Abraham Merritt was not a full-time pulp-slinger like many of the greats. He wrote in the early days of the Pulps, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, for weekly magazines like Argosy and All-Story. Merritt was a full-time editor at American Weekly and wrote only as a hobby. Despite this, almost every story he contributed was a gem and influential with several generations of writers including H. P. Lovecraft, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Hannes Bok and Robert E. Howard.
Merritt’s antiquated style harkens back to a day when writing was to be enjoyed in itself and not merely as a vehicle for a story. This stylistic flavor is either enthusiastically enjoyed or found distasteful. Merritt readers fall into two groups: lovers and haters. A few of his works were reprinted by Hugo Gernsback in the 1920s but Famous Fantastic Mysteries made a successful business on re-selling Merritt and others like him. These versions of his work were illustrated by the great Virgil Finlay.
Merritt’s first novel is The Moon Pool. This book was written in two parts. The first was called “The Moon Pool” and appeared June 22, 1918 in All-Story Weekly. Merritt followed up the successful tale with a longer sequel, “The Conquest of the Moon Pool”. It appeared in six installments starting February 15-March 22, 1919. The two pieces of the novel were reprinted in Amazing Stories (May-July 1927) and Famous Fantastic Mysteries (November 1939-April 1940). Fantastic Novels reprinted the entire novel in September 1948. The plot follows the Throckmorton Expedition to Ponape. In the ruins of the old temples is a pool that serves as a gateway to another reality, inhabited by a frog race. This story strangely inspired Lovecraft’s Deep Ones.
