From the Shelves with Kevin Paquet

Imagine that you want to get ahold of a book – and not just any book, but a really old, obscure book that hasn’t been published since Calvin Coolidge was president. You’ve trawled bookstores, thrift stores, eBay – all to no avail. Well, if this book was published before 1923, there’s a website that might be able to help. I obtained a copy of this issue’s selection in just such a way, and, although this is called “From the Shelves,” I believe that the Internet has earned its stripes as a book resource. That, and “From the Shelves” was the title I came up with after the editor told me I couldn’t call this column “Kevin’s Discount Book Bucket,” which was my first choice.

Project Gutenberg (Gutenberg.org) is a very simple website. By going there and typing an author or a work into the search box, you have instant access to the project’s impressive collection of public domain “plain vanilla” texts – so-called, I believe, because they are formatted as text files, with no frills.

Once you find the work you seek, you can download it for free and read it at leisure. I, however, find reading text off a glowing cathode ray tube to be not only counterintuitive but difficult as well. So I printed and bound the entire text out in the JSC Print Shop, where I work. Thus, I had a “free” book, having paid only for the cost of materials, and believe me when I say that it was well worth the cost. This novel has everything! Adventure! Suspense! Beautiful women! Eldritch technology! Repeated uses of the word “lambent”! And frog people!

“The Moon Pool” was originally published in 1919, which I think is probably also the year it’s set in, more or less. While much of Europe was still covered in the trenches of the First World War, our protagonist, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, was in the South Pacific.

The preface to the book explains that it is a narrative of Goodwin’s, authorized through the “Executive Council of the International Association of Science” as an official report, prepared for the public, to explain “what is beginning to be called the ‘Throckmartin Mystery.’” A. Merritt, they explain, is acting as a transcriber for Goodwin. As a result, the rest of the novel is told in the first person from Goodwin’s point of view, and over the ensuing pages we get to know this renowned botanist, who doesn’t seem like the sort of person I’d like to sit next to on a long plane ride.

At the beginning of the book, Goodwin is at the end of a botanical research trip and is getting ready to go home. However, he runs into a good friend of his – Dr. David “Throck” Throckmartin, who is not in good shape. On their way to Australia via boat, Throck tells Goodwin of a horror he and research team encountered while studying the ruins on the Nan-Matal – an island archipelago once home to a civilization of spectacular antiquity. While there, the natives of nearby islands tried hard to keep them from staying on the three nights of the full moon, something Throck vehemently wishes he’d done. For on those nights a strange creature emerged from a door in the rock and took, one by one, the members of his research crew back into the cave with it. He calls this thing the Dweller – a glowing cloud of “curdled’ moonlight, wrapped around seven glowing orbs. Now, Throck explains, he is going to gather what he needs to fight it and then return. Unfortunately, however, this is a moonlit night – and even as Goodwin watches, the Dweller comes, takes hold of Throckmartin – and vanishes.

Telling no-one, Goodwin, working from some tips Throckmartin gave him, picks up the gear he needs in Australia, including two Becquerel ray condensers. The Dweller of the Moon Pool, Throck explained, enters and leaves through the “Moon Door,” a distinctive gray rock set in a black wall. The moon door only opens on the nights of the full moon, and Throckmartin suspects that using a Becquerel ray condenser – which, as Goodwin describes it, is basically a large magnifying glass – will allow him to concentrate the weakened moonlight onto two special spots on the door, causing it to open on off-nights, when the Dweller isn’t around.

Basically, what Dr. David Throckmartin has found is the world’s first automatic garage door opener.

Becquerel ray condensers in hand and aided by a bereaved Norseman (whose wife and child were also taken by the Dweller) and Larry O’Keefe, pilot of a crashed hydroplane and veteran of the recently-completed World War, Walter T. Goodwin – scientist, friend, egotist – run into a Russian scientist, who, of course, is evil. After shooting at each other for awhile, they make a truce and wander into the cave behind the Moon Door, where they run into a pool of radioactive liquid, a holographic projection (of a woman later introduced as Lakla, Handmaiden of the Silent Ones, and her companion, a frog person) and, ultimately, a lost underground civilization, ruled over by Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One. Now there’s a name I’d like to see in a phone book. Or a business card.

This book didn’t age that well, in the off-chance you couldn’t tell. Eighty-eight years is a long time in science fiction, and “The Moon Pool” comes out somewhere between “Captain Video and His Video Rangers” and the 1960 film adaptation of “The Time Machine.” The Dweller in the Moon Pool, as described, sounds like a screen saver, the people of the lost land of Muria ride around in giant nautilus shells, and I get the unfortunate feeling that A. Merritt was slightly racist. I don’t get the vibe that he hated other races, just that he thought that white people were more capable. Which is stupid on a number of levels, not the least of which is that Throckmartin & Friends were the ones who set up camp outside the Moon Door when the natives told them they should leave.

What’s left, then?

For one thing, although Goodwin – whose vocal self-confidence appears to be cover for an inferiority complex – is mildly annoying, he gradually falls into a sort of secondary position behind Larry O’Keefe, who is likable. In addition to being duplicitly deranged – he fervently believes in the magical creatures of Ireland but chides Olaf the Norseman and Goodwin the Scientist for their dogmas – he’s also an all around swell guy. Upon first seeing the land of Muria, the party of four is astounded and shocked – except for Larry. “’What you see down there are people–just plain people. And wherever there’s people is where I live. Get me?’”

For another, some parts of the book have aged well – or, at least, come back in style. It features love, anger, hate, partial nudity, bizarre rituals, a car chase (in the giant shells) and, once again, frog people.

Indeed, Merritt is at his worst when he actually tries to explain the unexplainable through what I’m sure was cutting-edge knowledge in 1919. The mysterious liquid of the Moon Pool? Radioactive. The energy propelling the shell-cars? Radiation. The light that opens the Moon Door? Radiation – which, Goodwin confidently assures Larry, is of a special kind. The bulk of Merritt’s scientific theory for this book rests on undiscovered elements and radiation. “The Moon Pool” happened to be written during that really interesting period in human history that fell between when people discovered radiation and when people discovered radiation was bad for you.

In addition to the points already highlighted, the only thing I didn’t like about the story was the way it ended. Merritt uses a lot of foreshadowing, a technique I dislike because it lends a sense of fatalism to a story. In this case, as the story is a retrospective, fatalism is appropriate. However, I still think that Merritt painted himself into a corner in the use of foreshadowing.

Ultimately, however, this book comes highly recommended. I like Merritt’s writing style, I can overlook the parts where the plot gets kind of thin, and besides, how do you argue with free? Give my regards to the frog people.