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Willard E. Hawkins (1887-1970)
Author, Editor, Publisher, Public SpeakerBorn September 27, 1887, Fairplay, ColoradoDied April 17, 1970, presumably in Craig, ColoradoWillard E. Hawkins was born on September 27, 1887, in Fairplay,...
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Hubert La Due (1891-1946)
Author, Editor, JournalistBorn January 15, 1891, Alameda, CaliforniaDied 1946, Omaha, NebraskaHubert William La Due was born on January 15, 1891, in Alameda, California. His career in journalism began...
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Eric A. Leyland (1911-2001)
Aka Nesta Grant, Sylvia Little, Elizabeth TarrantAuthor, Librarian, PrincipalBorn September 22, 1911, Ilford, Essex, EnglandDied March 28, 2001Eric A. Leyland was a very prolific British author of...
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Ainsworth W. WyvilleAuthorBorn August 5, 1896, Denver, ColoradoDied January 25, 1982, Alameda city or county, CaliforniaAinsworth W. Wyville was born on August 5, 1896, in Denver, Colorado. His father,...
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Happy Birthday to the Second Incarnation of Weird Tales
Ninety years ago this month, in November 1924, Weird Tales began its second incarnation. The magazine was never on sound footing. That trend appears to be continuing to this day. But in 1924, it very...
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Two Topics In Search of a Venue
I have written recently about the question Is science fiction dying? To paraphrase and reverse Doctor McCoy's claim, I'm a blogger, not a doctor. I can't say whether science fiction is dying or not. If...
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A Baby's Ear
Still more on the question Is science fiction dying? I'll begin with a long quote:One morning in 1938, shortly before leaving the Communist Party, while feeding his young daughter, [Whittaker] Chambers...
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Woman and God or Idol on the Cover of Weird Tales
Gods and idols figure prominently in weird fiction. The sculpture of Cthulhu from "The Call of Cthulhu" is among the most famous of idols from Weird Tales. Unfortunately, Cthulhu never made it to the...
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Giants on the Cover of Weird Tales
This is a loose collection of two giant robots, a dinosaur, a rogue elephant, and a green-skinned demon. They don't have a lot in common, but the people (and demons) on these five covers do: they're...
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Aliens on the Cover of Weird Tales
Weird Tales was a magazine of fantasy, horror, weird fiction, and the supernatural, but it also published science fiction, especially after World War II, when that genre took over our popular culture...
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Monsters Alone on the Cover of Weird Tales
There were many monsters on the cover of Weird Tales over the years, but most of those monster covers showed the monster menacing a human being, very often a woman. You can see some of them in my...
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Vampires and Bats on the Cover of Weird Tales
Vampires are a very popular kind of monster, so popular that I'm surprised there were so few on the cover of Weird Tales. I count only two images that are obviously vampires and three that look like...
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Weird Tales in Futures Past Magazine
Writer and publisher Jim Emerson has begun publishing an online magazine called Futures Past: A Visual History of Science Fiction. His plan is to cover fifty years of science fiction beginning in 1926...
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More Troubles for Science Fiction
Within the past week or so, I have read that science fiction is struggling with political correctness. Evidently the controversy has been going on for awhile, but it seems to have come to a head...
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Asimov on Weird Tales and Other Topics
Forty years have gone by since Doubleday published Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930s, edited by Isaac Asimov. Fans of Weird Tales might not care very much for what Asimov...
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Ghosts on the Cover of Weird Tales
I count a dozen ghost covers for Weird Tales. Most of these images are conventional to the point of cliché. The exception is the last, by Virgil Finlay, illustrating one of few poems to make it to the...
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Skulls and Skeletons on the Cover of Weird Tales
You can make a case that the literature of fear is based on a fear of death.* The ghosts and monsters of literature are usually one of two kinds: the undead and the predator (which threatens death)....
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Reading the Pulps
Here's an advertisement from Country Gentleman, February 1948. The cartoonist was Hank Ketcham (1920-2001), later of Dennis the Menace fame (or infamy, depending on what you think of Dennis the...
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A.J. Mordtmann (1839-1912)
August Justus MordtmannAka Dr. Eisenhart, R.A. Guthmann, N.N. Guthmann, R. von A. Duroy-Warnatz (1)Civil Servant, Journalist, Editor, AuthorBorn February 27, 1839, Hamburg, GermanyDied April 30, 1912,...
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Weird Tales Books
Ten Tales Calculated To Give You Shudders, edited by Ross R. Olney (1972)If you grew up any time from the 1940s to the 1970s, you probably remember reading Whitman Books. They were inexpensive...
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