Tellers of Weird Tales in The New Yorker
The first issue of The New Yorker was dated February 21, 1925, one hundred years ago today. Unlike Weird Tales, The New Yorker has been published continuously since its inception. Also unlike Weird...
View ArticleRobert W. Chambers & the Language of Cosmic Horror
Robert W. Chambers' name is the first to appear in the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales (#367, published in 2023). This is in "The Eyrie," which used to be a letters column but has become simply a...
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Robert W. Chambers & Lost Lands
One sub-sub-genre of fantasy and adventure fiction is the tale of lost cities, lost lands, and lost continents. Sometimes those places that are lost are sunken cities and submerged continents. Atlantis...
View ArticleFour Men-Part One
Two figures cast their long shadows over the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales. They are of course Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. But it seems to me that there is more of Friedrich Nietzsche and...
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Four Men-Part Two
I'll set aside Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft before bringing them up again. The four men of the title are:German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900);French author Guy de Maupassant...
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100 Years of R'lyeh!
I have overlooked the 100th anniversary of the real-life earthquake that brought the fictional (we hope) Cthulhu Island to the surface of the South Pacific Ocean. It happened this past weekend,...
View ArticleFour Men-Part Three
God created the cosmos, thereby banishing the void and chaos that preceded it. For as long as God exists and reigns supreme, there can be no void, and nothing from the void can exist in or intrude upon...
View ArticleFour Men-Part Four
"The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant is in two versions. The first version is a short story or tale published in 1886. The second is a long short story or novelette published in 1887. If you can, you...
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What is it? What was it?
In "The Horla," by Guy de Maupassant, one of the narrators asks, "What is it?", this invisible being that has afflicted him. His question echoes the title of Fitz-James O'Brien's earlier short story...
View ArticleMargaret McBride Hoss (1890-1962)
Poet, Lyricist, Author, LibrarianBorn November 8, 1890, Nevada, MissouriDied September 29, 1962, Lake Worth Beach, FloridaMargaret McBride Hoss was born on November 8, 1930, in Nevada, Missouri. That's...
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Anne Forman Ellis (1893-1946)
Travel Writer, Tourist/Traveler, SecretaryBorn December 18, 1893, Carrollton, KentuckyDied June 22, 1946, Leigh Memorial Hospital, Norfolk, VirginiaAnne Elizabeth Forman Ellis was born on December 18,...
View ArticleThe 100th Anniversary in the San Diego Comic Con Book
As I was going through anniversaries and observances of anniversaries last year, I missed an observance. This one was for the 100th anniversary of Weird Tales, and it was published in the Comic Con...
View ArticleThe Weird Tales Scam
Every once in a while I look on the Internet for news of my blog. This isn't really vanity--or not mostly vanity--I just want to see what's going on out there. I don't have any connections to people in...
View ArticleA Friend
A friend died very recently. I don't yet know what day. I came back earlier this week, late on a rainy and utterly black night to find a terrible message waiting for me. The next morning I drove into a...
View ArticleThe Ships of Literature
When I wrote last, I pretty clearly placed literature above the level of genre fiction. That might be a little harsh. It's likely to offend fans of weird fiction, science fiction, horror, and so on. It...
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The Great Gatsby
I have been writing about the Weird Tales of one hundred years ago. In February, I wrote about The New Yorker at one hundred and its pretty tenuous connections to "The Unique Magazine." The Daily...
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Weird Tales, April 1925
One hundred years ago this month, the enigmatic Nictzin Dyalhis made his debut in the pages of Weird Tales magazine. His story, "When the Green Star Waned," was both the cover story and the lead story....
View ArticleThe Four Big L's
To us, the Weird Tales of 1923 to 1954 is a completed body of work. It's all one piece and will forever be unchanging and unchangeable. But to readers in its time, especially in its early years, the...
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Crosses on the Cover of Weird Tales
Today is Good Friday, representing the day on which Jesus Christ died upon the Cross. Weird Tales was of course a popular and secular magazine, although I would guess that most of its writers were...
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Gatz, Kurtz, &Ántonia
For my next feat, I will attempt to connect Shakespeare to Conrad to Fitzgerald and Cather to mid-century urban horror to twenty-first-century cosmic horror. Edgar Allan Poe will make an appearance,...
View ArticleApril Aliens & April Invasions
The cover story and lead story in the April 1925 issue of Weird Tales is "When the Green Star Waned" by Nictzin Dyalhis. The "Green Star" of the title is Earth as seen from the planet Venus. The men of...
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The Falling Man
The illustration on the cover of Weird Tales for April 1925 is for "When the Green Star Waned" by Nictzin Dyalhis. The artist was Andrew Brosnatch. It shows a man who appears to be falling into a mass...
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Nictzin Dyalhis & Donald Edward Keyhoe
Nictzin Dyalhis (1873?-1942) had his first story in Weird Tales in April 1925. So did Donald EdwardKeyhoe (1897-1988). Dyalhis' story was of course "When the Green Star Waned," a science-fantasy set in...
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Donald Keyhoe in National Geographic-Part One
Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988) had four stories in Weird Tales from April 1925 to May 1927. Two months after his last story for "The Unique Magazine" was published--at 12 o'clock noon on July 20, 1927,...
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Donald Keyhoe in National Geographic-Part Two
As I was paging through Donald E. Keyhoe's article "Seeing America with Lindbergh," published in The National Geographic Magazine in January 1928, I was struck by an oblique aerial photograph, and its...
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