The January issue of *Argosy* that REH, Moore and Kuttner would have read.

Today—as always on this date—is ‘A. Merritt Day’ at the DMR Books Blog. Doug Ellis—pulp scholar and literary executor for the A. Merritt Estate—has already provided DMR readers with a fine blog entry this morning. The Goodman Games blog got their licks in earlier this week with a worthy post on Mr. Merritt. I humbly present this essay upon the altar of Merritt as my offering on his natal anniversary.

January 20 is not only the date of Abe Merritt's birthday, it also marks--within a few days--the ninetieth anniversary of the debut of Merritt's classic novel, Dwellers in the Mirage, in the pages of Argosy. Like most of Merritt's novels, it hit the pulp-reading public like a bombshell. There were two hardcover editions published before the year was out and numerous future SFF luminaries were inspired by it. The reverberations of that publication resound--second-, third- and fourth-hand--to this day. My intent is to trace the many lineages descending from Dwellers in the Mirage.

Things are gonna get spoilertastic. For the spoiler-phobes out there, you can easily read the novel in question at the estimable Roy Glashan's Library before proceeding further. Tell 'im Deuce sent ya.

Dwellers in the Mirage

The protagonist of the novel is Leif Langdon, a mining engineer of half-Norse ancestry. A true scion of his "mother's yellow-haired, blue-eyed, strong-thewed Viking forefathers", he had always been an outcast in his father's family of staid New Yorkers. The novel opens with Leif and his Cherokee blood-brother, Jim Eagles, prospecting for gold in the (then) uncharted wilds of Alaska.

They stumble upon a huge valley which--due to a freak atmospheric phenomenon--maintains a temperate climate. They soon discover that the valley is divided between an offshoot of the ancestors of the Cherokees and descendants of the proto-Norse who once ruled the Gobi.

Leif had encountered the 'Ayjir' cousins of the Alaskan proto-Norse years before while on an expedition to Mongolia. They had taken him to a ruined temple, where he learned that he had been the barbaric and badass Ayjir king--Dwayanu the Releaser--in a previous life ten thousand years before. Langdon was given a ring—a golden thumb-ring set with a yellowish stone with a kraken-like image within it—by the Ayjir high priest. The image was of Khalk'ru, the foremost god of the Ayjir. The old priest attempted a summoning of the kraken-god, sacrificing a young girl to it. Leif fled in revulsion, but was told that Khalk'ru would call him and find him in due time.

Through the course of the novel, Leif becomes uneasy allies with the Ayjir. His main tie to the Ayjir is Lur the Wolf-Witch. She is part of a triumvirate that rules the Ayjir, possessing her own castle and commanding her own troop of warrior-women. Lur also controls a very cool falcon and a pack of timber wolves. Here is how Merritt describes her:

A woman came riding down the blue sward. She was astride a great black mare. She wore, like a hood, the head of a white wolf. Its pelt covered her shoulders and back. Over that silvery pelt her hair fell in two thick braids of flaming red. Her high, round breasts were bare, and beneath them the paws of the white wolf were clasped like a girdle. Her eyes were blue as the cornflower and set wide apart under a broad, low forehead. Her skin was milky-white flushed with soft rose. Her mouth was full-lipped, crimson, and both amorous and cruel.
She was a strong woman, tall almost as I. She was like a Valkyrie, and like those messengers of Odin she carried on her saddle before her, held by one arm, a body. But it was no soul of a slain warrior snatched up for flight to Valhalla. It was a girl. A girl whose arms were bound to her sides by stout thongs, with head bent hopelessly on her breast. I could not see her face; it was hidden under the veil of her hair. But the hair was russet red and her skin as fair as that of the woman who held her.
Over the Wolf-woman's head flew a snow-white falcon, dipping and circling and keeping pace with her as she rode.
Behind her rode a half-score other women, young and strong-thewed, pink- skinned and blue-eyed, their hair of copper-red, rust-red, bronzy-red, plaited around their heads or hanging in long braids down their shoulders. They were bare-breasted, kirtled and buskinned. They carried long, slender spears and small round targes. And they, too, were like Valkyries, each of them a shield-maiden of the Aesir. As they rode, they sang, softly, muted, a strange chant.

The cover from a French edition of DitM. Not an accurate depiction of Lur, armour-wise, but a great image of Jirel of Joiry.

Lur is a very bad grrrl who loves bad boys. Dwayanu--king of Ayjirland in the Gobi ten thousand years ago--is the baddest boy in all of Ayjir history. She helps Leif--if 'help' is the right term--regain many of his ancestral memories of Dwayanu. Dwayanu starts to come to the fore and take control.

Now is as good a time as any to mention one of the central themes of the novel. Leif Langdon is a 'man with two souls'. Leif--the modern man--and Dwayanu--the utterly ruthless and barbaric king from forgotten ages--both war for possession throughout the novel. Neither 'friend' nor 'foe' is ever quite sure just 'who' Leif is at any given moment. This energizes the story with incredible tension throughout the book. It was a literary device used later by Leigh Brackett, Kuttner/Moore, Edmond Hamilton and other SFF authors to great effect in the following decades.

This is a powerful concept. A variation on the 'amnesiac' theme used by so many pulp and pre-pulp writers. The protagonist is a decent guy, but his 'other soul' is shady at best. To my knowledge, Merritt was the first to explore it at novel-length.

Let's look at the influence of this seminal novel on Sword-and-Sorcery and S&S-adjacent fiction, shall we?

The most immediate effect of Dwellers in the Mirage was upon a Texan doctor's son: one Robert E. Howard. 'Dwellers' ran in six issues of Argosy--we know that REH read Argosy and was a Merritt fan--from late January 1932 through late February. It would've been almost impossible for REH to miss all of the installments.

What did Howard do in March of 1932? He created Conan of Cimmeria. The bastardly, barbaric, semi-sinister king of Aquilonia. A king 'chosen' by a priest--Epemitreus--to 'save' the nation he rules. In the case of Dwayanu, that was not a good thing. In the case of Conan, it might've saved the world.

There are far more 'Dweller' influences upon REH than that, but those will have to wait for an article dedicated to them.

Next up would be C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry. Once again, we know that Moore was a Merritt fan. She created Jirel sometime in 1934. Jirel is Lur the Wolf-Witch... only less badass. Jirel is a redhead who rules a castle and--as it turns out, loves bad boys. She commands a bunch of non-descript French dudes who can't keep out low-grade bad boy, Guillaume.

Lur has her own posse of warrior-women, along with a pack of wolves and a cool falcon. In addition, Leif/Dwayanu never took her castle. From beginning to end of Dwellers in the Mirage, Lur is always a major and decisive player who seeks a ‘Black God’. I'm sorry, I am Team Lur in this debate.

The entire background of Henry Kuttner's 'Prince Raynor' series (1939) is derived from the antediluvian 'Gobi Empire' we see in Dwellers in the Mirage. We know that Kuttner was a Merritt fan. He would write hundreds of thousands of words exploring the themes that Merritt originated..

In 1946, Kuttner's (and probably C.L. Moore's) The Dark World was published. It featured a 'man with two souls' who was thrust into a world of magic and mayhem. 1947 would see the debut of Lands of the Earthquake. An entirely different story in some ways, but the 'man with two souls' was at its core.

In 1948, Edmond Hamilton saw "Twilight of the Gods" published in Weird Tales. While more of an 'amnesiac' tale, there is the same tension in the story between what the protagonist is versus what he was. It also has an overtly Norse theme, just as in in 'Dwellers'. Merritt was Hamilton's favorite author, so I hope the lines of influence aren't too hard to draw.

Leigh Brackett--a student/fan of Moore and Kuttner and the wife of Hamilton--came up with her own take on Merritt's theme in 1949 with "The Sea-Kings of Mars"/The Sword of Rhiannon. Matthew Carse is a bastardly Terran archaeologist who gets thrown back to ancient Mars by way of the lost tomb of Rhiannon—the feared and hated god-king of the Red Planet. Mars, a desert planet, much like the Gobi that Dwayanu once ruled. Right up until the end, there are questions regarding whether Carse or Rhiannon is in control. There are also questions regarding Rhiannon/Carse bringing back ancient, powerful beings to rule over humans.

So, yes, the influence of Dwellers in the Mirage runs deep and wide.