The Moon Pool

Infobox Book
name = The Moon Pool
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author = Abraham Merritt
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country = United States
language = English
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genre = Fantasy novel
publisher = Argosy All Stories Weekly
release_date = 1918
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isbn = NA
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"The Moon Pool" is a fantasy novel by Abraham Merritt .

Although Merritt did not invent the lost world novel, following in the footsteps of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Burroughs and others, he greatly elaborated upon that tradition.

Plot summary

Dr. Walter T. Goodwin is sailing on the Southern Queen back to New York, after a botanical expedition to the d'Entrecasteaux Islands when he meets his old friend, Dr. David Throckmartin. Throckmartin looks as if he is haunted. He relates a tale of disaster and death to Dr. Goodwin.
Dr. Throckmartin was on an expedition on the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, northeast of New Guinea together with his wife and two others. On the island of Ponape they find a strange stone door. At night, the rays of the moon opened the door and people start disappearing while the others can't stay awake. They discover a strange glowing light, both divine and fiendish is taking the others, which they name The Dweller. Throckmartin and his wife, Edith, manage to get inside the passage behind the door and discover a radiant pool absorbing the moonlight. When Throckmartin shoots one of the globes feeding moonlight into the pool, the Dweller appears and tries to get to him. His wife flings herself into The Dwellers light, allowing Throckmartin to escape, but not before the Dweller marks him.
The tale almost ended, the moon appears from behind the clouds. Dr. Goodwin sees moonlight basking Throckmartin, but drowsiness prevents him from trying to prevent the moonlight to take away Throckmartin.
Later, Goodwin sets out to find his old friend. On the way to Nan-Tauach he meets Larry O’Keefe, a fearless Irish pilot who carries an oddly endearing mix of bravado and superstition, Olaf Huldriksson, a Norse captain who has lost his wife and child to the Dweller, and a Russian scientist called Marakinoff. Together they manage to get to the chamber of the Moon Pool and there, at its end they find a roseate oval formed by carved vines. Within the oval a golden-eyed young woman of extraordinary beauty appears accompanied by a frog woman. They show the way to open the roseate oval, which is a portal. The portal takes them to Muria, an underground city with a subterranean culture, separated by religious differences, one humanoid race that worships the moon and The Dweller, which they call the Shining One, and another of strange frog-like people who worship a trinity called The Silent Ones.
A battle between the two factions is inevitable. The good doctor and his compatriots soon become embroiled in the battle to do nothing less than save the world from being engulfed by the Shining One.

Legacy

The Moon Pool is sometimes cited as a precursor of The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft.

Copyright

The copyright for this story has expired in the United States and, thus, now resides in the public domain there. The text is available via Project Gutenberg.

External links

* [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/765 Text of the novel at Project Gutenberg]
* [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MerMoon.html E-text] of "The Metal Monster" by A. Merritt ( [http://www.sfsite.com/07a/mp107.htm Review] )