I have been writing about anniversaries of Weird Tales and observances of those anniversaries within the pages of the magazine, as well as in other publications. Here is a list of my articles about Weird Tales in its sixties and seventies:
- "Weird Tales: Years without Anniversaries" (Sept. 14, 2024) is about the years 1978, during which there weren't any issues published, and 1983, in which Lin Carter's fourth Weird Tales paperback came out. I don't have a copy of that book, and so I wasn't able to say whether there was any anniversary content in its pages. Nineteen eighty-three was the sixtieth-anniversary year of Weird Tales.
- Luckily, Phil Stephenson-Payne, who conducts the website The FictionMags Index, does have a copy of that book. He provided us with an excerpt from Lin Carter's essay from Weird Tales #4 (1983). I transcribed that text into an article called "Weird Tales at Sixty" (Sept. 15, 2024).
- On September 17, 2024, I posted an article called "More of Weird Tales at Sixty." That article is about Robert Weinberg's program book for the World Fantasy Convention, held in Chicago in October 1983. The late Mr. Weinberg's book is overtly an anniversary issue and has a lot of anniversary-related content.
- In "World Tales (1985)" (Sept. 19, 2024), I wrote about the program book of the World Fantasy Convention held in Tucson, Arizona, in October-November 1985. Created by Donald D. Markstein, that book was made to look like an issue of Weird Tales from the 1940s, but it isn't an anniversary issue. For the sake of completeness, I have included it in my blog. Before you reach the end of this article, you will see another publication included for the sake of completeness.
- "Weird Tales at Sixty-Five" (Sept. 21, 2024) is about the Spring 1988 issue of Weird Tales, the first issue after a hiatus. That publication, too, was overtly an anniversary issue, as indicated on its front and back covers. I don't have a copy of it (yet), but Mike Harwood was kind enough to send images of an introductory essay, written by "The Editors," and published as an entry of "The Eyrie." That essay is four pages long. Maybe I'll post it on this blog, but not yet. Anyway, the Editors made a really noteworthy distinction when they wrote: "We intend to resurrect the magazine, not to exhume it." They weren't interested in what they called "necrophilia" regarding long-dead authors and their works. As in seemingly every other anniversary essay, they made a list of authors. Fortunately, their list makes up a small percentage of their overall word count. I take that to be something less than mere filler. On the back cover, as well as in "The Eyrie," they gave some space to both H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Despite objections beginning perhaps with Robert Bloch and more recently from Jeff VanderMeer, editors and publishers of weird fiction know on which side their bread is buttered. I feel certain they will continue to publish stories of the Cthulhu Mythos and of heroic fantasy. Witness the issues of Weird Tales published in 2022-2023. Thank you, Mr. Harwood for your contribution.
- "Weird Tales at Seventy & Seventy-Five" (Sept. 23, 2024) is about two issues, those of Spring 1993 (70 years) and Summer 1998 (75 years). Phil Stephenson-Payne has let us know that he didn't find any mention of an anniversary in the former but that there is mention of the seventy-fifth anniversary in the latter. Thank you, Mr. Stephenson-Payne.
There was a break in the publication of Weird Tales from Spring 1994 to Summer 1998. During that time, there was a magazine called Worlds of Fantasy & Horror that was basically Weird Tales but without the title. Weird Tales came back with the Summer 1998 issue, mentioned above. So again, an anniversary issue came at the end of a break in publication. I guess we can call that a pattern. Thanks to Mike Harwood for pointing this out.
Mike Harwood has also let us know that Satellite TV Europe published a magazine called Weird Tales, complete with the classic main title logo, in March 1997, just in time for the seventy-fourth anniversary of the magazine. The name of the cover artist is unknown. According to Mr. Harwood, there isn't any fiction in that magazine, only non-fiction about movies and TV shows. Below is the image of the cover that Mr. Harwood sent to me. Thanks again to Mike Harwood.
Corrected on September 26, 2024.
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley
Hi Terrence,
ReplyDeleteThanks for rapidly correcting my earlier error that the Sci-Fi Channel had published the Satellite TV Europe magazine. I'm constantly fuming at people on Wikipedia for posting their faulty recollections as facts on the internet, and then I go and do it myself! I'm glad that I spotted the mistake myself before somebody else pointed it out in the comments, and offer my apologies to anybody misled by the earlier version of this post.
Hi, Mike,
DeleteI understand your concerns. Please know that I have made plenty of mistakes on this blog. Nobody likes to make mistakes, but I consider a lot of what we do here to be basically a first draft. Mistakes are allowed as long as we correct them.
I would like to be more positive and say thank you for providing us with the image above and for the facts on this magazine. As far as I know, no one has ever written before about the Satellite TV Europe version of Weird Tales, and the image on its cover is otherwise unfindable on the Internet. So thank you.
Terence Hanley