Weird Tales at Forty

You could say that Weird Tales magazine had its first run from March 1923 to September 1954. You could also break up that first run, the most obvious break being from August to October 1924 when the business behind the magazine was reorganizing and there weren't any issues published at all. A better way of saying it is that Weird Tales was just trying to survive that summer and fall. Survive it did. Last year at around this time, Weird Tales observed its own 100th anniversary with a new issue. This time this year, we find ourselves in the one-hundred-year anniversary of the first hiatus and the almost-disappearance of "The Unique Magazine."

You could make other breaks, too, if you wanted to. In its first run, there came a break after twelve almost-monthly issues, published from March 1923 to April 1924, all with Edwin Baird as editor. Then came the first and only quarterly issue of May/June/July 1924 with Baird, or Farnsworth Wright and Baird, or Baird, Wright, and/or Otis Adelbert Kline as editor. Then came a three-month break, during which there could have been another quarterly issue published. Then, finally, in November 1924, there was a return, with Wright as newly promoted editor, a post he would hold for the next fifteen and a little more years.

There weren't any breaks during the Wright years, even if there were changes made along the way. Weird Tales was published continuously during that time, even after Dorothy McIlwraith took over in May 1940. Call that a break if you want. Finally, in September 1953, Weird Tales went from being pulp-sized to being digest-sized, another break if you like. The magazine survived exactly a year in that format.

Leo Margulies acquired the Weird Tales property after the magazine ceased publication. He held it for about twenty years, finally to sell it to Robert Weinberg in the early to mid 1970s. The story is that Margulies wanted to revive Weird Tales as a magazine in the early 1960s. And the story is that Sam Moskowitz talked him out of it for fear Margulies would lose his shirt. Nevertheless, several paperbound anthologies came out at around the fortieth-anniversary year of Weird Tales. All have introductions, either by Margulies or Moskowitz, as well as shorter introductions to individual stories. None of these books is explicitly an anniversary issue, even if all look back with fondness and nostalgia on the Weird Tales years. I think the 1960s and '70s were an age of nostalgia for the popular culture of the 1920s through the 1940s or so. The Weird Tales anthologies came out near the beginning of that age.

I have written before about three of the four Weird Tales anthologies of the early to mid 1960s. They were:

• The Unexpected edited by Leo Margulies (Pyramid Books, Feb. 1961, 160 pp.), with an introduction by Leo Margulies and eleven stories (Margulies called this "a usurer's dozen"), all from Weird Tales. Cover art by John Schoenherr.

• The Ghoul Keepers edited by Leo Margulies (Pyramid Books, Oct. 1961; 1965, 157 pp.), with an introduction by Leo Margulies and nine stories, all from Weird Tales. Cover art by John Schoenherr, recycled from The Unexpected.

• Weird Tales edited by Leo Margulies (Pyramid Books, May 1964, 155 pp.), with an introduction by Leo Margulies and eight stories, all from Weird Tales. Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

• Worlds of Weird edited by Leo Margulies (Pyramid Books, Jan. 1965, 158 pp.), with an introduction, "The Forgotten Creator of Weird Tales, An Introduction . . ." by Sam Moskowitz and seven stories, all from Weird Tales. Cover art and interior illustrations by Virgil Finlay.

Pyramid Books issued two more anthologies at around that time, both edited by L. Sprague de Camp. These are in the same format as the Weird Tales anthologies, but not all of their stories were from "The Unique Magazine." These two books were:

• Swords & Sorcery edited by L. Sprague de Camp (Pyramid Books, Dec. 1963, 186 pp.), with an introduction by L. Sprague de Camp and eight stories, four of which were in Weird Tales. Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

• The Spell of Seven edited by L. Sprague de Camp (Pyramid Books, June 1965, 192 pp.), with an introduction by L. Sprague de Camp and seven stories, two of which were in Weird Tales. Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

One of these books is called Weird Tales. Another was published in 1963. Maybe together they make a fortieth-anniversary issue. Or take all six as an observance and celebration of forty years of Weird Tales. Finally, I should point out that Leo Margulies also reprinted stories from Weird Tales in his magazines of the 1960s, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, in print from 1966 to 1968.

The Jove edition of Weird Tales, published in 1979, is a reprinting of the Pyramid edition of 1964 except that Robert E. Howard's story "Pigeons from Hell" was removed. Also, Virgil Finlay's cover illustration--a good one to be sure--was replaced with this iconic image by Margaret Brundage, originally on the cover of the magazine in October 1933. I'm not sure that any other image is more closely associated with Weird Tales than this one.

By the way, the Pretenders' song "Back on the Chain Gang" includes the lyric "Got in the house like a pigeon from hell." That sounds an awful like a reference to Howard's story. As much as some fans and readers might want themselves and their favorite fiction to be separated and isolated from the real world--as much as they might want to escape from the world--it can't be done. If you're going to think about and write about genre fiction, you have to face the world, its people, its history, and its culture.

Text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley