The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 2: George T. Wetzel

by George T. Wetzel

George T. Wetzel (1921-1983) was, for decades, the leading researcher into the life and works of H.P. Lovecraft. His scholarly essays (which Wildside Press is working on collecting) appeared in numerous books and magazines from the 1940s through the 1970s. All the time he dabbled in writing weird fiction on his own, but never pursued it beyond the occasional contribution to a small press anthology or fan-produced magazine. Like his idol, H.P. Lovecraft, he dabbled in the art. We are pleased to include a fine selection of virtually all of his fiction, including:
A TALE OF THE ELDER GODS

ANONYMOUS

THE GOTHIC HORROR

CAER SIDHI

THE ENTITY

EATER OF THE DEAD

NIGHTMARE HOUSE

WHAT THE MOON BRINGS

NIGHT ON FORT CARROLL

POISON PEN

THE ADVENTURE OF GOSNELL

JUMBEE

SEEING THINGS AT NIGHT

THE PIRATE OF SHELL CASTLE

If you enjoy this book, search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see the more than 180 other entries in the series, covering science fiction, modern authors, mysteries, westerns, classics, adventure stories, and much, much more!

Genres: Short Stories, Anthologies

154 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I edited this assemblage of most of the weird fiction of Lovecraft scholar George T. Wetzel. It's important to note that Wetzel was a researcher and scholar first and a fiction author second - in truth, you could call him a dabbler, as I'm unsure how many, if any, of his fiction pieces appeared in paying markets.

Wildside having purchased Wetzel's estate, I was given the task of assembling his scholarly articles (still to come) and these stories - most of which appeared in various fanzines over the decades and were collected in fanzine form as The Gothic Horror and Other Weird Tales, with a few stray pieces escaping that collection to be mopped up (for this collection we were not able to track down copies of "Shadow Game" from THE ARKHAM COLLECTOR 1971 or a copy of his earliest piece, "A Tale Of The Older Gods" from fanzine THE FANSCIENT Spring 1949 issue - although I'm about 95% sure that latter title is actually just an early draft of "A Tale Of The Elder Gods", which does appear in this collection - thus this is not a "complete works", just as closely as is humanly possible at this time).

What's interesting about the work here is that it shows Lovecraft's influence without being the lazy kind of out and out Lovecraft pastiche you get from the Lovecraft circle writers. Wetzel may be one of the first examples of someone engaging the *spirit* of the Providence writer's themes and atmospheres without writing straight-ahead horror stories with devils and demons replaced with Elder Gods and sanity-blasting monstrosities. In fact, when eyeing the contents here for possible sampling in an upcoming Cthulhu Mythos anthology from Wildside (currently in production), I was actually hard pressed for choices. But more of that anon...

As I said, Wetzel is not a professional and so these can mostly be read as amateur writings, with all that entails - although, surprisingly, the most effective is not bad at all. Mostly, they can be seen as Wetezel working through various simple ideas or concepts, sometimes in tribute to certain weird authors (not just Lovecraft) whose work he enjoyed.

The weakest item here is the aforementioned "Tale Of The Elder Gods", which is a piece of Dunsanian whimsy, a mere trifle. Wetzel's "Jumbee", a shout out to weird author Henry S. Whitehead, is also a rather thin piece in which a greedy priest on a Caribbean island dismisses native magic at his peril. The rather long (and unpublished until THE GOTHIC HORROR collection) "The Pirate Of Shell Castle" seems to be an attempt by Wetzel to write a long-form historical adventure story - perhaps a first attempt - that pulps like ADVENTURE or ARGOSY would publish. It's an uneven pirate adventure set in the late 1800s involving a mysterious pirate (who may be Blackbeard reincarnated, for a slight weird feel), his stealth steam-ship, hidden pirate colony island base (extrapolating from real locales), and his strange plan to raise all the sunken ironclad ships from the Civil-War and later eras (Monitor, Merrimac, etc.) and terrorize a port city - his plan being foiled by a Pinkerton man planted among his pirate crew ala Verne's TWENTY-THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. There's some neat ideas in it (a historical earthquake, shell-castle, nauscopy), but it also proves that Wetzel wasn't up to the task of professionally writing long-form action as it has a choppy, unbalanced construction. An interesting failure.

A few of the pieces here are straight up weird tales in the pulp magazine mode - exotic and strange adventures involving foreign cultures with a hint of the supernatural. "What The Moon Brings" features an amulet robbed from Genghis Khan's tomb (and a flashback appearance of a horde of ghoul-zombies in a lost, desert-Tartar tomb-city) but is fairly typical. "Night At Fort Carroll" again returns to Wetzel's background and interest in military nautical history and is set on the real abandoned fort in Baltimore's bay, spinning a visionary tale of weird dreams received by a man stuck there overnight. "The Entity" is a retread of Poe's "The Man Of The Crowd" but with Death replacing Crime. "Seeing Things At Night" and "Poison Pen" are quick, cute little ironic/dark humor pieces in the vein of Robert Bloch (college boys biking through Transylvania camp overnight in a vampire's lair - to the consternation of the creature) and Roald Dahl (an Irishman wisely figures out how to kill two unpleasant birds with one postal stone - the classic "why don't you and him fight?" ploy), respectively. Again, slight but fine. Finally, "Anonymous" is a rumination on some Lovecraftian ideas as a man finds himself stuck in a rotting Maryland mansion during a downpour and discovers a journal of a man who used various combinations of esoteric drugs to travel through time - the ending recalls both "Cool Air" and Poe's "M. Valdemar", natch.

There are some enjoyable, solid (if amateur) stories here. "The Gothic Horror" seems to be Wetzel's tribute to M.R. James as an antiquarian with some kooky ideas about hidden satanic symbolism in cathedrals gets accidentally locked into one for the night (also brought to mind De La Mare's "All Hallows"). "The Adventure Of Gosnell" is also somewhat Jamesian (but also directly references Poe) but written in the aforementioned breezy, dark-humorous approach of Dahl, as an antiquarian ventures into the countryside and runs afoul of a vicar with an obsession with immuration. It made me laugh. "Nightmare House" is Wetzel's full-on Lovecraft tribute as a man moves into a house previously occupied by a famous Weird Tales writer who disappeared and now finds himself having strange dreams. Not great but kind of charming. "Eater Of The Dead" is another pulp-styled weird tale about a grave-robber-cum archeologist who finds himself paying for his misdeeds - it was effectively morbid and I liked it.

The best story here - written in 1954 - is "Caer Sidhi", a historically-set, full-blown cosmic horror type tale of two men stuck at a lonely lighthouse plagued by monstrous oceanic storms and imagery from Celtic mythology of "the revolving castle". Quite a nice discovery.

So, there you go - a bunch of pulp-era weird fiction for those with a taste for that kind of thing!

[Bill Borre]

"A Tale of the Older Gods" by George T Wetzel - wc

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this for what it is: pulp stories from the seventies. It was a time when denouement seemed less of a requirement.