The Moon Pool Read online

  Copyright

  This edition published in the United States in 2009 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  Woodstock & New York

  NEW YORK:

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  Introduction copyright © 2008 by Lynnette Porter

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN 978-1-46830-445-9

  An Introduction to The Moon Pool

  LYNNETTE PORTER, PH.D.

  PICTURE THESE: A TROPICAL PARADISE WITH A HIDDEN PORTAL TO ANOTHER world. A deadly creature, both beautiful and horrible to behold. Warring peoples, offering friendship or death to those who dare to enter their territory. A complex mythology of these people’s origins and beliefs. A philosophical debate by which visitors to this strange world try to determine whether science or the supernatural offers the likeliest explanation for what they experience. A multinational group, each person sharing insights into his culture. Sound familiar? In 2008, these descriptions might refer to a television popular culture phenomenon—Lost—or perhaps the long-awaited latest installment of the Indiana Jones movies. On the contrary, they describe a science fiction novel that first introduced readers to such intriguing foreign worlds: Abraham Merritt’s The Moon Pool.

  In 1919, The Moon Pool first became a book, uniting the original story (“The Moon Pool”) and its sequel (“The Conquest of the Moon Pool”), both previously published in pulp fiction magazines. “The Moon Pool” was published in June 1918 in All-Story Weekly; the longer follow-up story, published in the same magazine, was doled out to readers over six installments in 1919.1 Merritt’s first novel plays upon popular themes introduced in other novels of its time: the discovery of an exotic place, often the result of scientific exploration, and the revelation of a “lost race.” With what would turn out to be the first world war just ended, readers understood warfare and sacrifice, common literary themes of that time. Merritt elaborated upon these themes within a newer genre of literature: science fiction.

  To appreciate The Moon Pool as an ancestor text to so many literary, television, and film science fiction stories, we need to understand its historic significance as literature within its own time and in the pantheon of science fiction classics. We then can see Merritt’s influence on science fiction in the 20th and 21st centuries and gain a deeper enjoyment of The Moon Pool as historically important escapist entertainment.

  Science Fiction at the Turn of the 20th Century

  In his masterwork, Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Formative Period (1926-1970), science fiction scholar Dr. Thomas Clareson emphasized the importance of pulp magazines in the development of the science fiction genre at the turn of the 20th century. Merritt frequently published his stories first in these magazines, which “shaped SF during the period of World War I and included both SF and fantasy titles until the 1940s.”2 Merritt’s contemporary, Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan), revived the “lost race” story initially created by H. Rider Haggard and “turned the entire direction of science fiction from prophecy and sociology … to romantic adventure,”3 a storytelling style then imitated by Merritt and others. Unlike other imitators, however, “only A. Merritt achieved a reputation comparable to the creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars”4 (the former character brought to life yet again via animation in Disney’s 1999 film and subsequent Broadway musical, the latter reported under development for a Pixar film). With The Moon Pool, Merritt introduced readers to a beautiful but frightening world entered through a mysterious door linking an island in the South Pacific to a subterranean land of Muria. There readers meet characters from “lost races,” including the beautiful but deadly Yolara, a priestess devoted to the Shining One; the Silent Ones; their chosen representative, the lovely Lakla; and the frog-like Akka. Merritt’s novel offers romance as well as adventure for the men who journey into Muria.

  The Moon Pool, however, is more than a superficial “lost world” or mere romance. Merritt infused mystery and mythology into this romantic adventure. The Shining One (also called the Dweller by visitors) escapes the lower world through a moon pool during a full moon and becomes a compelling as well as repelling force for the humans who look upon it. When the Shining One captures members of scientist/explorer Dr. David Throckmartin’s party, including his young wife, Throckmartin seeks help in searching for them. Dr. Walter Goodwin agrees to help his colleague, who soon after also is taken by the Shining One. On the way to the island where the Throckmartin party disappeared, Goodwin meets Larry O’Keefe, a downed pilot rescued from the sea, and Olaf Huldriksson, a sailor whose wife and daughter also have been carried off to the Shining One’s lair. The trio undertakes a strange journey to Muria as they search for the missing. Along the way they find not only lost races close to civil war but experience love and sacrifice; the emotional components of the story are as compelling as the adventure and truly offer something for everyone.

  Although fantasy stories on which characters become lost in another world (e.g., Lewis Carroll’s [1865] Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, L. Frank Baum’s [1900] The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels, C. S. Lewis’ [1950-1956] Narnia series) long have been popular, Merritt created a distinctly SF style for his adventure in another world in search of a lost race. Responding to continued public interest in science, he added scientific theories to his fiction, which distinguishes The Moon Pool and his other works from fantasy stories using a “lost world” theme.

  By trade a journalist and an editor, Merritt became the assistant editor of The American Weekly, a job he held at the time of The Moon Pool’s publication; from 1937 until his death six years later, he served as American Weekly’s editor. Merritt’s journalistic background helped him conduct research to add as footnotes or lengthy explanations told through Goodwin’s dialogue. He often explained, in great detail, the (early 1900s’) theories relevant to curious aspects of Muria; he used science to help enrich the story and make such an adventure seem plausible, if not likely, to readers. Instead of following the journalist’s compact style, which editor Merritt valued on the job, he allowed himself greater creativity in his fiction, where his style became more reminiscent of fantasy writers’ elaborately descriptive prose. Like other authors of the early 20th century, including such renowned fantasy writers as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis (whose works once again are extremely popular in print and on film), Merritt preferred long sentences and elaborate descriptions to help readers visualize worlds unfamiliar to them.

  For his enduring contributions to SF, A. Merritt was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He was commended for his influence “upon the science fiction and fantasy world primarily through the imaginative power he displayed in the creation of desirable alternative worlds and realities … The escapist yearning for otherness and mystery that he expressed has seldom been conveyed in science fiction with such an emotional charge.”5

  Merritt’s Influence on SF Television and Movies

  Every SF television series or movie using a “portal” as a device to span time or space owes the idea to Merritt, whose Moon Pool introduced a “disappearing” portal between worlds. When Goodwin, Larry, and Olaf walk through a rock wall into Muria, they are just as surprised as their hosts, who demand to know where this hidden door is located; Yolara wants to know how to travel to the above world in order to conquer it. With this
one device, SF readers gained a new way to enter strange worlds, whether below earth’s surface, as in The Moon Pool, or through a star gate into other cultures and times (e.g., any of the Stargate movies or series). Portals permit travelers to venture into history, albeit randomly (e.g., The Time Tunnel, Quantum Leap), or boldly go where no (hu)man has gone before (e.g., the many Star Trek series or movies, including classic Trek episodes “The City on the Edge of Forever,” which employs a time portal into the past through which McCoy, Spock, and Kirk travel, and “All Our Yesterdays,” in which a librarian guarding a portal into the past allows the inhabitants of a dying planet to relocate). The style of portal may change, but the concept is the same. For more than a century it has served as an excellent way for storytellers to place courageous, adventurous humans into settings they never would have encountered in their normal lives.

  In particular, SF/fantasy fans have noticed similarities between television’s Lost and Merritt’s Moon Pool, as well as the author’s other works. When Irishman Larry O’Keefe confesses his belief in leprechauns and the banshee and compares Muria’s mythology with stories from his Celtic culture, he often sounds similar to Lost’s self-proclaimed “man of faith,” John Locke. Like Locke, Larry argues for the supernatural when science fails him with a reasonable explanation. “Man of science” Dr. Goodwin, a botanist well versed in the latest scientific theories (which Merritt espoused to provide “authenticity” for his tall tale), is a forerunner of Lost’s Dr. Jack Shephard, a surgeon who looks to science for his truth. Goodwin, like his later counterpart Shephard, becomes determined to find a way home from the land to which he may never return. Mystery and intrigue permeate a lush paradise that turns into hell for those ensnared in this hidden world.

  In tone and sense of adventure, Merritt’s works also are a prominent ancestor to the Indiana Jones movies, especially the most recent adventure, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Although the series of films also pays homage to movie serials of the 1930s and, in the recent 1950s-style film, to early alien and horror films, it also owes a great deal to the pulp magazines in which Merritt’s stories were first published. Merritt wrote great adventures using tidbits from news or scientific publications, including Popular Science as well as The American Weekly. Writing from the perspective of the scientist/explorer (or on behalf of an “official” scientific board, as he does in Moon Pool), Merritt sounded like a colleague of the esteemed Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr. His stories include both the “academic” explanations of the strange occurrences—just as Jones explains to Mutt (and the audience) about the crystal skulls—and wild, Indy-style journeys into the unknown, such as the startling entry through a portal apparently embedded within a rock wall and a dizzying trip to the underground city.

  A familiar device in the Indiana Jones films is the secret trap or revolving door, which in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade appears as a revolving wall in a castle fireplace and in Crystal Skull as an ancient monolith with a hidden staircase leading to the skulls’ hiding place (which turns into an alien launch pad). Merritt’s heroes, like Indy, search for a way to open the door leading to the moon pool; solving a seemingly impossible riddle is part of the adventure. Merritt’s Moon Pool surprises readers with disappearing portals or wild rides along darkened tunnels, and later writers maintain this tradition in print or on film.

  Merritt’s Goodwin, whose scientific knowledge comes in handy on adventures, goes in search of the missing Dr. Throckmartin, much as Indy is drawn into adventures to save his friends and family (Marion Ravenswood and fellow archeologist Professor “Ox” Oxley in Crystal Skull, Dr. Henry Jones, Sr., in Last Crusade). Many movies follow in the footsteps of Merritt’s Moon Pool characters (as well as pay tribute to other early 20th century novels and films that echo elements of Merritt’s storytelling); recent cinematic adventures take place in the ruins of an ancient South American civilization (e.g., Crystal Skull), Egyptian pyramids and deserts (e.g., Mummy movies loosely based on early 20th century books and films), or on an uncharted tropical island (e.g., Peter Jackson’s “re-visioned” King Kong).

  The quest for adventure requires courageous, good-looking heroes and heroines; a beautiful, often mystical foreign location; an ancient mystery waiting to be revealed; death-defying action; and great sacrifice. Along the way there’s likely to be a love story, too. Merritt’s The Moon Pool not only meets these criteria but shines light on the SF or fantasy TV series and films following it.

  NOTES

  1 Dodds, Georges T. “Review of The Moon Pool.” SF Site. http://www.sfsite.com/07a/mp107.htm

  2 Clareson, Thomas E. Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Formative Period (1926-1970). Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1990, p. 11.

  3 Clareson, p. 12.

  4 Clareson, p. 12.

  5 “Abraham Merritt, 1884-1943.” Science Fiction Hall of Fame. http://www.empsfm.org/exhibitions/index.asp?articleID=945

  Foreword

  The publication of the following narrative of Dr. Walter T. Goodwin has been authorized by the Executive Council of the International Association of Science.

  First:

  To end officially what is beginning to be called the Throckmartin Mystery and to kill the innuendo and scandalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the reputations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his youthful wife, and equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever since a tardy despatch from Melbourne, Australia, reported the disappearance of the first from a ship sailing to that port, and the subsequent reports of the disappearance of his wife and associate from the camp of their expedition in the Caroline Islands.

  Second:

  Because the Executive Council have concluded that Dr. Goodwin’s experiences in his wholly heroic effort to save the three, and the lessons and warnings within those experiences, are too important to humanity as a whole to be hidden away in scientific papers understandable only to the technically educated; or to be presented through the newspaper press in the abridged and fragmentary form which the space limitations of that vehicle make necessary.

  For these reasons the Executive Council commissioned Mr. A. Merritt to transcribe into form to be readily understood by the layman the stenographic notes of Dr. Goodwin’s own report to the Council, supplemented by further oral reminiscences and comments by Dr. Goodwin; this transcription, edited and censored by the Executive Council of the Association, forms the contents of this book

  Himself a member of the Council, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, Ph.D., F.R.G.S. etc., is without cavil the foremost of American botanists, an observer of international reputation and the author of several epochal treaties upon his chosen branch of science. His story, amazing in the best sense of that word as it may be, is fully supported by proofs brought forward by him and accepted by the organization of which I have the honor to be president. What matter has been elided from this popular presentation—because of the excessively menacing potentialities it contains, which unrestricted dissemination might develop—will be dealt with in purely scientific pamphlets of carefully guarded circulation.

  THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCIENCE

  Per J. B. K., President

  Contents

  Copyright

  An Introduction to The Moon Pool

  Foreword

  Chapter I: The Thing on the Moon Path

  Chapter II: “Dead! All Dead!”

  Chapter III: The Moon Rock

  Chapter IV: The First Vanishings

  Chapter V: Into the Moon Pool

  Chapter VI: “The Shining Devil Took Them!”

  Chapter VII: Larry O’ Keefe

  Chapter VIII: Olaf’s Story

  Chapter IX: A Lost Page of Earth

  Chapter X: The Moon Pool

  Chapter XI: The Flame - Tipped Shadows

  Chapter XII: The End of the Journey

  Chapter XIII: Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One

  Chapter XIV: The Justice of Lara

  Chapter XV: The Angr
y, Whispering Globe

  Chapter XVI: Tolara of Muria vs. the O’Keefe

  Chapter XVII: The Leprechaun

  Chapter XVIII: The Amphitheatre of Jet

  Chapter XIX: The Madness of Olaf

  Chapter XX: The Tempting of Larry

  Chapter XXI: Larry’s Defiance

  Chapter XXII: The Casting of the Shadow

  Chapter XXIII: Dragon Worm and Moss Death

  Chapter XXIV: The Crimson Sea

  Chapter XXV: The Three Silent Ones

  Chapter XXVI: The Wooing of Lakla

  Chapter XXVII: The Coming of Yolara

  Chapter XXVIII: In the Lair of the Dweller

  Chapter XXIX: The Shaping of the Shining One

  Chapter XXX: The Building of the Moon Pool

  Chapter XXXI: Larry and the Frog-Men

  Chapter XXXII: “Your Love; Your Lives; Your Souls!”

  Chapter XXXIII: The Meeting of Titans

  Chapter XXXIV: The Coming of the Shining One

  Chapter XXXV: “Larry—Farewell!”

  About The Moon Pool

  CHAPTER I

  The Thing on the Moon Path

  FOR TWO MONTHS I HAD BEEN ON THE D’ENTRECASTEAUX ISLANDS GATHERING data for the concluding chapters of my book upon the flora of the volcanic islands of the South Pacific. The day before I had reached Port Moresby and had seen my specimens safely stored on board the Southern Queen. As I sat on the upper deck I thought, with homesick mind, of the long leagues between me and Melbourne, and the longer ones between Melbourne and New York.

  It was one of Papua’s yellow mornings when she shows herself in her sombrest, most baleful mood. The sky was smouldering ochre. Over the island brooded a spirit sullen, alien, implacable, filled with the threat of latent, malefic forces waiting to be unleashed. It seemed an emanation out of the untamed, sinister heart of Papua herself—sinister even when she smiles. And now and then, on the wind, came a breath from virgin jungles, laden with unfamiliar odours, mysterious and menacing.