The Moon Pool & The Metal Monster (Annotated): Enriched Edition. Science Fantasy Novels

Dr. Goodwin #1-2

by A. Merritt

The Moon Pool & The Metal Monster gathers two of Abraham Merritt's most influential scientific romances, works that helped shape the vocabulary of early twentieth-century fantasy and weird fiction. In The Moon Pool, an expedition encounters an uncanny Pacific mystery that opens onto a subterranean world of beauty, terror, and quasi-divine forces; in The Metal Monster, explorers confront a crystalline, collective intelligence whose geometry and radiance verge on the sublime. Merritt's style is lush, incantatory, and sensuous, blending adventure narrative, lost-world romance, occult suggestion, and speculative science in the tradition of H. Rider Haggard and the emerging pulp fantastic. Abraham Merritt was not merely a pulp storyteller but a widely read journalist and editor, best known for his long association with The American Weekly. His professional life exposed him to popular science, archaeology, travel writing, sensational reportage, and esoteric currents, all of which inform his fiction's unusual mixture of documentary confidence and visionary extravagance. His fascination with ancient survivals, hidden civilizations, and nonhuman consciousness gives these novels their enduring imaginative force. This volume is recommended to readers interested in the genealogy of modern fantasy, science fiction, and cosmic horror. Those who admire grand invention, ornate prose, and the sense of wonder characteristic of early speculative literature will find Merritt's work both historically important and still vividly strange.

This enriched edition has been carefully crafted to add value to your reading experience.
- A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions.
- A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation.
- A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists.
- A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths.
- Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts.
- Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.

Genres: Science Fiction

318 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 13, 2018

About the author

Abraham Grace Merritt, wrote under the name of A. Merritt, born in New Jersey moved as a child to Philadelphia, Pa. in 1894, began studying law and than switched to journalism. Later a very popular writer starting in 1919 of the teens, twenties and thirties, horror and fantasy genres. King of the purple prose, most famous The Moon Pool, a south seas lost island civilization, hidden underground and The Ship of Ishtar, an Arabian Nights type fable, and six other novels and short stories collections (he had written at first, just for fun). Nobody could do that variety better, sold millions of books in his career. The bright man, became editor of the most successful magazine during the Depression, The American Weekly , with a fabulous $100,000 in salary. A great traveler, in search of unusual items he collected. His private library of 5,000 volumes had many of the occult macabre kind. Yet this talented author is now largely been forgotten.

Reviews

[Sharon Healy-Yang · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable entry into the civilization-at-the-center-of-the-earth genre. The narrator encounters a fellow scientist/adventurer aged beyond his years and hears this fellow's tale of a dreaded creature of lights that rises on the moon's light and absorbs the souls of any humans its tendrils of coruscating lights entangle-including his wife. Having risen periodically from the depths of a ruined ancient city in the South Seas, "The Dweller of the Pool" tracks the narrator's friend along the moon's beams to seize him before the very eyes of the main character on a ship at sea. Before you can say "C'thullu" (if you can say C'thullu), our main character is shipping out to that island, picking up along the way a downed Irish/American (dual citizenship of sorts) RAF flyer and a Norse seaman whose wife and child had been absorbed by the thing. Joined by a pesky Russian scientist/Communist revolutionary on the island, the four manage to journey to the center, or close to it, of the earth, where they confront lost civilizations, ancient dwellers of the earth and stars, exotic flora and fauna, "The Shining One," and some babes. These babes also have brains as well as bodies. Anyway, Merritt manages a ripping good adventure with some nifty humor along the way and, unfortunately, some florid verbiage that would put a smile on H.P. Lovecraft's face (according to the book's cover, it did!). Yes, Merritt does use the word "cyclopean" a lot.