A. Merritt inspired a sub-genre of Science Fantasy we might call “Fantastic Adventures”. His placing of his novels like The Face in the Abyss and Dwellers in the Mirage in remote locations helped to cement the adventure element to the fantastic. It simply isn’t enough to just see polar bears or to invent something in a lab. The hero had to go some place strange and face dangers both known and unknown.
Merritt makes you feel the unexplained strangeness of the locality and its weird inhabitants. This was why he had the first Pulp named after an SF writer, A. Merritt’s Fantasy Magazine (1949-50) though Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Fantastic Novels were pretty much in the same spirit. His work would inspire writers like Jack Williamson and his “The Metal Man” or Clark Ashton Smith’s “The City of the Singing Flame”. Merritt was considered the chief Fantasy writer of the 1910-30s. He inspired the generation who came after, writers like the Big Four: Edmond Hamilton, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner and Leigh Brackett.
Now you might be wondering about H. Rider Haggard. Didn’t he do all this back in 1885 with King Solomon’s Mines? Certainly he was one of Merritt’s inspirations, but the Pulps notched up the fantastic aspect of the tale. King Solomon’s Mines or Allan Quatermain are good adventure books with remote locations but they do not contain the magic and eldritch weirdness of Merritt. Haggard’s She (1887) is probably closer with its mystic powers of eternal life but again, Merritt takes things to another level, building on Haggard’s classic work.
I am quite fond of this mix. Some examples of great Horror/Adventure fiction include H. P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” (Astounding Stories, February-March 1936), and Robert E. Howards “The Fire of Asshurbanipal” (Weird Tales, December 1936). These are great Adventure tales but they are also Horror pieces. Weird Tales certainly used a number of fantastic adventures over the decades but the magazine that best grasped the Merritt-flavored adventure was aptly named Fantastic Adventures.
Ray A. Palmer created the magazine in May 1939 as he took the helm of the latest incarnation of Amazing Stories. It ran until March 1953. During Palmer’s time, the Pulp catered to readers who liked their Science Fiction in the Merritt mold, with unusual settings, weird creatures and plots that didn’t revolve around any complex Science. (You have to remember this was about the time that John W. Campbell started the Golden Age of Science Fiction at Astounding Stories. Palmer wasn’t interested in that stuff. He had the spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs and A. Merritt to guide him.)
Some of Palmer’s picks:
“Lords of the Underworld” by L. Taylor Hansen (Amazing Stories, April 1941)
“Daughter of the Snake God” by William P. McGivern and John York Cabot (David Wright O’Brien) (Fantastic Adventures, May 1942)
“Daughter of Thor” by Edmond Hamilton (Fantastic Adventures, August 1942)
“Goddess of the Fifth Plane” by William P. McGivern (Fantastic Adventures, September 1942)
“The Ice Queen” by Don Wilcox (Fantastic Adventures, January 1943)
“Goddess of the Golden Flame” by William P. McGivern (Fantastic Adventures, July 1947)
“Secret of the Serpent” by Don Wilcox (Fantastic Adventures, January 1948)
“Ice City of the Gorgon” by Richard Shaver and Charles S. Geier (Amazing Stories, June 1948)
“Queen of the Panther World” by Berkeley Livingston (Fantastic Adventures, July 1948)
“Dimensions Unlimited” by Berkeley Livingston (Fantastic Adventures, November 1948)
“Queen of the Ice Men” by S. M. Tenneshaw (Fantastic Adventures, November 1949)
“Warrior Queen of Mars” by Alexander Blade (Rog Philips) (Fantastic Adventures, September 1950) was actually during Howard Browne’s tenure but it falls into the same category. I notice as time goes on the remote locations shift from the Himalayas or the Arctic Circle to Mars and other planets. The world just wasn’t as small as it was in Haggard or even Merritt’s time.
Conclusion
It’s not hard to see what the unifying theme is here. A guy goes to a weird place and meets a gorgeous and powerful woman. That’s old Haggard again. For isn’t that a description of She? Merritt spun the formula his own way, not always letting the story end on a happy note. These followers usually ended things on a happy note, with the hero getting the girl, the alien terror defeated, and all normalcy returned.
Next time…More Merritesque sagas in Startling Stories.
I just wanted to stop in and give a long overdue THANK YOU to you folks at Dark Worlds Quarterly. Not only for all of the GREAT articles, but for including links to The Internet Archive where we can read and enjoy those fantastic and fun stories as they once appeared in the original magazines themselves! Thanks to your efforts the past will always be with us, and the fantastic origins of SF/F, adventure, mystery, suspense and horror will live forever.
Keep up the amazing work!
You are most welcome.