Weird Tales January 1924

by Edwin Baird (Editor)

Facsimile reprint of the eighth issue of Weird Tales pulp magazine from January 1924, containing 12 stories, two serial chapters, poetry, and editorial material.

Genres: Horror

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1924

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost a year into its young life, Weird Tales is definitely beginning to find all its legs now. This issue is mostly free from stories that must have been harvested from the slush piles of other magazines, though the cover suggests a salvaged western pulp submission with a ghost cowboy added. The clear high point of the issue is Lovecraft's "The Picture in the House," as creepy and psychologically gravid a tale as any the old gent wrote . . . hinting at unspeakable things, the lure of forbidden, even pornographic books, and catching that sense of decayed backwoods New England in a way no other writer ever approached. For all his creepiness, racism, and verbal excess, HPL was definitely a master of his art. In the context of a magazine full of inferior stories, the contrast is startling. Besides the Lovecraft, I also liked B. Wallis' "The Abysmal Horror," a serial chapter about an invasion of Earth by extremely alien plants. The other stories in the book, while weirder than prior issues' contents, are largely forgettable.