PulpFest This Week

PulpFest, the annual pulp-fiction and pulp magazine convention, happens this week, from Thursday, August 7, to Sunday, August 10, 2025, in the Pittsburgh area. This year, PulpFest celebrates the sesquicentennial of the births of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), Edgar Wallace (1875-1932), and Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950). There will be programming on all three of those authors as well as on Doc Savage and Philip José Farmer. And there will be film screenings. PulpFest will be held at DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh--Cranberry, located north of Pittsburgh. You can read more about PulpFest by going to their website. Click here for a link.

Weird Tales in The Pulpster

Weird Tales published issue number 366, a sword-and-sorcery issue, in early 2023, but there was no mention in its pages of an anniversary. I found that odd. Did the publisher and editor not know that their magazine was turning 100 years old at about the time they were making their newest issue available? You would think they would, but I think it's very possible that they didn't. We should remember that the businesses behind the magazine have been extremely secretive for years. And we should realize that secrecy is a hallmark of dysfunction. Just be up front. Tell us the truth. We can handle it. We're adults.

I have found out during 2023-2024 that the business behind Weird Tales magazine is also more or less incompetent. We should never underestimate the power of incompetence in making a wreck of things. We see that every day now that we're a quarter of a way through the twenty-fist century. We might actually be living in a Golden Age of Incompetence. One of the bad things about living in a Golden Age of Incompetence is that we might not survive long enough to live in the Silver Age.

Anyway, there is no anniversary content in Weird Tales #366, issued in early 2023. (That issue is otherwise undated.) If there was any on its way, it would have to wait until the next issue was published, which would be--when exactly? We didn't know. So what happened instead? Well, Weird Tales was scooped by The Pulpster, the magazine of the pulp-fiction convention PulpFest, held every year in the Pittsburgh area, formerly in Columbus, Ohio.

Actually Weird Tales was scooped in this very space. After all, I wrote on January 5, 2023 (here), about the one-hundred-year anniversary of "The Unique Magazine." But that wasn't anything in print. Print means something far more significant than do a bunch of organized electrons, and so we have to give PulpFest and The Pulpster credit. If there was anything in print before The Pulpster #32, dated August 2023, I don't know what it was.

PulpFest is an annual pulp fiction/pulp magazine convention, usually held in about the middle of summer. I didn't go in 2023 and I don't have the dates marked on my calendar. I believe it was in about the first week of August as it has been for the past few years. Every year, PulpFest publishes a nicely made magazine called The Pulpster. I have a copy of that magazine from last year's PulpFest. It was a gift from my friend SP, who is an artist, illustrator, and fan of comic book art and popular illustration. Thank you, SP.

The editor of The Pulpster #32, August 2023, was William Lampkin. The assistant editor was Peter Chomko, and the publisher was Mike Chomko. There are five thematic sections included in issue number 32, plus some other content. The fourth section in the magazine is called "A Century of Weird Tales." Its contents:

• "A 'Weird Tales' Club Member's Claim to Fame: Hugh Hefner's Love of the Pulps Was Reflected in His Men's Magazines" by Tony Davis (pp. 42-43+), plus a sidebar called "What Kind of Man Reads 'Blood 'n' Thunder'," also by Tony Davis (p. 43).

• "Remembered for 'Weird Tales,' HPL: Frank Belknap Long Reflects on Writing Supernatural Horror and Science Fiction" by Darrell Schweitzer (first published in Nyctalops 11/12, Apr. 1976) (pp. 46-50).

(Boldface added.)

There are also mentions of Weird Tales and some of its authors elsewhere in the magazine, including in advertisements. The current Weird Tales placed a full-page, full-color advertisement on page 44. That ad includes part of the iconic Bat-Woman cover from November 1933. The copy reads:

Weird Tales

100 Years of Weird

1923 - 2023

A couple of pages before that is an advertisement for the sale of a complete run of Weird Tales. I might have met the man who was offering that collection for sale. That was a few years ago at PulpFest, when it was held in Columbus, Ohio. Anyway, the going price was $125,000. I don't know whether that collection sold or not. At an original average price of about 25 cents per issue, the total price for those magazines would have added up to about $70.

PulpFest is put on and attended by diehard fans. They know their stuff. This is more than what we can say, I think, for some people who are actually active in writing, editing, and publishing genre fiction. So, congratulations to PulpFest and The Pulpster for being first in print (as far as I know) to observe the centennial of Weird Tales, and for its continued success. Next year's event is scheduled for August 7-10, 2025, in the Pittsburgh area.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

PulpFest This Weekend

A gathering of great significance takes place this week in Ohio. No, I'm not talking about the Republican national convention. That's in Cleveland. The gathering to which I refer is PulpFest, the annual pulp magazine convention. Now in its eighth year, PulpFest begins tonight, Thursday, July 21, 2016, at the Hyatt Regency Columbus and continues through Sunday afternoon. Here is a link to the PulpFest website:

http://www.pulpfest.com/

I hope you can make it.

* * *

I have been out of commission these past two weeks. My computer died on July 8. Luckily my hard drive is safe, and I have all my files. I took the poor thing to a computer store. When I told him how old it is, the technician there called it "vintage." That's their official term for a machine that--if it were a person--would this summer be entering first grade. I wonder what that technician would make of a pulp magazine. An impossibly old and hopelessly primitive form of communication? Or a treasure like a cuneiform tablet or the Rosetta stone? Anyway, I'm back in action, if you can call sitting in front of an electronic device "action." I will pick up where I left off with the artists of the Bellerophon Weird Tales, but first with an interruption in the form of a biography of a writer whose 1945 mystery novel The Red Right Hand has been called "strange and terrifying" (New York Times) and "surely one of the dozen or so finest mystery novels of the 20th century" (Jack Adrian). I read it since I left you and I would like to tell you about it before too much longer.

Copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Final Notes from PulpFest

On Saturday evening, August 15, 2015, a panel of enthusiasts and scholars got together at PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio, to talk about the editors of Weird Tales. The panelists were Garyn Roberts, Morgan Holmes, Don Herron, Will Murray, and moderator Tom Krabacher. Their talk is called "Weird Editing at 'The Unique Magazine'." You can hear it on the website The Pulp.Net, here.

On the day of the talk, someone warned me that it could become contentious. I have wondered about the politics behind pulp magazine research and about Weird Tales in particular. I am not an insider in the world of pulps and really have no experience with the political side of things. I asked what the contentiousness might be about but came away without anything concrete. As it turned out, the talk was mostly friendly and only a little contentious. Evidently things were worked out before it began. I have a feeling, though, that the politics of Weird Tales involves mostly H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard--and probably August Derleth, too. Lovecraft and Howard may at times have been handled a little roughly by the magazine. For fans, that kind of handling may very well amount to an unforgivable crime.

I made only a few notes during the talk. Here they are, fleshed out:

• Regarding the origins of Weird Tales, Will Murray mentioned a letter written by Henry S. Whitehead and published in The Writer magazine in 1921 or 1922. In his letter, Whitehead complained about the lack of outlets for stories of ghosts and fairies. That caught my interest, so I looked it up. The letter is called "Editorial Prejudice Against the Occult." It was published in The Writer in October 1922, Volume 34, Number 10, pp. 146-147. You can read the text in Google Books and on the blog Tentaclii::H.P. Lovecraft Blog, August 13, 2014, here. Whitehead got his wish just five months later with the debut of Weird Tales. He went on to have twenty-six stories published in "The Unique Magazine."

• One of the panelists--I think it was Don Herron--brought up Lovecraft's ghostwriting for Harry Houdini. I made a note at that point: "Houdini helped Lovecraft escape from his marriage." My chain of thought in writing that is lost, but Lovecraft returned from New York City to Providence in April 1926. Houdini died six months later, on October 31, 1926. Lovecraft had previously ghostwritten "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," published in the triple-issue Weird Tales of May/June/July 1924. Lovecraft lost his draft of the story on his way to marrying Sonia Greene. He spent his honeymoon retyping the story. By the time two years had passed, Lovecraft was back in the city of his birth and his marriage was for all intents and purposes over.

• J.C. Henneberger famously offered the editorship of Weird Tales to H.P. Lovecraft in 1924. Lovecraft famously declined. In a way, though, Lovecraft was an editor in the way that an editor works with a circle of authors, developing them, mentoring them, encouraging them, suggesting revisions, rewriting stories, etc.

• H.P. Lovecraft was rejected by Weird Tales on several occasions, as Morgan Holmes pointed out in the talk, but he ultimately rejected himself by not acting professionally, retyping his manuscripts, seizing opportunities, or persisting in his pursuit of being a writer; also by excusing himself from work as an old-fashioned gentleman or dilettante, by talking down his work, by giving up easily, in short, by his evident passivity and low self-esteem.

• The talk at PulpFest was about fifty minutes long. Edwin Baird got a couple of minutes. Dorothy McIlwraith, who edited the magazine for fourteen years, got about the same. Dorothy is often passed over, but one of the panelists made a good point, that she may not have published stories as good as those published under Farnsworth Wright, but she also didn't publish stories that were as bad. Otherwise, talk of Wright dominated "Weird Editing at 'The Unique Magazine'." Opinion of him was mixed as it seems to be in general among readers of the pulps.

So that ends my series on Notes from PulpFest. Now on to other things.

The cover of Pinkie at Camp Cherokee, a children's novel by Henry S. Whitehead from 1931.

Text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Notes from PulpFest-H.P.L. at 125

Today, August 20, 2015, is the 125th anniversary of the birth of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, author, poet, essayist, editor, publisher, and perhaps the most prolific writer of letters in human history. PulpFest, the annual pulp magazine convention held in Columbus, Ohio, honored Lovecraft at the convention and on the cover of its annual magazine, The Pulpster. Inside is a long article called "Lovecraft's Lasting Legacy," with contributions from Ramsey Campbell, Darrell Schweitzer, S.T. Joshi, Marvin Kaye, Will Murray, and many others. Happy Birthday, Ech-Pi-El! (The photograph is from 1915.)

This week is also the anniversary of the birth and death of Hugo Gernsback, known as "The Father of Science Fiction." Born Hugo Gernsbacher on August 16, 1884, he came from Luxembourg to the United States in 1904 and set himself up in the electronics business. Soon he was on to radio and eventually television. In the 1910s, he began publishing science fiction. (The term did not come into use until 1929.) In 1926, Gernsback published the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. If I have done my research correctly, he also published the second, third, and fourth science fiction magazines, the Wonder titles of 1929-1930. The Hugo Awards, presented by the World Science Fiction Convention, are named in his honor. (Incidentally, the World Fantasy Awards, presented by the World Fantasy Convention, are cast in the image of H.P. Lovecraft.) Hugo Gernsback died on August 19, 1967, at age eighty-three. Happy Birthday, too, to Hugo Gernsback! (The photograph is from 1918.)

Captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Notes from PulpFest-Who Owns Weird Tales?

Pulp magazines began in 1896, making next year the 120th anniversary of their birth. The anniversary of their death is harder to pin down. Like old soldiers, they just faded away, probably in the 1950s. I read that the last pulp science fiction magazine was published in 1957. Michael Neno tells me that the last pulp of any kind was Ranch Romances, which rode off into the sunset in 1974.

Few titles are left from the pulp era. Analog, which was christened Astounding Stories in 1930, is still in print. So is The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which came into the world in 1949. Both, however, are digest-size and not pulp-size. Amazing Stories is still around but only in digital format. There may be others of that type as well. If Weird Tales were to be issued this year, we might be able to say that it's the last of the magazines from the pulp era still printed at pulp-size, but who knows if it will be published, and if it is, whether it will be pulp-size or magazine-size. Of course the cheap paper, garish covers, muddy interiors, and untrimmed edges are long gone. So, too, is the world in which pulp magazines flourished. Pulp today is more a spirit, a culture, or fiction and art of a certain kind than a physical object you can buy on the newsstand.

Weird Tales made its debut in 1923. The early history of the magazine is a little tricky, and I'll leave that for another day. In 1938, however, Short Stories, Inc., acquired Weird Tales and moved its offices from Chicago to New York. In September 1954, Weird Tales came to an end. My understanding is that editor Leo Margulies acquired the Weird Tales property at about that time (ca. 1954-1955). He may have had plans to revive the magazine, but Sam Moskowitz is supposed to have talked him out of it. Instead, Margulies published a number of paperback anthologies in the 1960s. He also reprinted stories from Weird Tales in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine.

Margulies and Moskowitz revived Weird Tales for four issues in 1973-1974, just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of "The Unique Magazine." Moskowitz the editor relied heavily on reprints of stories from other magazines that had fallen into the public domain. There wasn't much new or even pulp content. Leo Margulies died in December 1975. At about that time (ca. 1974-1975), Robert Weinberg acquired the Weird Tales property and began publishing his own books and periodicals: WT50: A Tribute to Weird Tales in 1974, The Weird Tales Story in 1977, and The Weird Tales Collector from 1977 to 1980. Mr. Weinberg held onto Weird Tales for thirty years or so as I understand it. He finally sold the property to Viacom. In the meantime, the magazine went back into print, as four paperback anthologies in 1980-1983, then in two rare magazine-sized issues in 1984-1985, finally, in varying formats under varying editors and publishers from 1988 to 1994 and 1998 to 2014. We're still waiting for an issue to appear this year.

This weekend at PulpFest, the ownership and editorship of Weird Tales came up again and again. On Friday evening, Philip M. Sherman talked about his uncle Leo Margulies, who owned Weird Tales from circa 1954 to circa 1974. Other people at the show mentioned Robert Weinberg, Darrell Schweitzer, and other authors, editors, and publishers associated with the magazine. I can tell you, there is a lot of confusion on the issue of who owns Weird Tales. Robert Weinberg supposedly owns the copyrights to stories published in the magazine--except that some issues have fallen into the public domain. Viacom I believe owns the Weird Tales trademark if nothing else. (Maybe film or video rights as well.) And now we know that Nth Dimension Media, Inc., is the publisher of Weird Tales magazine. But how? Under a license? Is Weird Tales split into various pieces, each owned by separate persons? The bigger question is this: why don't we know?

The publishers of Weird Tales went through a controversy lately, and we might be tempted to ascribe its absence to that. But one dealer I talked to said that it became impossible to find the magazine when it was recently in print. Another dealer or collector mentioned that Weird Tales had lost its distributor. So maybe the Mystery of the Missing Magazine has more to do with economics and logistics than anything else. None of this is new, of course. All of it is emblematic of Weird Tales throughout its troubled history.

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Notes from PulpFest-The Mystery of the Missing Magazine

I came away from PulpFest with a copy of The Pulpster, the official publication of the convention. A colorized photograph of H.P. Lovecraft is on the cover, and inside is an article called "Lovecraft's Lasting Legacy," written by various authors, editors, fans, and critics of Lovecraft and Weird Tales. Marvin Kaye contributed to "Lovecraft's Lasting Legacy" and provides clues to the Mystery of the Missing Magazine, which has not been seen in print in more than a year.

Sometime within the last decade, Mr. Kaye went to work for the Jekyll and Hyde Club in New York City. "I was given the role of Mr. Shroud," he writes, "the head butler and major-domo to Dr. Jekyll." (p. 46) In that role, Marvin Kaye (b. 1938) met fellow actor John Harlacher (b. 1976). Sharing a taste for the macabre, the two became friends. Upon learning that Mr. Kaye had once edited H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror (6 issues, 2004-2009), Mr. Harlacher urged him to acquire the property from John Gregory Betancourt (b. 1963). To Mr. Kaye's surprise, Mr. Betancourt, when contacted, offered him Weird Tales to go with H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror, all for a bargain price. With both magazines in the bag, Marvin Kaye and John Harlacher created Nth Dimension Media, Inc., with Mr. Kaye as editor and Mr. Harlacher as publisher. That transaction took place in 2011. 

I don't know what legal arrangement the two men might have, but in my previous article, I suggested that Marvin Kaye the editor might be subordinate to John Harlacher the publisher. That's not necessarily the case. I also suggested that it was Mr. Kaye's decision to print an excerpt from Save the Pearls: Revealing Eden by Victoria Hoyt (2012) and that John Harlacher objected to that plan (at least after controversy inevitably and predictably ensued). According to Jeff VanderMeer, however, Mr. Harlacher and Mr. Kaye had dinner with his wife, then-editor Ann VanderMeer, in June 2012 (I think), during which they talked about their plans to print an excerpt from Revealing Eden. She advised them against it. That and other disagreements precipitated her resignation. John Harlacher may have tried to put a damper on the controversy, but it was already too late. To read accounts now, he seemed only to have thrown more fuel on the fire with his apologies and explanations.

Part of the problem in trying to reconstruct the sequence of events here is that the website for Weird Tales is no longer in existence except for as a placeholder, as one of my readers pointed out. There are still websites where you can read about the controversy over Revealing Eden, but only from one side, the side of the aggrieved. (1) The best place to start might be on a blog posting called "Weird Tales, Ann VanderMeer, and Utter Stupidity" by Jeff VanderMeer (her husband), dated August 20, 2012, here. Weird Tales itself remains silent.

Ann VanderMeer stayed on as editor for one issue of Weird Tales after its acquisition by Nth Dimension Media. That was the Winter 2012 issue, Volume 66, Number 3, whole issue number 359. Three issues edited by Marvin Kaye followed:

• Cthulhu Returns Issue, with a tribute to Ray Bradbury--Fall 2012 (Vol. 66, No. 4) #360
• Fairy Tales Issue--Summer 2013 (Vol. 67, No. 1) #361
• Undead Issue--Spring 2014 (Vol. 67, No. 2) #362

In this year's issue of The Pulpster, Mr. Kaye states: "[T]he next issue [of Weird Tales] in development is our 'Swords and Sorcery' issue." (p. 46) I don't know when Mr. Kaye wrote those words. I presume it would have been since last year's PulpFest, as decisions about next year's themes are worked out during this year's show. I don't suppose it matters. The controversy over Revealing Eden (though maybe not over Marvin Kaye or his company's actions) has died down. Nth Dimension Media has had more than a year during which to get a new issue in print. There are no doubt scads of sword-and-sorcery stories and art available for publication. And, still, Weird Tales is missing.

In closing his essay, Marvin Kaye writes:

Though [Weird Tales] was closed down several times, it always returns, which is why I called it "the magazine that never dies." It is now in its 92nd year. May it go on until it is at least 200-years-old, and beyond!

I wonder if he sees any irony in those words.

Note

(1) The controversy over Revealing Eden suggests that the current owners of the license to Weird Tales might have reason to remove the content of the website themselves. We simply can't say.

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Where Is Weird Tales?

Weird Tales has been called "The Magazine That Never Dies," and in the ninety-two years since it was first published, Weird Tales has lived up to that sobriquet. This week, Weird Tales is being celebrated at PulpFest, the annual pulp magazine convention held in Columbus, Ohio. H.P. Lovecraft, who probably helped keep the magazine afloat, is also being celebrated on the 125th anniversary of his birth. Lovecraft is long gone. But where is Weird Tales?

Weird Tales was last seen in Spring 2014 when Volume 67, Number 2--whole issue number 362--was published. The editor was Marvin Kaye, the man who many years ago nicknamed his recent charge "The Magazine That Never Dies." It's either a coincidence or an irony that the Spring 2014 issue was subtitled "The Undead Issue," for the magazine that never dies appears to have done so after all. But then it has died before and has always come back, in 1924, 1973, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1998. Although Weird Tales was in print in almost every year from 1988 to 2014, the roster of publishers and editors in that time became bewildering. And now the magazine is lost.

Marvin Kaye succeeded the widely admired Ann VanderMeer as editor of Weird Tales with the Fall 2012 issue. He was at the helm for just three issues, Fall 2012, Summer 2013, and Spring 2014. Somewhere along the line he got himself into some trouble when he announced that Weird Tales would print an excerpt from Save the Pearls Part One: Revealing Eden by Victoria Foyt (2012). Written for young people, Revealing Eden is a dystopian or post-apocalyptic novel of a world ruined by global warming. (1) If she had stopped with global warming, the author (and Marvin Kaye) probably wouldn't have caught any grief. It is, after all, a politically favored idea. Instead, Ms. Foyt proceeded to tell a story in which white people--the "pearls" of the title--are lower in status than are black people, specifically because of their skin color. (Black people are called "coals" in the book.) Ms. Foyt's book was self-published; the weight of the inevitable political charges against her might only have dragged her down. But then Marvin Kaye chained himself to Victoria Foyt's anchor, and he, too, went under when fans, authors, and publisher John Harlacher objected to his plan to reprint Revealing Eden. [Update, Aug. 19, 2015: John Harlacher's objection may only have been an attempt at damage control for a decision that he and Mr. Kaye may have made together. We can't be sure of some of these things because all the content on the Weird Tales website is gone.]

But is that why Weird Tales is missing from the scene? I don't know. If you look at the supposed website of the magazine, which is called Weird Tales but is found at a URL called www.weirdtailors.com (for some unknown reason), you will find only an image of the Undead Issue cover by Danielle Tunstall. (2) The website has been like that for almost a year. A former staff member told me that the original website was wiped out by another former staff member who, unbeknownst to his coworkers, had it stored on his own server. That sounds like a disgruntled former staff member. Whatever the case may be, he was probably well qualified to work for Hillary Clinton after that. No one since has rebuilt the Weird Tales website, and so it shows, appropriately, only the image of a zombie.

Weird Tales in its last four issues (from Winter 2012 to Spring 2014) was published by Nth Dimension Media, Inc., with an address at 105 West 86th Street, Suite 307, New York, NY 10024. The man in charge presumably is or was actor, director, and producer John Harlacher (b. 1976). However, the Weird Tales property itself is owned by Viacom, which acquired it from Robert Weinberg. I can't say for sure, but I presume Nth Dimension Media is or was operating under a license from Viacom, which may have had some plans for it, but nothing seems to have come of any of its plans or anybody else's plans. So as you can see, Weird Tales is still lost or missing.

Or dead.

Or maybe mostly dead, like Westley from The Princess Bride.

But Weird Tales has always returned from the dead, and I would wager it will again. But it won't be in time for PulpFest this weekend, so we'll have to celebrate without it. (3)

Notes

(1) Oddly, Revealing Eden, the first book in the Save the Pearls series, won an Eric Hoffer Award for the Young Adult Category in 2012. So some people liked it and some people hated it. Not having read it, I can't say what merits, if any, the book might have.

(2) The URL:

http://www.weirdtalesmagazine.com

redirects to:

www.weirdtailors.com

(3) As an aside, Weird Tales, in its first incarnation, was in print during every year from 1923 to 1954. In later incarnations, Weird Tales was in print in every year from 1988 to 1994 and from 1998 to 2014. If no issue comes out this year, then the second longest string of publication will be broken and we'll be starting over again at year one.

The most recent--or maybe the last--issue of Weird Tales, No. 362 from Spring 2014. The artist is Danielle Tunstall, a British artist and photographer. Note the ubiquitous zombie. If Weird Tales has died again, here's hoping for a resurrection or maybe a reanimation. Where's Herbert West when you need him?

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

This Week in Columbus: PulpFest

I'm taking time out from my series on politics in science fiction to let you know that the 44th PulpFest is taking place this week in Columbus, Ohio. The convention begins on Thursday afternoon, August 13, 2015, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Columbus and will run until 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon, August 16, 2015. This year, PulpFest will be celebrating the 125th anniversary of the birth of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as the magazine that showcased his work, Weird Tales. This year's guest artist will be Jon Arfstrom, cover artist for the original Weird Tales magazine. If you would like to learn more about PulpFest, click on the following link:

http://www.pulpfest.com/

One of the great questions about Weird Tales is: Why didn't H.P. Lovecraft ever get a cover story? I have a possible answer: His byline was guaranteed to sell magazines, so the magazine didn't need a Lovecraft cover story in order to appeal to its readers. Weak, but a possibility. I have another possible answer: maybe Lovecraft's work didn't lend itself very well to cover art, especially for a magazine that would have been displayed on the newsstand for a general readership vs. for a specialized readership. Weaker still and not really worth considering. In any case, it isn't true that Lovecraft never got a cover story in Weird Tales. In fact he got exactly one--this one--from May 1942. The problem was, you had to live in Canada to pick up a copy. The cover story was "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," rejected by editor Farnsworth Wright in 1933, published in booklet form in 1936, finally published in Weird Tales in January 1942, then reprinted in the Canadian edition of May 1942. This cover dispels any possibility that Lovecraft's stories may not have lent themselves to cover art. The Canadian-American illustrator and cartoonist Edmond Good (1910-1991) was the man behind the cover. He is in a category of one.

Here is Jon Arfstrom's first cover for Weird Tales. It was published in January 1952 when the artist was barely twenty-three years old. Now eighty-six, Mr. Arfstrom is one of the last living contributors to the original Weird Tales. I hope to see him at PulpFest.

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley