The first scholarly edition of a classic science fiction novel. One of the most gripping fantasies ever written, The Moon Pool embodies all the romanticism and poetic nostalgia characteristic of A. Merritt's writings. Set on the island of Ponape, full of ruins from ancient civilizations, the novel chronicles the adventures of a party of explorers who discover a previously unknown underground world full of strange peoples and super-scientific wonders. From the depths of this world, the party unwittingly unleashes the Dweller, a monstrous terror that threatens the islands of the South Pacific. Although Merritt did not invent the lost world novel, following in the footsteps of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Burroughs and others, he greatly elaborated upon that tradition. This new edition includes a biography of the author, and an introduction detailing Merritt's many sources and influences, including the occult, mythological, and scientific discourses of his day.

"THE SUPREME FANTASY GENIUS!" That's how The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy hails A. Merritt, author of The Lightning Witch. Isaac Asimov simply describes him as, "The most famous of fantasy writers." In this visionary writers controversial magnum opus, a small band of explorers—including the famed Dr. Goodwin, Ruth Ventnor, her brother Martin, and the scientific adventurer Alvin Drake—finds itself face to face with a sentient, collective intelligence composed of billions of living geometric metallic forms! Spawn of an alien race that moves among the stars, seeding their kind on likely planets, the metal being intends to replace all biological lifeforms on Earth. Between it and humanity, between it and the group of adventurers that have inadvertently stumbled into its lair, stands only Norhala, the lightning witch, a mysterious, unearthly woman of incredible beauty and power, who seems at once the metal intelligence's handmaiden, keeper, and secret enemy. In the Lightning Witch, writes Sam Moskowitz, Merritt "pulled out all the stops," creating a rare masterpiece with "inspired cosmic passages in which the author envisions a world of metal intelligences?" Hugo Award winning SF historian Alexei Panshin, writes that, "The farthest reaches of Merritt's vision of mystery simultaneously scientific and spiritual are to be found in \[The Lightning Witch\]. "with a direct testimonial to the ubiquity of mystery." See for yourself why The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy says, "The othersness and mystery that Merritt expressed has seldom been conveyed in SF with such an emotional charge." (Also published as The Metal Monster. Cover: Virgil Finlay 1940