I started reading and collecting Science Fiction and Fantasy digest magazines–Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy, If, etc.–around 1960. Once in a while, I’d run across a copy of Weird Tales but the condition was usually ragged and beat-up. I did read Weird Tales anthologies where I discovered H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and many more terrific writers.
Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird celebrates this ironic magazine by blending classic Weird Tales stories with some new stories written in the Weird Tales style. If you’re a fan of Weird Tales, this is a must-buy. If you’re a casual fan of Weird Tales, ask your Library to buy a copy and check it out. Are you a fan of Weird Tales? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The Third Guy – By Scott Sigler
A Century of Weird – By Lisa Morton
The Game – By Marge Simon
Disappear Donna – By R. L. Stine
Up From Slavery – By Victor LaValle
The Call of Cthulhu – By H.P. Lovecraft
The Circle: Shared Worlds – By Lisa Diane Kastner
Worms of The Earth – By Robert E. Howard
Swords and Sorcery: Weird Tales and Beyond – By Charles R. Rutledge
Cosmic Horror – By James A. Moore
Arched Bridges: Blackout Poetry – By Jessica McHugh
Black Gods Kiss – By C.L. Moore
Legal Rites – By Issac Asimov and Frederick Pohl
The Scythe – By Ray Bradbury
Who You Gonna Call? The Evolution of Occult Detective Fiction – By Henry Herz
Blood Moon – By Owl Goingback
The Vengeance of Nitocris – By Tennessee Williams
Dead Jack and The Case of the Bloody Fairy – By James Aquilone
Slaughter House – By Richard Matheson
The World Breaker – By Blake Northcott
Scratch-off Universe – By Hailey Piper
Church at the Bottom of the Sea – By Michael A. Arnzen
Prezzo – By Keith R. A. DeCandito
How To Make the Animal Perfect? – by Linda D. Addison
Jagganath – By Karin Tidbeck (Curated by former Weird Tales editor Ann VanderMeer)
Bait – By Dana Fredsti
The Damp Man – By Allison V. Harding
NecronomiCommedia: Dante, Doré, nad the Root of Lovecraftian Horror – By Jacopo della Quercia and Christopher Neumann
Lady Cataract Comes to the Mosque – By Usman T. Malik
Cupid is a Knavish Lad – By Laurell K. Hamilton
Vampire Chaser – by Anne Walsh Miller
I’d love a nice edition of vintage Weird Tales stories but that particular sub-genre seems so rooted in its era that new work in a similar vein doesn’t interest me especially if contributors include the likes of Stine and Hamilton. I’ll give it a look if my library gets a copy but it’s not something I need on my shelf.
Byron, I wanted to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of WEIRD TALES with this new book. Pure nostalgia on my part!
Sub-genre. Sloppy use of language. WEIRD TALES, in all its versions over the years (Maberry being involved with the current one) has always carried a range of fiction.
I’ve managed to pick up most of the survey volumes from WT over the years, but by no means all. I will eventually pick up this one, one way or another, for at least a read-through.
Interesting that most of your correspondents these days don’t have much to say about WT, vs., say, the NFL.
I became aware of the short-lived Renown revival of WT in 1973, but didn’t score a copy…did read a story from it in one of Harold Masur’s “Hitchcock” volumes not too long after (“Funeral in Another Town” by Jrrry Jacobsen, IIRC, should check his name), as well as being very aware how much the earlier versions had conributed to the anthologies I was reading in those years.
Well, it’s definitely Jerry rather than Jrrry! Slightly Lovecraftian, the typo.
LitHub decided Frederik Pohl was a Frederick the other day, as well…if you’re in a typo-fixing mood.
Todd, I am constantly tormented by the WORLDPRESS spell checker! It changes names without notifying me so thank you for the heads up! Well, WEIRD TALES is 100 years old and its heyday was in the 1920s and 1930s. By the early 1950s, it was on the chopping block.
I’ve always preferred the 1940s WT, as edited by Dorothy McIlwraith, with the likes of Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury, Margaret St. Clair, Theodore Sturgeon, Joseph Payne Brennan, Richard Matheson, even a drop-by by Robert Heinlein with a good story by him, vs. the more Lovecraftian/Seabury Quinn-dominated-years under Farnsworth Wright in the ’30s. WT did continue in its first/second version (depending how one counts) till 1954, hurt not only by the contraction of the fantastic-fiction magazine market but also by the anti-horror-comics hysteria, despite not being a comic book.
And the 1980s WT revival deserves a nod, as well, for keeping up a very good standard (and what’s left of it currently is directly a descendant of the George Scithers and Co. revival).
Todd, I transitioned from WEIRD TALES to FANTASTIC to paperbacks by Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, F. Paul Wilson, Graham Masterton, Stephen King, and other writers who carried on the WEIRD TALES tradition.