling this story, Throckmartin himself vanishes from the boat on which the two scientists are traveling. Goodwin resolves to venture to the Nan-Matal to investigate the disappearances and rescue the Throckmartin party. In this effort, he is accompanied by a couple of new acquaintances, men with their own reasons for embarking on such an adventure. When they make it to the archaeological site, they discover a portal that leads to a lost civilization underground.

The Moon Pool is a horror novel for those who think colored lights are spooky. Over and over again, we get images of colored lights—“pulsing” (14 times), “throbbing” (17 times), “coruscating” (15 times)—in every color of the rainbow. Another oft-repeated motif is the characters experiencing simultaneous feelings of “ecstasy and terror”—many, many times and in many variations. The best portions of The Moon Pool are when Merritt offers scientific explanations of the mystic phenomena depicted—speculative hypotheses drawing from physics, chemistry, anthropology, etc.—but there is so little of that. The vast bulk of this book is just the familiar cult-in-a-cave clichés that one finds in any Tarzan or Mummy movie. The females of this lost race are conveniently gorgeous, scantily-clad humanoid beauties, while the males are brutal, ugly ogre types. They engage in bizarre rituals in which sacrifices are made to a vengeful god.

The Moon Pool might be a baby step above most pulp fiction of this era. There’s an actual sci-fi story going on here; it’s more than just boobs and bullets, though there’s some of that too. This premise and plot, however, only merit perhaps a novella, while Merritt tries to turn this into an extended epic. The result is a boring, drawn-out mess. There are so many overly protracted descriptions of architecture: yet another chamber with another pool or fountain, yet another light show or a curtain of colored mist. Who cares? Despite a couple of relatively exciting action scenes, the story is dominated by mystic mumbo jumbo and predictable romance. Merritt wrote a sequel to The Moon Pool, The Metal Monster, in which at least one of the characters returns, but I’m not likely to tune in for that encore performance.