The Moon Pool begins with an expedition into the ruins of Nan-Matal and descends into a hidden world where ancient races, luminous beings, and forgotten technologies survive beneath the familiar Earth. Abraham Merritt turns the lost-world adventure into a passage through myth, archaeology, and non-human intelligence.
The Moon Pool is both place and force: a threshold through which explorers encounter a form of life that combines beauty, intelligence, and menace. Merritt’s ornate prose and lavish imagery make the descent feel mythic, while his interest in heredity and scientific discovery keeps the novel connected to modern speculation.
No screen adaptation is currently included.
The book was published in 1919 after the shorter story The Moon Pool appeared in 1918 and the longer serial The Conquest of the Moon Pool ran in 1919. The selected text is the assembled novel, situated between lost-world fiction, weird fantasy, and early science fiction.
The selected text is English and has no translator. the selected public-domain text provides the searchable public-domain text. The Wesleyan edition is used only for scholarly context.
Recommended for readers of lost civilizations, subterranean worlds, weird fantasy, and lavish pulp adventure. Its shifting balance of attraction and terror also shows why discovery in Merritt is never neutral: to encounter the unknown is to risk being changed by it.
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