MERRITT, A(braham)

(1884-1943)

   US editor, real-estate developer and writer, primarily of FANTASY, though he was influential among sf writers and readers as well. His first years were occupied with newspaper journalism; he was a longtime assistant editor of The American Weekly, becoming editor-in-chief in 1937 and remaining so until his death. His fiction was written as a sideline to this busy career, which may explain why his output was relatively small. He began publishing stories with Thru the Dragon Glass (1917 All-StoryWeekly as "Through the Dragon Glass"; 1932 chap); his first novel, The Moon Pool ("The Moon Pool" 1918 All-Story Weekly; "The Conquest of the Moon Pool" 1919 All-Story Weekly; fixup 1919), begins with the Shining One, a deadly though insubstantial monster within a pool in Micronesia, and moves on to a complicated lost-race melodrama (ANTHROPOLOGY; LOST WORLDS). (The posthumous Reflections in the Moon Pool (coll 1985), ed anon (actually Sam MOSKOWITZ), is unrelated to the novel, containing a long biography of AM by Moskowitz, a few prose items by AM, and some poetry, letters and articles.) The Metal Monster (1920 Argosy; 1946), another lost-race tale (and containing one of the characters from the previous book), describes a collective ALIEN being, comprised of millions of metal parts, who is absentmindedly kind to the explorer-protagonist. The Face in the Abyss ("The Face in the Abyss" 1923 Argosy; "The Snake Mother" 1930 Argosy; fixup 1931) describes an ancient, almost extinct, semireptilianrace and its considerable wisdom. In The Ship of Ishtar (1924 Argosy; cut 1926; text restored 1949), his best novel, a man travels into a magicalworld and falls in love with the beautiful female captain of the ship of Ishtar; the highly coloured descriptive passages of this novel still havea strong effect on readers. 7 Footprints to Satan (1927 Argosy; 1928), filmed in 1929, is a horror/detective mystery, "Satan" being a greedy villain. The Dwellers in the Mirage (1932 Argosy with happy ending; 1932; with original intended unhappy ending 1944) is an effective lost-race novel, one of AM's best. Burn Witch Burn! (1932 Argosy; exp 1933) and its sequel, Creep, Shadow! (1934 Argosy; 1934; vt Creep, Shadow, Creep! 1935 UK), the first volume filmed as The DEVIL DOLL (1936), comprise a shortseries about witchcraft and HORROR detection. The Fox Woman and Other Stories (coll 1949) assembles short stories and uncompleted fragments, ofwhich the title story had already been incorporated into The Fox Woman and The Blue Pagoda (coll of 2 stories 1946) by AM and Hannes BOK, "The BluePagoda" being by Bok but linked to AM's fragment with connecting passages. Bok's second completion of AM's work was The Black Wheel (1947), of which less than a quarter is by AM.AM was influential upon the sf and fantasy world not primarily through his storylines, which tended to be unoriginal, or through the excesses of his style, but because of the genuine imaginative power he displayed in the creation of desirable alternative worlds and realities. He was extremely popular during his life, even having a PULP MAGAZINE, A. MERRITT'S FANTASY MAGAZINE, named after him; and Sam MOSKOWITZ, in Chapter 12 of Explorers of the Infinite (1963), probably represents the view of many of AM's original readers that he was the supreme fantasy genius of his day. Even though, by any absolute literary standard, AM's prose was verbose and sentimental, and his repeated romantic image of the beautiful evil priestess was trivial - deriving as it did from a common Victorian image of womanhood (women being either virgins or devils) - the escapist yearning for otherness and mystery that he expressed has seldom been conveyed in sf with such an emotional charge.

   JC/PN

   Other works: Three Lines of Old French (1919 All-Story Weekly; 1937 chap); The Drone Man (1934 Fantasy Magazine as "The Drone"; 1948 chap); Rhythm of the Spheres (1936 TWS; 1948 chap); Woman of the Wood (1926 Weird Tales; 1948 chap); The People of the Pit (1918 All-Story Weekly; 1948 chap); Seven Footprints to Satan and Burn WitchBurn! (omni 1952); Dwellers in the Mirage and The Face in the Abyss (omni 1953).

   See also: AMAZING STORIES; DIME-NOVEL SF; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FAR FUTURE; HISTORY OF SF; PARALLEL WORLDS; PUBLISHING; SF MAGAZINES.