Intermission
I have been away for two weeks. We had a death in our family, a not unexpected death, but a sad occasion nevertheless. My aunt lived a long life. She loved holidays. Halloween was one of her favorites,...
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Take the Z-Train
PulpFest took place a month ago, but I still haven't finished writing about it and the topics that came up because of it. I'll begin again with this one.At PulpFest, I talked to a publisher about ideas...
View ArticleWounds
Allison V. Harding wrote thirty-six stories for Weird Tales, more than any of the women and most of the men. Unlike the nine authors ahead of her on the list, Allison has never seen a collection of her...
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The Origins of the Damp Man
Art reveals something of the artist. It's why so many artists burn their work or wish it to be burned upon their deaths. Luckily, there is a Max Brod for every Franz Kafka--or for almost everyone who...
View ArticleAllison V. Harding-Revelations and Requests
So the Damp Man series by Allison V. Harding had antecedents in stories of water spirits, in "The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall" by John Kendrick Bangs, and in pulp magazines, comic books, and movies....
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J.D. Salinger and Lamont Buchanan
J.D. Salinger was one of the most famous recluses of the twentieth century. Born on January 1, 1919, in New York City, Salinger attended public schools in Manhattan, then the McBurney School, also in...
View ArticleThe Undead Past
"The past is never dead. It's not even past."--from Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner (1951)My grandfather, a son of illiterate Irish immigrants, was born in 1891. His older brother Willie drowned...
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Jacob Clark Henneberger on Campus
I received a request from a reader in France for a photograph of Jacob Clark Henneberger (1890-1969), co-founder and publisher of Weird Tales magazine. Here is his senior picture from the yearbook of...
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Update on Tellers of Weird Tales
I have four series going at once:My categorizing of Weird Tales covers, which began on January 2, 2014, with "The Eternal Triangle: Man, Woman, and Monster."The A. Merritt Art Gallery, which began on...
View ArticleThe Conservative vs. the Zombie
A year ago this weekend, I ended my seemingly interminable series "What is the monster of the twenty-first century?" with the conclusion that zombies, representing mass man and his desire to...
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Weird Tales Books
The Adventures of Jules de Grandin by Seabury Quinn (1976)Seabury Quinn (1889-1969) wrote more stories than anyone for Weird Tales and for a longer period of time, from 1923 to 1952, almost the entire...
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Edgar Allan Poe and James Whitcomb Riley
Today is a day of two anniversaries. On this date in 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore at age forty. The circumstances of his death remain mysterious. Also on this date in 1849, James Whitcomb...
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A Bittersweet Fortnight in 1969
At PulpFest, I bought two TV tie-in novels of The Prisoner. I've read them both and liked No. 2 (the novel) better than No. 3. In reading about The Prisoner, I found an interesting coincidence:On...
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More Whip-poor-wills
At PulpFest, I saw a copy of Whispers #10, from 1977. The cover drawing is by Frank Utpatel (1905-1980). It drew my eye because of the whip-poor-wills in flight:On July 14, 2015, I wrote about...
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Notes on "The Colour Out of Space"
I recently reread "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft, a story composed in March 1927 and published in Amazing Stories in September of that year. I won't analyze the story. Instead I'll just...
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Lovecraft and the Mass Rock
In searching the past for clues to the present, I have been reading a little about Ireland. My family is from western Ireland, historically a poverty-stricken and now a vastly depopulated place. Sad to...
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Thomas Lanier Williams (1911-1983)
Aka Tennessee WilliamsPlaywright, Author, Poet, Movie ScenaristBorn March 26, 1911, Columbus, MississippiDied February 25, 1993, New York, New YorkTime was when American literature was dominated by...
View ArticleBotanical Fiction Database
I don't ordinarily provide links to other sites, but recently I found one that probably every fan of fantasy and science fiction should know about. The site itself is called The Fish in Prison. The...
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Edgar Allan Poe-America's Pocket Author
Edgar Allan Poe often began his stories with epigrams, often in other languages. He also liked to throw into his text foreign words, phrases, and sayings. So I'll begin today with a word from another...
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Before Star Trek and Star Wars . . .
. . . there was Weird Tales.Star Trek and Star Wars are in the news. Earlier this month, CBS Television Studios announced that a new Star Trek television show will begin in January 2017, missing the...
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