Weird Fiction discussion

Wikipedia article on Weird Tales, the magazine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_T...

More than any other source, the magazine Weird Tales has defined our genre. With very few exceptions over the entire span of the magazine's history, it has been safe to say that whatever or whoever is printed in it is by definition automatically considered to be writing in the genre known as Weird.

Weird Tales was published during the following years: 1923-1954, 1973-1974, and 1981-2014 with a few missing years here and there in that last range as publishers changed hands. The first range up through 1940 marks the time known as Classic Weird, or Pulp Weird; the last range encompassing from 1990 forward is New Weird. Perhaps the period 1940-1990 should just be called Weird.

It used to be very difficult to read the earliest issues of Weird Tales. By the 1970s and 80s, back issues became so hard to come by that the earliest ones would sell for hundreds of dollars no matter what the condition. The only way to read old stories was to try to find individual ones reprinted in an anthology or story collection.

With the advent of the Internet we no longer live in such blighted times under conditions of such deprivation and scarcity. In fact, most (all?) of the earliest back issues are now available for free at the click of a mouse. Even the once greatly treasured issue number one which appeared all the way back in February 1923 (cover date March 1923) is available even though it's almost a century old now!

The best site I have found for downloading PDFs of these old issues is here: http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/W.... Anyone care to join me in perusing issue #1? If you do, you have your work cut our for you. It contains no less than twenty-two stories. Just think. That means readers who bought that first issue got on average an entire story for every penny spent!

Stories of Weird Tales #1

"The Dead Man's Tale" by Willard E. Hawkins - 4 stars
What happens in a lover's triangle when one of the triad becomes a ghost?
The first of eleven stories Willard E. Hawkins would publish during his lifetime according to ISFDB.org, a very impressive debut.

Looking at the cover reminds me why I got into reading the genres I do. Is there a topic for discussing cover art & artists? Are there just 'weird' artists?

Looking at the cover reminds me why I got into reading the genres I do. Is there a topic for discussing cover art & artists? Are there just 'weird' artists?

Excellent point! I just created a folder for discussing Weird art.

Sometimes i practice making abstract art, it's fun while challenging
at the same time...

What a pleasant surprise that first story, "The Dead Man's Tale" was! Not only was it readable with good suspense, but it's the kind of Weird story that's still being written today in the genre. Without creating spoilers, I'll just say the story is about this man who dies, but stays on Earth after death to try to affect outcomes.

If you mention to relatives or friends that you like Weird fiction, and they ask, "What exactly is that?", one culturally well-known example you can supply, and there aren't that many, is the movie "Ghost." You know, the one starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore? It's straight up Weird fiction.

That vein is still being mined in current day Weird. In The Gate Theory, a story collection by Kaaron Warren, is a short story called "The Time Thief." Just as in "Ghost" and "The Dead Man's Tale", the protagonist has just died. He doesn't go on to his destination because there's more he wants to do here before then. In fact, there's a lot more. All the stories revolve around what the protagonist does in this transition state.

The concept is used differently in horror, which tends to focus attention on the people here on this side (Demi Moore's character, for example) or the governess and the children (in The Turn of the Screw) and how they're being haunted. Weird's focus is on the person who is on the other side. I find it amazing we see this concept being used as far back as the first Weird Tales story way back in 1923.

Oh, i have heard of Patrick Swayze before.

Thanks to an interesting blog Tellers of Weird Tales, I have become aware of the book The Thing's Incredible! the Secret Origins of Weird Tales which discusses the early days of this magazine.

Oddly enough, I found that blog not by looking for anything about weird tales, but looking for information on the ghastly foul bird known as the Whip-poor-will. A bird so evil that it has featured often in weird tales by Lovecraft, Derleth, Thurber, and perhaps Robert W. Chambers.

Article: Whip-poor-wills in weird fiction

Whippoorwills deserve their reputation. I had one who used to spend time in the tree just off the front porch. I leave the house before dawn & walk right past the tree. Every once in a while, it would suddenly burst out seemingly right next to my head. Scared the crap out of me every time.

Ed wrote: "Thanks to an interesting blog Tellers of Weird Tales, I have become aware of the book The Thing's Incredible! the Secret Origins of Weird Tales which discusses the early days of thi..."

Fascinating material on early Weird Tales. I can't believe that 1933 cover! And I thought Hefner was breaking new ground in the 1950s. The book looks the most interesting to me. I didn't know there was so much to tell about those first two years of publication.

Dan wrote: "I can't believe that 1933 cover! ..."

Dan is referring to the cover shown here by Margaret Brundage for the story "Black Colossus" by Robert E. Howard.

So cool to know my library has old original copies. I hardly ever go to the main branch of the IMCPL, but if I ever go downtown, I'll look.

Are you from Indianapolis, Quirky? I'm reading Cat's Cradle right now and I had to go look up an address Vonnegut mentions just to see if it was real. It wasn't

I have been to the Comic Carnival, but it has been years ago. I'm assuming it's still on Carrolton in Broad Ripple. But I lost the knack of reading comics somehow over the years. I bought Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 8 and decided I was just not good at reading comics anymore . . .

I almost never go to the IMCPL anymore. I just get the ebooks on line

In fact, I gotta get going. I have to finish Cats Cradle for another group and then figure out which of the 30 ebooks I have out right now I'm not going to read so I can return them and the next guy can get them.

Hey, wouldn't all Vonnegut books be considered weird? (He's from Indianapolis, you know.)

https://www.weirdtales.com/

The print magazine Wierd Tales, defunct since 2014, is apparently back. Issue #363 is available for purchase.

I picked up a copy of Weird Tales #363, read the first story and am thrilled with it. Copies are available directly from the Weird Tales website as well as being distributed by Darrell Schweitzer on ebay. Schweitzer was an editor and publisher of the 1990s version of the magazine. His interview of Tanith Lee, for example, which was excellent, was in the Summer 1988 issue. So Schweitzer has a long history with the magazine. His current role is unclear.

#363 came out over the Summer. According to Marvin Kaye, the current editor, #364 was supposed to be out by Halloween. Sadly that was an overly optimistic prediction. I am happy to report that #363 is truly excellent, a fully worthy successor. At $12.99 plus $4.00 shipping (on eBay), it is super expensive, probably to support higher than necessary (my opinion) production values.

As high as the production values are, I was surprised to see three grammar mistakes in the leadoff story alone. I don't look for them; these hit me in the face. Any decent copy editor would have caught them. A new person talking is a new paragraph. And twice the plural "s" was preceded by an apostrophe. I expect more from middle schoolers!

The magazine is slightly larger than 1990s size, which was the same as the 1923-1954 size, and the size I'd prefer to see, though it is smaller than 2000s size. The pages are glossy, lots of sharply rendered color, but the margins and white space are also excessive. I'd rather see more words being printed than have white space.

The leadoff story, "Up from Slavery" by Victor Lavalle is sixteen pages long, fully twenty percent of the magazine, but well worth the investment. It is a fantastic story. Marvin Kaye says of it in "The Eyrie" that he thinks H. P. Lovecraft would have "championed" it, which I find to be a silly remark. The story and writing style have nothing whatsoever in common with Lovecraft. I also don't recall Lovecraft championing any story. In his Supernatural Horror in Literature Lovecraft shares opinions, but they are neither entirely laudatory or condemning. He says what he likes about stories and discusses their weaknesses. I digress.

Lavalle's story was a surprise because for the first two thirds I felt like I was more in the genre of African American literature, not Weird. That was fine. I love that genre too, even studied it formally in college, and Lavalle's story was of the highest quality for that genre. I loved how he brought in the subtle forms of racism today examples that would never occur otherwise to this white person. I also loved the references to Booker T.'s book, which shares this story's title, something I've read about but never read in, an oversight I'd like to correct soon. In the last third things got Weird enough for me too. It was an amazing blending of the two genres, something I've never encountered or ever even considered before. This story will be a favorite for me for a long, long time. I will definitely be tracking down and reading more of Victor Lavalle's work soon.

So, as to the new issue, I am glad it's being edited by Marvin Kaye. I know of his work. He is a well-regarded anthologist. If Gardner Dozois, Ellen Datlow, and the Vandermeers occupy the top tier, Kaye is on the very next one for certain. The reason I'm glad to see Kaye editing is because he has a love of the genre and of the historic Weird Tales. I think he will stay true to the original aim of the original magazines rather than say introduce any of his pet genres such as Steampunk to the magazine as Ann Vandermeer did when she was in charge. My only concern in having Kaye in charge is that his background is in horror. As we know, Weird also traffics in fantasy and science fiction. I am trusting stories that contain these elements don't get short shrift, leaving us with nothing but a Literary Horror magazine. But hey, I'd take even that over the nothing-doing of the last five years. I sure hope whatever is causing the delays in producing this fine magazine can soon be resolved.

I just completed the other stories in #363 and am happy to report that they were all good. The Victor Lavalle piece is the clear standout though. "The Shadows beneath the Stone" by Jonathan Maberry was really interesting, set in Scotland in 1307. What kept it from being an even better story was not enough sustained interpersonal drama. There was a bit too much poetry for me in this issue, and I don't like even short poems getting entire pages. That's very un-Weird Tales like.

One trend with this issue I noticed was less speculation, more realism. The stories barely left our world sometimes, and when they finally did, often did so late in the story. I'm not complaining, just noticing. There was not much that was Clark Ashton Smith or Lovecraft like, not even much I would call like Tanith Lee or Robert Bloch. It's a slightly different path, but I'm intrigued.

There are a number of writers of Weird in our group. I just wanted to share an observation or recommendation. I've noticed Weird Tales only publishes stories by established authors. But not necessarily all that well established. If you want to have a story you write published in Weird Tales, I think it possible--assuming the magazine resumes regular publication at some point.

Starting to look at the authors in the current issue, we have the following:

Victor Lavalle. Searching ISFDB.org, what magazines has he published his other short stories in? Answer:
A) "Daddy" (2018) in The Weird Fiction Review, Fall 2018.
B) "I Left My Heart in Skaftafell" published in Daedalus, Vol. 133, No. 4, Fall 2004
Lavalle's other six short stories appeared in anthologies. Maybe Lavalle was invited to contribute directly to those anthologies. Maybe the anthologies picked Lavalle's work up from an online magazine ISFDB.org doesn't list.

Jonathan Maberry got "Pegleg and Paddy Save the World" published in Space and Time, #112, Winter 2010.

I think you get the picture. You can do this with all the current authors. In any event, all the authors in issue #363 have recently published short stories and other works in various really interesting venues. I think it's highly worthwhile to see where they're being published in order to have made it far enough to be getting published in Weird Tales like they have.

I just realized that the year 2023 came and went with a failure to mention that it was the 100th year birthday for the magazine that defined and created our favorite genre: Weird Tales. The first issue was published with a cover date of March 1923. For the magazine's first thirty years it stuck to a regular publishing schedule, usually monthly, never more infrequent than bi-monthly. After 1953 publication was discontinued for some twenty years, and has been highly irregular or sporadic since it was restarted in 1973. This century we are lucky if we see a single issue in a given calendar year.

Those first thirty years worth of Weird Tales are freely available for reading on the internet and can be downloaded into e-readers if one is so inclined. The Internet library carries them, but I usually go to Luminist: https://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/....

Looking at the contributors to that first issue, which contained no less than 22 stories, I only recognize two names. R. T. M. Scott wrote a 4-page story titled "Nimba, the Cave Girl." I recognize Scott's name because I read a fair amount of pulp fiction and Scott helped create one of my favorite pulp fiction series featuring a protagonist known as The Spider, which was also the name of the magazine. His story in this first issue predates that work by about ten years. I like Scott's writing. It's down to earth, less fantastic or sensational than later authors that took The Spider over after the first couple issues. Scott could not churn out pulp in great volume fast enough to be a series writer probably because he kept the quality high.

The other name I recognize is Otis Adelbert Kline, but I can't quite remember from where I know that name. Did he work with or co-write with Lovecraft some maybe? I look it up in Wikipedia and that's a "no." E. Hoffman Price is the one who worked with Lovecraft. Otis Adelbert Kline wrote a lot of what are called oriental stories apparently. I read an unexceptional one recently in a magazine that started with Spicy, Spicy Mystery maybe, or was it Spicy Adventure? I remember Kline included Arabic words in his story. He spelled them the way they are pronounced and used them correctly, which impressed me. That's rare. The Spicy magazines constrained authors to write somewhat by a formula and made the female figure too prominent in an unmeaningful way. I should read some of his other work. In Weird Tales March 1923, they published the first half of a novel by Kline, The Thing of a Thousand Shapes with a warning not to start the story late at night.

Has anyone else ever read this first issue of Weird Tales? If so, what did you think?