American editor and writer

Early in his career, Abraham Merritt was 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.

Merritt began publishing stories with “Thru the Dragon Glass” (1917). His first novel, The Moon Pool (1918), begins with the Shining One, a deadly though insubstantial monster within a pool in Micronesia, and moves on to become a complicated lost-race melodrama. The Metal Monster (1920), another lost-race tale, describes a collective alien being, comprised of millions of metal parts, who is absentmindedly kind to the explorer-protagonist. The Face in the Abyss (1923) describes an ancient, almost extinct, semi-reptilian race and its considerable wisdom. In The Ship of Ishtar (1924), arguably his best novel, a man travels into a magical world and falls in love with the beautiful female captain of the ship of Ishtar; the highly colored descriptive passages of this novel still have a strong effect on readers.

7 Footprints to Satan, (1927, adapted for film 1929), is a horror/detective mystery (with "Satan" being a greedy villain). The Dwellers in the Mirage (1932) is an effective lost-race novel, and one of his best. Burn Witch Burn! (1932, filmed as The Devil Doll in 1936) and its sequel, Creep, Shadow! (1934), comprise a short series about witchcraft and horror detection.

Merritt was influential upon the science fiction and fantasy world primarily through the imaginative power he displayed in the creation of desirable alternative worlds and realities. He was extremely popular during his life, and even had a pulp magazine named after him. The escapist yearning for otherness and mystery that he expressed has seldom been conveyed in science fiction with such an emotional charge.

Selected Bibliography:
The Moon Pool (1918)
The Metal Monster (1920)
The Face in the Abyss (1923)
The Ship of Ishtar (1924)
7 Footprints to Satan (1927)
The Dwellers in the Mirage (1932)
Burn Witch Burn! (1932)
Creep, Shadow! (1934)

Film/TV Adaptations:
7 Footprints to Satan (1929)
The Devil Doll (1936)

Courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Copyright © John Clute and Peter Nicholls 1993, 1999, published by Orbit, an imprint of the Time Warner Book Group UK.