Our Appendix N Archeology and Adventures in Fiction series are meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page. Adventures in Fiction: Abraham Merritt by James Maliszewski Of all the literary influences on D&D and DCC RPG, Abraham Merritt is perhaps the “most-influential of the least-known.” His work is rarely read in this modern time, yet he is named by Gary Gygax as one of “the most immediate influences on AD&D. Today, on January 20, 2020, the 136th anniversary of his birth, we provide a little more insight into this little-read but well-deserving author. You can also learn about all the Appendix N authors by listening to the Appendix N Book Club. For Merritt in particular, his most famous work, The Moon Pool, was recently covered in a special session on the Appendix N Podcast in which Joseph Goodman participated. You can find more about it HERE. Abraham Merritt (1884-1943) After listing all of the books and authors that inspired him, Gary Gygax concluded Appendix N of the Dungeon Masters Guide by stating, “The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt.” Most of the writers he mentioned ought to be well known to devotees of fantasy and with good reason: their works form significant parts of the foundation upon which the genre was subsequently built. Even if, by some unhappy circumstance, one has not read the stories of Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft, odds are nevertheless good that one knows of Conan the Cimmerian or the Cthulhu Mythos. Something similar could, I hope, be said of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth or Planet of Adventure or perhaps even of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s Harold Shea. All of these authors created an enduring character or place or even idea after which later writers could model their own creations, thereby establishing a clear chain of literary descent. Their influence on the development of fantasy is thus relatively easy to establish. In the case of Abraham Merritt, though, that is more difficult to do. Partly, that may be because he produced comparatively few works of fiction. By profession, Merritt...