Weird Tales February 1924

by Edwin Baird (Editor)

Facsimile reprint of the ninth issue of Weird Tales pulp magazine from February 1924, containing 14 stories, three serial chapters, poetry, and editorial material.

Genres: Horror

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1924

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another beautiful facsimile issue that allows one to read one of the earliest issues of The Unique Magazine without having to clean up crumbled bits of brittle paper. WT is definitely finding its niche almost a year into its young life, with very little of the detective and non-weird content that half-filled earlier issues. There is still a fair amount of early science fiction -- forgivable since the genre didn't exist yet and including stories of other worlds in the weird category must have made sense to the editor and the readers. Lovecraft contributes "The Hound" here, not one of his better stories, perhaps because it is overtly supernatural and the old materialist's heart wasn't in it. I liked the concluding serial, "The Abysmal Horror," by B. Wallis -- an invasion story about monstrous plants. Pure pulp but good of kind. Finally worth mentioning is what seems to be an extended bit of sarcasm on the editor's part, the publication of a semi-literate submission called "The Transparent Ghost," full of malapropisms, misspellings, and expressions of what might be incipient schizophrenia on the part of the writer. The story is accompanied by letters in The Eyrie, all having a little sport with the erstwhile author. The joke, whatever its nature, isn't funny.