A. E. Merrit – Dwellers in the mirage

Abraham Merritt (1884-1942), usually known simply as A. Merritt, was one of the more interesting American pulp writers of horror and fantastic fiction.Dwellers in the Mirage was one of several “lost world” novels that he wrote and as usual he gives the sub-genre his own distinctive twists. Leif Langdon is an engineer and with his yellow hair and huge build he’s a genetic throwback to his family’s Viking forebears. He’s more than simply a physical throwback however as will soon become evident. On an expedition to the Gobi Desert he discovers that he has a kind of race memory of his distant ancestors and with his Viking blood he shares a racial ancestry with the Uighurs of the Gobi.