Tag Archives: Weird Tales

Happy Birthday, Clark Ashton Smith

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Clark Ashton Smith (8)January 13, 1893 saw the birth of Clark Ashton Smith.  Along with his friends and correspondents Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, Smith was regarded as one of the Big Three at Weird Tales during was is generally regarded as the magazine’s golden age.

Given his stature in the field, it’s a little surprising how brief his career as a writer of fiction was.  Most of his fiction was written between 1929 and 1934.  Smith’s first literary love was poetry.  He also worked as an artist.  Clark Ashton Smith was never able to completely support himself through his artistic endeavors, and he frequently did manual labor around his hometown of Auburn, California.

Smith’s fiction is not for the week of vocabulary.  He wrote several story cycles that take place in exotic imaginary lands in prehistory or on other planets.  Smith’s Collected Fantasies is back in print in paperback and electronic editions.  (Click the individual titles for links to electronic versions.)

Happy Birthday, Margaret Brundage

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Brundage WT Bat GirlMargaret Brundage was born on this date in 1900.  Brundage gain fame, some would say infamy, illustrating covers for Weird Tales in the 1930s.  She was born Margaret Hedda Johnson and was married briefly married to “Slim” Brundage, a painter with radical politics.  The had one son.  I guess that means the rumor I heard that she used her daughters for models isn’t true.

The best way to honor Brundage is to show examples of her work.  Since the illustrations won’t be to everyone’s taste, and some folks get offended waayy too easily these days, the illustrations will be after the “Continue Reading” break.  What follows may not be approriate for youonger readers and the uptight.  There’s a reason she’s been called “Margaret Bondage.” Continue reading →

RIP, Jon Arfstrom 1928-2015

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Weird-Tales-52-01-204x300Jon Afrstrom passed away December 2.  He was believed to be the last surviving artist to work on the original Weird Tales.  While he wasn’t as well known as Margaret Brundage or J. Allen St. John, Jon Arfstrom created several striking covers in the final years of the magazine, such as the one shown on the right, which from January 1952.  This was his first cover.

In recent years he’d returned to fantasy art and provided cover art for publishers such as Haffner Press and Fedogan & Bremer among others.  He was the artist on the Stoker Award winning collection The Early Fears by Robert Bloch.

Fortunately, Arfstrom was a guest at PulpFest 2015.  You can see an interview with him here.

Kuttner Unkollected

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9630457No, that’s not a typo, it’s a deliberate misspelling.  It’s a weisenheimer attempt at alliteration.

About a decade ago, give or take a year, I had a little extra money from summer teaching.  So did I save the money or invest it wisely?  No, I didn’t.  I decided to try and obtain as many copies of Henry Kuttner stories that had never been reprinted at that time that I didn’t have, along with a few other unreprinted stories by people such as Eric Frank Russell.  Except for some copies of Weird Tales which were out of my price range, I managed to get most everything I didn’t have copies of.  Haffner Press has reprinted the Weird Tales material.  When pursuing a project like this, eBay is not your bank account’s friend an invaluable tool.   Continue reading →

If You Were Stranded on a Desert Island…

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If you were stranded on a desert island and could have one complete run of a pulp magazine to help you while away the hours, which one would it be?  For those of you who are anal retentive, assume that food, water, and shelter are not an issue.

Oh, and you’re alone.  I don’t want to know what type of harem you would have on a desert island.  That’s a different blog post on a different blog written by a different blogger.  The thought of what some of you people might come up with on that one frankly scares me.

For the purposes of this thought experiment, any pulp that survived after the early 1950s (I’m thinking Astounding here) when the pulp market collapsed can only be included up through 1953.  Any magazine that started in the 1950s (F&SF, Galaxy, etc.) is outside the bounds of consideration.  Here are my top ten choices: Continue reading →

“The Golgotha Dancers” by Manly Wade Wellman

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Golgotha Dancers“The Golgotha Dancers”
Manly Wade Wellman
ebook $0.99

This story was originally published in the October 1937 issue of Weird Tales.  It’s now available as a short story in electronic format.

This is an early Wellman, so it doesn’t have the strong sense of place as his later work set in the Southern mountains, such as the John the Balladeer stories.  Still, it’s a solid piece of fiction in its own right, even if it isn’t Wellman’s best work.

Just so you know, below the CONTINUE READING line, there will be spoilers. Continue reading →

Henry Kuttner at 100

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kuttnerOne of my all-time favorite writers was born 100 years ago on this date.  Henry Kuttner was a prolific author who wrote in multiple genres.  Kuttner started out writing Lovecraft pastiche for Weird Tales.

Kuttner mentored Ray Bradbury and wrote the ending to Bradbury’s “The Candle” when Bradbury got stuck.  In the introduction to the Ballatine/Del Rey edition of The Best of Henry Kuttner (there was a 2 volume British edition by the same name with more and different stories), Bradbury says in reference to “The Graveyard Rats” that Kuttner didn’t want to be remembered as a minor league Lovecraft.  That’s a paraphrase, as I don’t have the book here with me.  I looked at “The Graveyard Rats” on Kuttner’s birthday last year. Continue reading →

Lovecraft Letter to Publisher of Weird Tales

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H._P._Lovecraft,_June_1934For those of you who have an interest in H. P. Lovecraft, I came across this today via The Passive Voice.  It’s an 8 page single spaced letter housed in the Harry Ransom Collection at the University of Texas, where much Robert E. Howard material is stored.

James Machin was researching Arthur Machen when he decided to check on any H. P. Lovecraft material that might be in the archives.  There was one letter dated February 2, 1924, from Lovecraft to J. C. Hennenberger, the publisher of Weird Tales.  As you might imagine, it’s a long letter that touches on many things, including two unwritten novels by Lovecraft.  I’m not sure if this is an unknown letter or not.  I’m not an expert on Lovecraft, and certainly not Lovecraft correspondence, by any means.

The entire letter as well as Machin’s comments about it can be read here.

Blogging Jirel of Joiry: Black God’s Kiss

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Black God's KissBlack God’s Kiss
C. L. Moore
Paizo
trade paperback $12.99

Shortly after she began chronicling the adventures of Northwest Smith, C. L. Moore created a second series character, one that would have an even greater impact on the genre. I’m talking, of course, about Jirel of Joiry.

Instead of setting these stories in space like she did with Northwest Smith, or in some age before the dawn of recorded history, like Howard did with Conan, Moore chose to place Jirel in the fictional French kingdom of Joiry, square in the Middle Ages.

There were only five Jirel stories, plus the Jirel and Northwest Smith team-up “Quest of the Starstone” that she wrote with her husband Henry Kuttner.  But for the first time in the history of the field, here was a female character who was worthy of her own series.  Note: the rest of this post will contain spoilers. Continue reading →

Blogging Northwest Smith: The Cold Gray God

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150px-Weird_Tales_October_1935“The Cold Gray God” adds a slight Lovecraftian element to the Northwest Smith saga.  First published in the October 1935 issue of Weird Tales, the story opens with Smith being accosted on the street of Righa, a city in the polar regions of Mars, by a fur clad woman.  Smith thinks she’s a Venusian, but she behaves in a way a Venusian woman wouldn’t.  Fro one thing, she touches him.  I couldn’t help but think of women in Islamic countries from the way she is describes.

Although he’s somewhat repulsed by her, there’s something familiar about her, too.  At her request, Smith accompanies her back to her house.  There he discovers she’s a famous singer who simply vanished a few years earlier.  She asks him to help her retrieve a box from a man who is frequently a notorious bar.  She tells Smith he can name his own price, hinting that he can have her it that’s what he wants.  Leery, Smith still accepts her offer, asking for ten thousand dollars. Continue reading →