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Friday, December 31, 2021

Why Weird Tales?

Weird Tales was in trouble during that first year. The magazine that never dies almost did in 1924. Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946) stepped in to edit the triple-sized, first anniversary issue, May/June/July 1924. It would be the last issue of the magazine until November 1924, when Farnsworth Wright (1890-1940) took over. Coincidentally, that first-anniversary issue was whole number 13.

The first feature in Weird Tales for May/June/July 1924 was a kind of manifesto entitled "Why Weird Tales?" It was written, anonymously, by Kline. In it, he explained the purposes of publishing the magazine, first, to offer readers stories they wanted but were unlikely to find in other places; second, "to find and publish those stories that will make their writers immortal." H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was not yet known when Kline wrote. Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) was only eighteen and just getting started as a writer. Dozens of now well-known authors had not yet been published in Weird Tales. Hundreds of still nearly unknown writers, the beginning subject of this blog, still awaited discovery.

According to the current Weird Tales website, the first issue of the magazine appeared on newsstands on February 18, 1923. In other words, in about seven weeks Weird Tales will enter its 100th year. "The Unique Magazine" hasn't been continuously in print for these one hundred years. But it still exists and is still known and read. There may be another issue coming in the not very distant future. Otis Adelbert Kline's vision still holds.

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I have posted the complete text of "Why Weird Tales?" on a new page for this blog. See the list of pages at the right. I have transcribed this text from the original, which I found on the website Internet Archive at the following URL:

https://archive.org/details/WeirdTales1924050607ATLPM/page/n1/mode/2up

Any transcription errors are my own.

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Otis Adelbert Kline mentioned many authors in his essay. Following is a list. Names in bold are of those whose work was published in Weird Tales in the period 1923-1974. Click on their names to see my biographies of these authors.

Kline devoted a good deal of his 2,100-word essay to Poe and Hawthorne, also a full paragraph to Charles Brockden Brown. Brown may have been more well known in the 1920s than he is today. He has been and may even still be a neglected author.

I almost overlooked H.G. Wells' name in "Why Weird Tales?" and was almost ready to make something of that. Even though his name is there, I might still make something of Kline's bare mention of it: Weird Tales does not seem to have followed in Wells' path, for his work was an innovation. Weird Tales came from older things. Even though the magazine published science fiction, especially in the 1940s and '50s under the supervision of Dorothy McIlwraith (1891-1976), its mainstay was the weird tale, a type of fiction that matured into its own subgenre, weird fiction, in the pages of "The Unique Magazine." That's my opinion.

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There are many good points in "Why Weird Tales?" One passage jumped out at me, considering what I have written over the past year about Utopia and Dystopia in Weird Tales. That passage:

The ancient Hebrews used the element of fear in their writings to spur their heroes to superhuman power or to instill a moral truth. The sun stands still in the heavens that Joshua may prevail over his enemies.

I refer here to Jack Williamson's idea that Utopia is in the Greek tradition, while Dystopia is in an older Egyptian-Hebraic tradition. (See "Utopia & Dystopia in Weird Tales-Part Three: Dystopia Before Utopia," here.) I'll have more on that topic and wrap up that series after the new year arrives.

Until then, Happy New Year to everyone everywhere. If 2022 is going to be better than the previous two years, we will all have to make it better. It won't happen on its own.

The cover story of Weird Tales May/June/July 1924 was "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" by Harry Houdini. I don't see a signature here, but this is almost certainly the work of William F. Heitman of Indianapolis. I wanted to show Heitman's work here because it reminds me of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood are thrown into the pit. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

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