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? ? ?-The First Anonymous Story
There are two kinds of anonymous works. First are works written by some unknown person or persons, often in the distant past, but sometimes today, too, things written for example on subway walls and...
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William Sanford (1878-1929)-A Tale of Madness & Murder
Newspaper Reporter, Author, Poet, Humorist, FarmerBorn December 1878, Portsmouth, Rhode IslandDied March 27, 1929, Imperial Valley, California, presumably in El CentroWilliam Sanford was born on...
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Joseph Faus (1898-1966)-The First Collaboration
Bank Clerk, Worker, Newspaper Reporter & Columnist, Author, Editor, Local Historian, Youth Group CounselorBorn August 30, 1898, Fairbury, NebraskaDied April 12, 1966, presumably in Miami,...
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James Bennett Wooding (1897-1954)-The First Collaboration
Author, Publisher, Real Estate AgentBorn December 27, 1897, Springfield, IllinoisDied August 22, 1954, San Antonio, TexasJames Bennett Wooding was born on December 27, 1897, in Springfield, Illinois,...
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The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni-The First Gorilla Story
Joseph Faus & James Bennett Wooding's Story:"The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni" is a short story in three chapters and told in the first person. It takes place in Belleville, a small...
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Weird Tales-The Gorilla Connection
In 1924, a young girl of Chicago discovered science fiction in the pages of Weird Tales magazine. She had already seen a real-life fantasy land. Her mother had written about it: We were in a fairy...
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Capt. George Warburton Lewis (1878-1963)-The First Femme Fatale
Carpenter, Typesetter, Soldier, Author, PoetBorn February 20, 1878, near Old Fairview, KansasDied November 1, 1963, U.S. Veterans Hospital, The Bronx, New YorkGeorge Warburton Lewis was born on...
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F. Georgia Stroup (1882-1952)-The First Woman Author
Fannie Georgia Stroup was the first woman writer in Weird Tales, or I should say the first writer known to have been a woman. After all, two in that first issue used only their initials, while a third...
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I.W.D. Peters (1870s?-1931)-The Second Woman Author
Née Idella W. DonnallyAka Ida Donnally Peters, Ida D. PetersAuthor, Telephone & Telegraph OperatorBorn November 27, 1870s?, Callaghan, Alleghany County, VirginiaDied March 14, 1931, at home,...
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Harold Ward (1879-1950)-The First Tale of the South Seas
Aka H.W. Starr, Ward Sterling, ZorroSongwriter, Press Agent/Publicist, Postmaster, City Clerk, National Guardsman, Newspaper Reporter & Editor, AuthorBorn January 5, 1879, Coleta, IllinoisDied...
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J.B.M. Clarke, Jr. (1883-1959)-The First British Author and a Second Canadian
James Blyth Macalester Clark, Jr.Journalist, AuthorBorn August 26, 1883, Liverpool, EnglandDied February 5, 1959, Rainhill Hospital, Liverpool, EnglandJames Blyth Macalester Clark, Jr., was born on...
View ArticleCormac McCarthy (1933-2023)
Cormac McCarthy has died. He was eighty-nine years old. It would not be exactly true to call him a mainstream novelist, but he was more nearly mainstream than an author of genre fiction or of one of...
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The Eyrie in the First Issue
"The Eyrie" was the letters column in Weird Tales and was there from the first issue. The first installment opens with a kind of fanfare. The author of it called himself merely "The Editor." We can...
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Readers Respond to the First Issue-Part One
In the first installment of "The Eyrie," the editor of Weird Tales asked that readers write and let him and everyone else know what they thought of the first issue. Letters in response started arriving...
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Readers Respond to the First Issue-Part Two
More letters came in about the first issue of Weird Tales and were printed in the third, dated May 1923. Charles M. Boone, third officer aboard the ship Yumuri sent a letter, postmarked Veracruz,...
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Editors Respond to the First Issue
Out of twenty-six stories published in the first issue of Weird Tales, only four were reprinted in the era before books became something other than books, that is, before the early 2000s. "Ooze" by...
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One Reader Responds to the First Issue
There are thirty-three items in the first issue of Weird Tales. Twenty-six are stories. Six are nonfiction fillers. The last is the letters column, "The Eyrie." I will look only at the twenty-six...
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The Return of "Ooze"
I have a couple of things left over concerning the first Weird Tales cover story, "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud. I also have something new.The first Weird Tales cover and the only illustration in the first...
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The Last of Colloids & Tentacles
A colloid is a suspension of one or more substances in another. Two thirds of the ingredients of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich are colloids. A long time ago, I knew a guy who liked banana and...
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Fate Magazine & Weird Tales (Again)
Last year, I wrote about connections between Weird Tales and Fate magazine. You can read what I wrote by clicking here. One of the points in my first essay is that Fate was one successor to Weird...
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