Rebels of Mars

A. Merritt and the Moon Pool

Mostly forgotten today, author Abraham Merritt was writing for The All Story as early as 1918.  His day job was working for Randolph Hearst.  Merritt, as editor of  Hearst's The All American Weekly, discovered,  hired and championed  illustrator Virgil Finley-  who would collaborate with all the greats in sci-fi producing masterpieces of interior line-drawing illustrations and painting hundreds of covers for all the pulp mags..   

Merritt's The Moon Pool was the first and most significant work of popular fantasy fiction to follow A Princess of Mars  and Tarzan.   Merritt was celebrated as a literary writer (unlike ERB) and his style broke the science/fantasy genre into acceptable venues.  Interesting to note that today's readers bitch about Merritt's prose as being "old fashioned." Well, that's  what A.D.D. induced from overexposure to cyperpunk sci-fi will do to you,  kids.   Anyway, The Metal Monster is one of the dozen or so wicked good stories Merritt would write over the years;  cover shown is from 1920.  The Metal Monster and all of Merritt's storys  would be be re-packaged, re-painted and re-published for the pulp mags constantly for decades.

The Moon Pool, Merritt's break-through work,  is where the Burroughs' Portal  (that never-answered-by-ERB  explanation  of " just exactly how did John Carter get to Mars anyhow?") was taken by Merritt  from Burroughs'  vague conceptual whatchamathingee to a  refined  method of transporting characters to and fro across space, time and dimension .   

Throughout his  busy  writing life, Merritt was a very popular and influential author and editor.  He  worked across the American literary spectrum  and his  Burn Witch Burn was made into a hit movie called The Devil Doll (directed by Tod Browning of Dracula fame , no less)

For lots more about this Merritt guy...  watch this "space" in the future ~ and beyond.

posted by Tom Novak, who knows where the real Moon Pool is located, and where it will be next - but isn't telling.

Dwellers in the Mirage -- Abraham Merritt

I read this novel when I was about 12 and to this day think it would make a great movie. Two explorers somewhere in Mongolia discover a lost world situated in a valley between steep mountains. And some world it is! I won't give anything away except that it involves an octopus god who of course wants nubile maidens as a sacrifice. Always with the alien monsters lusting after human-type female hotties.

Abraham Merritt, who lived from 1884 to 1943, was as popular in his day as Stephen King is in ours. At first trained in law, he turned to journalism, first as a correspondent, and later as editor. In 1917, published his first fantasy, The People of the Pit, in Weird Tales. This was followed by many more tales, including The Moon Pool, , The Face in the Abyss, The Ship of Ishtar, The Woman of the Wood and Burn, Witch, Burn!.

Posted by Bob Wallace, WHO STILL HAS THE HOTS FOR LUR, THE WITCH WOMAN.