November 2023 is the centennial anniversary for publication of A. Merritt’s The Ship of Ishtar. This classic novel was first published as a six part serial in the pulp magazine Argosy All-Story Weekly from November 8, 1924 to December 13, 1924.

Merritt first wrote the story as a novelette. Editor Bob Davis at Argosy All-Story Weekly returned the story wanting Merritt to expand the tale into a novel. Merritt wrote portions of the last part of the novel and then filled in sections from there. E. F. Bleiler wrote that the novel incorporates a sequel tacked onto the original story.

The story is a portal fantasy set in a parallel world with WWI veteran, John Kenton transported to a ship after receiving a model of a Babylonian model. The ship is divided between Sharane, assistant priestess of Ishtar and Klaneth, assistant priest of Nergal. These Mesopotamian divinities interfere in the lives of humans. There has been a stalemate on the ship after the head priest and priestess fell in love altering stability in the universe.

Kenton’s arrival has disrupted the stasis on the ship. There are a series of episodic adventures and then a final showdown. Merritt’s work is romantic in a 19^th Century sort of way. The Ship of Ishtar along with Dwellers in the Mirage have a mythic quality. A hardback edition of the novel was published in 1926 from G. P. Putnam’s Sons. It was voted the most popular story ever to appear in Argosy and reprinted in the magazine in 1938. The first softcover reprint was by Avon in 1945. Another pulp reprint followed in Fantastic Novels in the March 1948 issue.

Avon reprinted the novel twice in the 1950s. The zeitgeist of the late 1960s turned to reprinting fantasy. There was a 1966 paperback edition with the Douglas Rosa cover. This was the edition I first read finding a copy in summer 1983 in a used bookstore. I remember also picking up Otis Adelbert Kline’s Port of Peril (with Roy Krenkel cover) at the same time. I was reading anything reprinted from Weird Tales I could get my hands on at that time.

The Ship of Ishtar was The Lord of the Rings for pre-WW2 audiences. People today don’t realize how popular The Ship of Ishtar really was. The novel was an influence on Leigh Brackett’s “Sea Kings of Mars”/Sword of Rhiannon and Hannes Bok’s The Sorcerer’s Ship. A case can be made that it is the first modern sword & sorcery story even though Merritt used a modern man instead of a character from that world.

There is a new edition of The Ship of Ishtar from DMR Books that is the author’s preferred text. Also included illustrations by Virgil Finlay and some unpublished ephemera. Available in trade paperback or digital. It is one of the foundational novels of modern fantasy fiction.