Darkness at Noon

After writing the other day about weird webs and science fiction lines, I finished reading Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1941). In it, I came upon a word I had used in what I wrote: oceanic. I didn't go looking for it. It found me. In using the word oceanic, I was referring to a kind of loss of direction or location in time and space, a loss of boundaries that occurs when a person encounters weird, or becomes immersed or enmeshed in the uncanny, the supernatural, or any of the inexplicable things that may be found in our universe. Here is Koestler's explanation of oceanic:

And yet there were ways of approach to him. Sometimes he would respond unexpectedly to a tune, or even the memory of a tune, or of the folded hands of the Pietà, or of certain scenes of his childhood. As if a tuning-fork had been struck, there would be answering vibrations, and once this had started a state would be produced which the mystics called "ecstasy" and saints "contemplation"; the greatest and soberest of modern psychologists had recognized this state as a fact and called it the "oceanic sense". And, indeed, one's personality dissolved as a grain of salt in the sea; but at the same time the infinite sea seemed to be contained in the grain of salt. The grain could no longer be localized in time and space. It was a state in which thought lost its direction and started to circle, like the compass needle at the magnetic pole; until finally it cut loose from its axis and travelled freely in space, like a bunch of light in the night; and until it seemed that all thoughts and all sensations, even pain and joy itself, were only the spectrum lines of the same ray of light, disintegrating in the prisma of consciousness. (pp. 206-207)

Now I find that oceanic is a Freudian word and concept.

Darkness at Noon is about a man named Rubashov being held prisoner of a radical revolutionary regime--a Marxist and Stalinist regime--even though he is himself a radical revolutionary. I have written before about reason versus irrationality. One of the themes of Koestler's book is of that conflict. If reason is a primary quality of science fiction, and irrationality is a quality, if not a primary quality, of weird fiction, then this quote pertains:

When he had read that newspaper notice, then also alone in his cell, with joints still sore from the last bout of torturing, he had fallen into a queer state of exaltation--the "oceanic sense" had swept him away. Afterwards he had been ashamed of himself. The Party disapproved of such states. It called them petit-bourgeois mysticism, refuge in the ivory tower. It called them "escape from the task", "desertion of the class struggle". The "oceanic sense" was counter-revolutionary. [Emphasis added.] (p. 208)

I have written before, too, about how so much science fiction is progressive, that the basic philosophy behind it is in fact progressive. Progressivism, at least in science fiction, need not become political in nature, but it often does. So in political terms, progressivism, leftism, or Marxism is at odds with ecstatic, mystic, or oceanic states. (Another associated word in Darkness at Noon is romantic or romanticism.) Again: The "oceanic sense" was counter-revolutionary.

The paragraph following that quote reads:

     For in a struggle one must have both legs firmly planted on the earth. The Party taught one how to do it. The infinite was a politically suspect quantity, the "I" a suspect quality. The Party did not recognize its existence. The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

Here are echoes of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924), also of Anthem by Ayn Rand (1938). But especially We: "The infinite was a politically suspect quantity" echoes the words of the female rebel against the United State, I-330, who says:

     "And why then do you think there is a last revolution? There is no last revolution, their number is infinite . . . . The 'last one' is a children's story. Children are afraid of the infinite, and it is necessary that children should not be frightened, so that they may sleep through the night." [Ellipses in the original.]

Contemplation of the infinite, then, evokes fear, fear is irrational, and as such must be tamped down, if not eliminated.

I-330's philosophical opponent, D-503, whom she is trying to seduce into rebellion, writes early on:

I feel my cheeks burn as I write this. To integrate the colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to straighten it out to a tangent--to a straight line! For the United State is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines!

Here are more of his words:

From beyond the Wall, from the infinite ocean of green there rose toward me an immense wave of roots, branches, flowers, leaves. It rose higher and higher; it seemed as though it would splash over me and that from a man, from the finest and most precise mechanism which I am, I would be transformed into . . . . But fortunately there was the Green Wall between me and that wild green sea. Oh, how great and divinely limiting is the wisdom of walls and bars! This Green Wall is I think the greatest invention ever conceived. Man ceased to be a wild animal the day he built the first wall; man ceased to be a wild man only on the day when the Green Wall was completed, when by this wall we isolated our machine-like, perfect world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds and beasts . . . .

Notice these words in their negative connotations, negative, that is, to a man caught in the passionate embrace of reason: ocean, wave, wild, sea, irrational.

So in the literature of dystopia and totalitarianism, lines and limits, gray, manmade structures of iron and concrete--even if they are prisons--appear to be both desirable and in opposition to the curved, the infinite, the wild, the green, the oceanic. (Leaves and seas are green.) Reason and logic are also desirable and also in opposition to the irrational. (Remember that D-503 is building a rocketship that will be used to "subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets.") Could there be the same oppositions in other types of genre fiction, such as in science fiction versus weird fiction?

Another long quote from Darkness at Noon:

     For forty years he had lived strictly in accordance with the vows of his order, the Party. He had held to the rules of logical calculation. He had burnt the remains of the old, illogical morality from his consciousness with the acid of reason. He had turned away from the temptations of the silent partner, and had fought against the "oceanic sense" with all his might. And where had it landed him? Premises of unimpeachable truth had led to a result which was completely absurd; Ivanov's and Gletkin's [both are party men] irrefutable deductions had taken him straight into the weird and ghostly game of the public trial. Perhaps it was not suitable for a man to think every thought to its logical conclusion.

     Rubashov stared through the bars of the window at the patch of blue above the machine-gun tower. Looking back over his past, it seemed to him now that for forty years he had been running amuck--the running-amuck of pure reason. Perhaps it did not suit man to be completely freed from old bonds, from the steadying brakes of "Thou shalt not" and "Thou mayst not", and to be allowed to tear along straight towards the goal. (p. 209)

Again, notice the language: "logical calculation" and "the acid of reason" versus "illogical morality"; "[p]remises" and "irrefutable deductions" that lead "straight into"--i.e., along lines--to absurdities and "the weird and ghostly game of trial." The breaking of bonds, the shattering of traditional limits, the being "allowed to tear along straight towards the goal." And the realization:

Perhaps it was not suitable for a man to think every thought to its logical conclusion.

Maybe it's better to remain within limits, for some things to remain unexplored and unknown, and for something other than logic and reason to be sometimes our guide.

* * *

In addition to We and Anthem, I see themes in common with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Koestler and Orwell knew each other. Orwell seems to have been the more decent of the two. In any case, I have a feeling he was influenced by Koestler and his novel. Both books are bleak and depressing. Both are about defeat at the hands of a powerful and ruthless State. In both, the assertion is put forth by the State and the Party that the ends justify the means. In both, the protagonist is imprisoned and tormented by a questioner, even if O'Brien is far worse than Gletkin in that role. And in both, the protagonist betrays his lover. By the way, this year is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The year in which the novel takes place is now forty years past . . .

And now here we are again, engaged in a struggle. The political opposition is being jailed in America. Europe is still after what one of Koestler's characters referred to as "a certain wheat-growing province inhabited by a national minority." (p. 175) Throughout the West, there is censorship and enforced silence, also criminalized speech and criminalized thought. In our country, we have a party which seems to believe in its relentless quest for power that the ends always justify the means. That, too, is a theme in Darkness at Noon. Rubashov comments upon "the moral superiority of the victim." (p. 171) We have that in our country, too. It has gone so far that members of the religion of pieces, who are seen as the oppressed, are given intellectual license to murder those who are seen as their oppressors. The murdered were, after all, only Jews. And in America, too, a delusional young woman is counted among the victims of her own bloody massacre of helpless and innocent children in a school in Tennessee. The murdered were, after all, only children. They were, after all, only Christians. She was a victim, thus she was morally superior to them. If they were not oppressors, they were at least the children of oppressors at whom she might strike with her fully justifiable violence . . .

The parallels between Koestler's unnamed country--a country in the grip of Marxist revolutionaries--and our own could go on. A paradox, though: parallel lines may be lines but they may never meet, even when carried into infinitude . . .

To make an allusion to a different work and a different form of socialism, this summer our American Melakon machine-gunned our John Gill. He is now out of the way and she can seek after his power, prestige, and position. (Her name and Melakon's are almost anagrams of each other.) I have another pertinent quote from Darkness at Noon. I believe this is originally from the eighteenth-century French revolutionary Danton. It's fitting in its use of the feminine pronoun:

"Tyranny is afoot; she has torn her veil, she carries her head high, she strides over our dead bodies." (p. 204)

That's still a little excessive when it comes to our Melakon, but give her time, give her time.

We should remember that the impulse towards tyranny is in all of us. It becomes especially pronounced in some people, though, and too often they pursue political power so as to satisfy their impulses and to ameliorate their inner disquiet, for they cannot be happy until they stride over us and remake the world according to their own visions, even if that involves the murder of millions. If we want a better understanding of them, their impulses, and their visions, also their disquiets and inner torments, it's good to read books like Darkness at Noon and Nineteen Eighty-Four, We and Anthem, and on and on, into The True Believer and The Psychopathic God, book after book, account after account.

So begin.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Takings and Turnings

Some object to the supposition that Allison V. Harding was not a woman but a man, believing--rightly I should add--that the things that are women's should remain women's and not be taken from them. Yet every day in America, the things that are women's are being taken from them, most importantly the integrity of their bodies and of their sex, also their uniquely female experiences and identities. The things and places that are or should be women's are being taken from them, too. Women are now not always the victors in women's sports. Some sports records are held not by women but by men. Women and girls are no longer safe in women's restrooms, dressing rooms, changing rooms, shower rooms, and locker rooms. Men have entered women's prisons and women's shelters and have assaulted them there, sexually and otherwise. The takers in all of this are men, but they are being helped in many cases by women. Others who object are forced to remain silent, all that is, but the most powerful among them. Even then, these powerful women are vilified, and there are attempts to strip them of their power, to strip them even of their own creations. If we're looking for a case in which there are real attempts at silencing and erasing a woman writer and to take from her the things that she has created, look no further than that of J.K. Rowling. Men are doing that and women are helping them.

I have written before about the desire afoot in this world to destroy the past and everything that remains of the past. There is that negative goal to be sure, but I have overlooked the possibility that there could be a positive goal to replace it. The desire to destroy is a powerful one, but what comes after the destruction? The skilled destroyers among us can only wake up empty once they have done their work--either that or cast about for fresh, new things to destroy. The replacers, though, still have their goals and may pursue them through and past all of the destruction.

We have given up on God, and so there can be no spiritual transcendence. The yearning for transcendence remains, though, and so we replace spiritual transcendence with other kinds of attempted transitions, transferences, and transmutations. Ordinarily, we seek spiritual transcendence of the body and of our earthly experience because God and a purely spiritual existence lie on the other side. The replacers among us have decided that we are Gods--each one of us, capital-"G" Gods. We have usurped his role, believing we have his wisdom and authority, are confident that we can exert his power. We believe we can remake his world and his universe, of which we are a part. We believe we can remake ourselves in our own image. Whatever we can envision--whatever we might want of ourselves--we can become. We have become Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.

Weird fiction has its limitations. For one, it tends to be told in the form of a tale: One time this weird thing happened when somehow I stepped outside the normal world and normal experience, but then I came back, or: I witnessed this weird thing that came into our universe but then went away again, but we should be on the lookout for that ever happening again. The weird tale--tale being the operative word--tends to be a premodern form. Science fiction, on the other hand, tends to more sophisticated and modernistic. And it takes place in the real, material world. It isn't weird. It's real and normal, logical and rational. Weird fiction is also a prewar genre. Once the world was awakened from a sometimes irrational past into a scientific and technological present of atomic bombs and rocketships, of the possibilities of apocalypse and dystopia, of alienation and all of the psychopathology of modern living, weird fiction lost much of its power. Science fiction became the alternative. Before the war there were monster movies. After the war, Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein. Meanwhile, science fiction came into the movies, and we had The War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There were weird-fictional monsters after the war--vampires and zombies for example--but these were often given scientific explanations, such as in The Last Man on Earth, Night of the Living Dead, and The Omega Man. Other weird tales were turned into types of horror, including body-horror (An American Werewolf in London) and the horror of the psychopathic killer, who was depicted as a supernatural or almost supernatural phenomenon, even if psychopathy is seen in our time as a scientific, medical, psychological, or sociological (i.e., a "soft"-scientific) problem. There were exceptions of course. I'm working here in generalizations.

Before the war there were serious authors who wrote weird fiction--their tales tended to be called "ghost stories"--but before the war there doesn't seem to have been any great discontinuity between serious literature and genre literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Henry James, and still others wrote in those genres. Some authors of the American South before and after operated in what is called the "Southern Gothic" mode. After the war, though, serious literature turned away from weird fiction and ghost stories and towards science fiction. Again, there were exceptions. Flannery O'Connor, Shirley Jackson, and Joyce Carol Oates have worked in Gothic modes. But when turning to genre fiction for their subjects and themes, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Walker Percy, and others like them have chosen science fiction rather than weird fiction as their preferred mode. Put another way, science fiction is fiction, a higher and more literary form, versus weird fiction as a folk form, simpler form, or more popular form. Again, there are exceptions, H.P. Lovecraft being a notable example.

Still working in generalizations.

My point here is that we are living in and will continue to live in a science-fictional world and a science-fictional society. The real-world problems and threats confronting us are science-fictional, not weird-fictional: We have done away with the supernatural--or think we have done away with it--and have turned entirely towards the material and the scientific--or at least what we call the scientific. We face threats in the form of apocalypse and dystopia, but for now at least, the greater threats, I think, are our development of artificial intelligence, our turning towards robots and away from human beings, and perhaps greatest of all, our seeking to transcend ourselves as we were created towards something we believe we ourselves can create--or re-create. Again, we believe that we and the universe in which we find ourselves are flawed. And we believe ourselves capable--wise enough and powerful enough--to remake all of it. These attempts to correct our perceived flaws, to remake ourselves, to transcend ourselves, to remake the entire world and all of human nature--the belief that we can do these things--can be seen as a kind of gnosticism, if I understand the term and the concept correctly.

There are new gnostics--new progressives and new utopians--among us. Two of them were born in the 1930s--the last decade, by the way, in which weird fiction may still have stood above science fiction in popularity. These men, both from central Europe--a place of origin for so many twentieth-century horrors--don't have long for this earth. We can't rejoice that they will die, nor should we. That's not the point. The point is that they and everyone like them will die, and all of the grand ideas filling their heads will die with them. That's the fate of all of us, now and until the end of time. There is no escaping it. Our physical bodies are mortal. That's how we were made. We cannot transcend them, at least on our own and under our own power. We certainly can't transmute them. We cannot be anything other than what we are. It is essential that we all remember these things and hold them in our thoughts every day. 

The science-fictional idea is that we will progress into the future. The weird-fictional alternative might be that we are bound to ourselves and the world as we and it were created in a supernatural beginning and which continue to operate under supernatural auspices. We may try to escape those bounds, but our destiny or fate is either to return or to face the dire consequences of our transgressions. How many transgressive weird-fictional heroes and protagonists are punished or suffer these consequences in the end? Dr. Frankenstein is certainly one of them and may have been the first. His example is still with us. We should heed it.

Victor (an ironic name) Frankenstein tried to create a man where there was never before a man. Medical doctors today are trying to make men where there were never men and women where there were never women. Technologists would like to create beings out of machinery and souls where there were never before souls. These are things that simply can't be done. Women can never have the things that are men's. Beyond that, after their attempted transitions, they will never again have a chance at the things that are women's. They might as well try to get with child a mandrake root. But all women should remember that men in attempted transition may very well continue to have the things that are men's and take from women the things that are women's. Women in attempted transition give things up; men in attempted transition become takers. Remember that.

Trans- . . . that prefix . . . The word weird has to do with fate or destiny, but it also has to do with turning or becoming. To transgress, to transition, to transmute, to become transhuman, to pursue transference, to transcend--all are a kind of turning or becoming. But what things can we do strictly on our own, and what others will forever lie beyond our power? Transgression--our first sin--is a choice placed before us. Transcendence--offered to us so that we might live--is the alternative. All of these other things can only lead to earthly and bodily horrors.

And then maybe we will have a return to weird fiction.

In this cover for Mandrake the Magician, magic meets science--and wins!--but only by resorting to good old-fashioned fisticuffs. Note the Frankenstein-village setting of the Gothic romance juxtaposed with the flying saucers of science fiction. The monsters of science fiction have taken the place of those of weird fiction. Note, too, that the aliens and their ship (like a cupola) are entirely green.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

C. Hall Thompson (1923-1991)

Né Charles John Thompson
Author
Born March 17, 1923, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died February 11, 1991, presumably in Pennsylvania

C. Hall Thompson's name came up the other day while I was writing about Viking stories. He didn't write any Viking stories that I know of, but he did write a few Northerns--the Alaskan and Canadian type, not the Viking type--and several Westerns. He also wrote four stories for Weird Tales. While looking into his life and career, I came across an interesting bit of speculation put forth on the Internet. I'll get to that in a minute.

C. Hall Thompson and Weird Tales made their debut in the same month, March 1923. He was born on St. Patrick's Day and was christened almost three months later, on June 10, 1923, at Tabor Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. His baptismal name was Charles John Thompson. The Charles part came from his father. Before he was even out of high school, Thompson, a budding author, had adopted a pseudonym: from at least 1942 until the closing out of his career, he called himself C. Hall Thompson. The Hall part came from his mother, Helen Hall Thompson.

Thompson graduated from South Philadelphia High School for Boys in June 1942. He would have been a year older than his classmates, but I don't have an explanation for his delayed graduation. Even then he was a writer, for Thompson penned the review of his graduating class, calling it "Southern for Service." He may have been the Charles J. Thompson who, as a student at Vare Junior High School in Philadelphia, won second prize (junior group) and the grand sum of $3 for his entry in the National Peace Poster Contest in March 1938. Despite his efforts, war came to Europe a year and a half later. Although Thompson was of an age to serve when America went to war, I don't know that he did. However, he filled out a draft card in 1942 while residing in Philadelphia.

Thompson appears to have lived in Philadelphia and nearby places in Pennsylvania for all or most of his life, but I know almost nothing about him, and neither does anybody else as far as I can tell. Like I said, he had four stories in Weird Tales:

• "Spawn of the Green Abyss" (Nov. 1946)
• "The Will of Claude Ashur" (July 1947)
• "The Pale Criminal" (Sept. 1947)
• "Clay" (May 1948)

All have been reprinted again and again and a couple have even been translated and published in European editions.

Thompson's popularity as a teller of weird tales can be attributed in part to his authorship of some of the first Cthulhu Mythos stories told after the death of H.P. Lovecraft--told, that is, by someone other than members of Lovecraft's circle. (Lovecraft died two days before Thompson's fourteenth birthday.) There is a story on the Internet that August Derleth threatened Thompson with legal action if he did not cease writing tales set in a Lovecraftian universe. That story arrives without citation or attribution, but it would seem to go along with Derleth's reputation. (The more I read about him in regards to Lovecraft, the less I like him: Derleth seems to have been a man who loved something so much that he thought it was his.) Chased away from Weird Tales or not, Thompson sold nearly four dozen stories to Adventure, Argosy, Dime Western Stories, Frontier Stories, North-West Romances, 10 Story Western Magazine, and other titles, mostly Westerns, over the next six years. He also broke into the slicks with stories in Collier's and Esquire.

Thompson's magazine stories were published between 1945 and 1954 when their author was in his twenties and early thirties. Then, in the same year that Weird Tales came to an end, Thompson's magazine credits seem to have dried up. Pulps in general were dying off by the early 1950s, but Westerns were still strong, in paperback, at the movie theater, and on TV. Thompson had a few Westerns published in the 1950s: A Gun for Billy Reo in 1955, Under the Badge in 1957, and Montana! in 1959. Ace Double Editions issued Thompson's Western novel The Killing of Hallie James in 1969. Thompson is also supposed to have written stories for Sunday newspaper sections.

There is speculation online that C. Hall Thompson was the pseudonymous author of "The Dunstable Horror" (Apr. 1964) and "The Crib of Hell" (May 1965), both in Fantastic Stories of Imagination. (That thread appears on the website Thomas Ligotti Online, here.) Not very long ago (in geologic terms) I was working on some research to do with Lee Brown Coye. As it turns out, Coye illustrated "The Dunstable Horror," a serviceable pastiche of Lovecraft (and far superior to Derleth's own novel The Lurker at the Threshold, from 1945). This was Coye's final work for Fantastic. By 1964 he had already begun working for Derleth and Derleth's Arkham House. Coye had previously illustrated "The Will of Claude Ashur" and "Clay" by Thompson in Weird Tales. If Pendragon was indeed a pseudonym of C. Hall Thompson, then Coye would already have been familiar with his work.

In the summer of 1951, Thompson married Italian-born Isabella Elda Pirritano (1924-2009), a recent graduate of Temple University who had studied secondary education. She was also a choral singer. I don't know anything about their lives nor their long years together after 1969. Charles J. Thompson died on February 11, 1991, and was buried at Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. His wife survived him by nearly two decades and was laid to rest beside him in 2009.

C. Hall Thompson's Stories in Weird Tales

"Spawn of the Green Abyss" (Nov. 1946)

"The Will of Claude Ashur" (July 1947)

"The Pale Criminal" (Sept. 1947)

"Clay" (May 1948)

Further Reading

None except to read Thompson's stories.

C. Hall Thompson's first story for Weird Tales, "Spawn of the Green Abyss," from November 1946, was also his first and only cover story. The cover artist was the unfindable Boris Dolgov. His technique was unusual for a pulp cover, as it appears to be a pencil drawing tinted with watercolors.

Lee Brown Coye illustrated Thompson's next story for "The Unique Magazine," "The Will of Claude Ashur," from July 1947. This was also the first issue in which Coye's "Weirdisms" feature began in Weird Tales and the first in which the Damp Man, created by Allison V. Harding, appeared. Despite the eventual popularity of the Damp Man stories, Thompson had the lead story in that July 1947 issue.

I don't know whether "The Crib of Hell" by Arthur Pendragon was the cover story in the May 1965 issue of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, but I wanted to show the cover because I have detected a swipe, unfortunately made by an otherwise great and very admirable artist, Gray Morrow. You can see for yourself how oddly divided this image is. The part on the right is likely original. The part on the left, executed in an entirely different technique, is obviously a swipe. See the two images below. There is at least one person, by the way, who has speculated that Thompson and Pendragon were the same person. More on that in the next posting.

At the left is Jack Thurston's cover for Satan's Disciples by Robert Goldston (1962), and at the right is another artist's swipe done for the summer 1974 issue of Weird Tales. Who knows where the late Mr. Thurston's artwork will show up next? Update (Jan. 22, 2019): I have been thinking about this image, and it occurs to me that all of the artists who created versions of it may have been guilty of swiping it from an original source, Jack Thurston included. But what would the original source have been?

Text and captions copyright 2019, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Zombibliography-Zombie: The Living Dead

Zombie: The Living Dead by Rose London

(New York: Bounty Books, 1976), 112 pp.

Cover art by Robert Ellis

I don't know anything about Rose London. I assume she is a British author of popular works and not a university professor or scholar. Her book, Zombie: The Living Dead, is a popular, pictorial history of the undead in movies. It covers not only American movies but also those from Great Britain, Mexico, Canada, and other countries. The book was originally published in Britain. It's worth noting that, although Ms. London's book covers vampires, mummies, and other undead creatures, it is entitled Zombie: The Living Dead. That indicates to me that zombies were gaining traction in the mid-1970s as a leading monster type. Nevertheless, the author's discussion of zombies doesn't begin until page 76, and about half of that discussion is devoted to science fictional themes, including invasions by aliens bent on controlling the minds and lives of people on Earth. There is, without a doubt, a connection between movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and stories of zombies, but I'm not sure that stories of alien invasion belong with stories of zombies in a book like this one.

The zombie section of Zombies: The Living Dead includes a few movies worth mentioning in any history of zombies. One is Revenge of the Zombies (1943), in which "[a] doctor operating in the swamplands of the Deep South tried to create an army of invincible zombies to help the Nazis." (p. 82) Thus, even early on in the history of zombies in America, storytellers recognized the significance of zombies as representative of mass movements, especially political mass movements. Another is Invisible Invaders (1959), an alien invasion movie in which the dead rise from the grave en masse. Thus, as early as the 1950s, there were scientific undead vs. the supernatural undead. And they moved in masses. Still another is Plague of Zombies, a Hammer film from 1966 in which a strange plague kills off the inhabitants of an English town, only for them to come back as zombies. Although there is a scientific explanation for the zombie-ism in the movie, there is also a supernatural explanation in that the man responsible for the plague has been to Haiti and has learned about voodoo there. Having never seen Plague of Zombies, I can't say how those two things are reconciled. In any case, Plague of Zombies seems to have anticipated Night of the Living Dead and all subsequent stories of zombie hordes infected with disease.

So it looks like the zombie in film evolved over the years from a harmless and helpless slave--a walking deadman lacking any will of his own--into a frightening and dangerous monster. That is to be expected, as there aren't very many dramatic possibilities represented by a figure who lives, yet lacks all human personality and attributes, motivation or agency. There was also an evolution from the zombie made by magic to one made by science. And there was of course an evolution from solitary zombie slaves or small groups of slaves to out-of-control hordes or masses. I wonder if there will ever again be a zombie movie based on the original idea of the zombie as one of the harmless (and pitiable) undead. I have a feeling that moviegoers, having forgotten the slave origins of zombies, would complain, "That's not a zombie." That's how far we have come, I think. It seems obvious to me, though, that there was not a first of anything when it comes to zombies in film other than that there was a first zombie movie, which was, of course, White Zombie, from 1932. Instead, there was an evolution of zombies. I'll have more to write on that in an entry I will call "The Island Theory of Zombiation."

Original text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Zombography

In my hypothesizing about zombies, I have speculated that academia would have first been interested in zombies in the 1960s or '70s. I developed that hypothesis based on these suppositions: 1) During the 1960s and '70s, zombies crossed over from the realm of the magical and supernatural into that of the scientific and materialistic. In other words, they were scientified. In the process, zombies also became politicized, or they were shambling towards politicization. 2) During that same period, zombies went from being individual slaves, subservient to their masters, to becoming uncontrollable and very threatening masses. That development also made zombies subject to scientification and politicization. The masses (also called "the people") have been of interest to leftist theorists since the French Revolution and especially since the time of Karl Marx, a materialist who claimed sympathy with the masses and considered history to be a science. I assume that to be the link between zombies as masses and the scientific/materialistic/political leftist interest in zombies. 3) In the 1960s and '70s, academia became more interested in popular culture, especially in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc., and in the various pop-culture forms of pulp magazines, comic books, mass market paperbacks, etc. That interest could have remained neutral and appreciative. Instead, it became ideological and critical. 4) During that same period, academics became more leftist in orientation, and academia as a whole began applying leftist interpretations to history, popular culture, and just about everything else you can imagine. Academics were (and are) especially interested in critical theory, which I think of as an odd marriage between Marxism and Freudianism. (One result of that marriage is politicized sex.) In fact, the "critical" part of critical theory appears to be directed almost exclusively at: a) capitalism; and b) traditional marriage, the traditional family, traditional sex roles, traditional sexual morality, and, lately, the immutable fact of biological sex. Very little else seems to exist in the imagination of the critical theorist, such as it is.

So here is my hypothesis: Academia became interested in zombies either in the 1960s or '70s. How do I test that hypothesis? Well, one way is to look at a scholarly bibliography of zombies, or what I'll call a zombibliography. Luckily, I found one. It's called "Zombie Studies Bibliography: Scholarly Research on Zombies in Popular Culture," and it has been compiled by Tyll Zybura, British and American Studies, Bielefeld University, Germany. You can find it by clicking here. The version I have is from September 14, 2016, and everything I write here is based on that version. I think Tyll Zybura should be commended for a very fine piece of work. I would like to point out that the tally and chart (below), as well as all opinions and interpretations here are my own. Any errors I have made are also my own.

There are, by my count, 528 papers and books listed in "Zombie Studies Bibliography." The earliest is from 1987. Assuming the bibliography is comprehensive or nearly so, I'm off on my prediction: 1987 is not the 1960s or '70s. But I dug a little deeper, and I found evidence to support my hypothesis, for the earliest paper listed, from 1987, is by Richard H.W. Dillard, an American poet, author, editor, and university professor. Since 1964, Dr. Dillard has taught at Hollins University near Roanoke, Virginia. From 1973 to 1980, he edited The Film Journal, and he has a special interest in film, especially genre films. In 1976, Monarch Press published Dr. Dillard's book Horror Films. I don't have this book, but I have read the back cover blurb. The text of the blurb confirms that in his book, Dr. Dillard discussed Night of the Living Dead, George Romero's seminal zombie movie from 1968. So, assuming Horror Films, written by a university professor and a well-respected member of academia, is a scholarly work, then the earliest known scholarly (vs. popular) discussion of zombies is from 1976. I'm surprised that there is nothing before that, as Night of the Living Dead has obvious political or racial connotations, but we're still early in this game of zombie historiography, or zombography.

So I tallied by year the scholarly papers and books listed in Tyll Zybura's bibliography of zombies in popular culture and then graphed them. Here are my results. They are formatted as an 8-1/2 x 11-inch sheet, hence all the white space:

The last thing a reader of weird tales wants to see is a graph or chart, but there are some interesting points or interpretations to make about this zombograph. First, academia didn't seem to care very much about zombies between 1987 and 2005. That seems to fit with another of my hypotheses that vampires were the favorite pop culture monster until they were displaced by zombies in the late 1990s to early 2000s. (My sister thinks it happened about 2005 or so.) Second, the number of scholarly papers followed a trend, rising steadily from 2006 to 2015, with three exceptions: 1) Either the number for 2008 is high, or the number for 2009 is low relative to the trend. 2) The number for 2011 is exceptionally high. 3) The number for 2014 also doesn't fit the trend, being higher than the year after it. I think I can explain the number for 2011: The Walking Dead premiered on October 31, 2010; academia then took notice of the vast popularity of the show, and the papers they wrote in response were published in the year following the premiere. (An expert on The Walking Dead might be able to explain the large number of zombie papers published in 2014. I would look for developments from 2013 or early 2014 as possible factors in the increase in the number of papers.)

In political terms, the number of zombie papers is a pretty neutral measure. If you want to know about the content of those papers, you have to read them or their abstracts. Lacking that, you can read their titles, which are in the bibliography at hand. Richard H.W. Dillard's paper, "Night of the Living Dead: It's Not Like Just a Wind That's Passing Through," from 1987, is not obviously political by its title. The title of the next paper in chronological order, however, is another story: "Night of the Living Dead: A Horror Film About the Horrors of the Vietnam Era" (by Sumiko Higashi) suggests a political interpretation. The next, from 1992, is entitled "I Shopped with a Zombie" (by Philip Horne), a paper that would seem to be about Dawn of the Dead (1978), a film that has been interpreted in political ways for its satire of consumerism.

That pattern of neutral or only vaguely political titles continued until 2006, the same year in which the number of zombie papers increased from three to seven, or more than 200 percent, and in which the current trend seems to have begun. The prize for the first overtly political zombie title (by my estimation) goes to Annalee Newitz. Actually she wins a twofer for her paper "The Undead: A Haunted Whiteness," which appeared in her own book Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture (Duke University Press, 2006). Here's a blurb from her publisher:

[In Pretend We're Dead] Newitz shows that as literature and film tell it, the story of American capitalism since the late nineteenth century is a tale of body-mangling, soul-crushing horror.

As the security device in Undercover Brother might say, "Leftness confirmed."

Since then, all hell has broken loose. Just look at these words from the titles listed in the zombibliography: homonormativity, proletariat, imperialist hegemony, multiculturalism, intersections, global capitalism, queered sexuality, capitalist futures, masculinities, fascist masculinity, gendered, queer failure, queering, gendering, advanced capitalism, zombie capitalism, queers, the queer monster, queer zombies, cross-cultural appropriations, capitalist monsters, whiteness, monsters of capital, consumerism, zombified capital, postcolonial capital, corporate zombies. I'm no expert on the topic, but it seems to me that this is the vocabulary of the critical theorist, a person whose interests, like I have said, seem to be limited to two main topics: sex--which came from Freud, I think--and capitalism--which obviously came from Marx. In their constricted vision and imagination, critical theorists (and leftists in general) remind me of the stereotypical Puritan, who sees the devil everywhere he looks. Leftism may very well be a permutation of Puritanism. It's certainly a belief system of religious intensity and with millennialist (i.e., Utopian) goals.

None of this is to say that there aren't scholarly papers of interest or usefulness in the zombibliography. There obviously are, and I would like to read some of them. But the titles of these papers indicate a leftward slant to the research and commentary on and the interpretation of zombies since 2006. That academic interest seems to coincide with a greater interest in zombies among regular people, you know, all of those deplorables who watch TV because reading scholarly journals is out of their intellectual range. That could just be an expression of the academic's natural interest in what's going in the wider world. But how much of it is political theorizing attached to the nearest object of popular interest? And not just interest but extraordinary success, including monetary success. (Those rotten capitalists.) It's as if academics, in writing about zombies, have taken an intellectual selfie to pass around among their friends: "Look at me, everyone, standing next to the phenomenon of The Walking Dead! It's rich and famous, so the fact that I'm in close proximity to it makes me rich and famous, too!" Do they think that by associating themselves with the show some of its renown and success will rub off on them? Who knows. But if that's the case, it would be evidence in favor of my hypostulatin' that people in academia write about zombies more to meet their own psychological and emotional needs than as exercises in genuine and unbiased scholarship. (One bit of evidence that the social "sciences" are not sciences at all is that confirmation bias in these fields is not only permitted but practically required.) I'll close by saying that it's too bad I have to call it hypostulatin'.  I would like to call this a hypothesis--i.e., that academics write about zombies mainly to meet their own psychological and emotional needs--but it just doesn't reach the level of a testable hypothesis. Not until we get them all on the analyst's couch, anyway. Where's Freud when you need him?

There's another zombograph on the way, so be ready for it.

Horror Films by R.H.W. Dillard (Monarch Press, 1976), the earliest presumably scholarly work on zombies that I have found to date, and then only in part. It seems to me that there would have been something before Dr. Dillard's book, but this is what we have for now. By the way, Richard H.W. Dillard married one of his students, who became Annie Dillard and who wrote an extraordinary book called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), which won her a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. Annie Dillard was born in Pittsburgh, a city close to where Night of the Living Dead (1968) was filmed. Her birth name was Meta Ann Doak, which fact makes me wonder if she was related to Hugh Doak Rankin, who drew pictures for Weird Tales.

Text, caption, and chart copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Secret Origin of Zombies-Part Two

Magical Thinking and The Magic Island

Like the title says, I'm looking into the origins of zombies in American popular culture, and I'm doing it for two reasons. First, so we know just when and how it happened. Second, so that we can figure out whether it has anything to do with capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, fascism, or any other -ism you care to imagine.

For the first part of this series, I looked for occurrences of the word zombi(e) in the popular press around 1900 and before. Why 1900? Because that's when Dr. Stephen Olbrys Gencarella of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst says it all happened, to wit:

The zombie trope in the United States emerged with the zombie-as-slave phenomenon around the turn of the 20th century, when American capitalism and colonialism led to ethical conflicts about labor and human rights.

The quote is from an article called "The Shameful Fascism of The Walking Dead," by writer Sean T. Collins, dated December 17, 2016, and posted on the website The Week, here. It seems to me that there's a lot riding on Dr. Gencarella's assertion, for if "[t]he zombie trope" didn't come into American popular culture sometime around 1900, then there could be something wrong with his argument. It might take some of the starch out of Mr. Collins' argument as well.

So I did a search for the word zombie in popular sources from before 1910, and I came up empty. That's because no one I have found called them zombies before William B. Seabrook in his newspaper articles of 1928 and in The Magic Island of 1929. (The word zombi, describing a different kind of being or creature, was in print in American newspapers as early as 1838.) I will admit that I didn't exhaust sources in the American popular press from before 1910, but I did what I think were some good, thorough searches, and I came up empty. I wonder if Dr. Gencarella has access to further sources to back up his assertion that zombies arrived on our shores and in our imaginations around 1900.

So if it didn't happen around 1900, when did it happen? When did zombies as we know them today make their entry into American popular culture? The evidence still points to the period 1929-1932 when The Magic Island was published and White Zombie, the first known and extant zombie movie, was released. That's a big gap--1900 to 1929. (1) There was something to fill that gap, but I'm going to hold off on that part of the story for now.

I have a newspaper item from 1932 that reads:

Do zombies really exist? Rumors have been seeping in for years from the island of Haiti about dead bodies being exhumed and, through a process of sorcery, put to work in the fields and mills, but is there any truth in the rumors? (2)

The item doesn't give any source for the "rumors" of zombies. (I guess rumors don't really have sources.) So what does that mean, "for years"? Since 1928, when William B. Seabrook had his first articles on the subject published in American newspapers? Or was it before that? We'll never know as far as this newspaper item is concerned. But the conventional wisdom is that zombies are part of the folklore of Haiti, a nation situated on Seabrook's "magic island" of Santo Domingo or Hispaniola. And just what was going on in Haiti in the 1920s and early 1930s? Well, American occupation was going on, so cheer up, all of you who think zombies have something to do with capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.

All right, that's enough cheer, for there are already problems with the idea that the zombies of Mr. Collins' and Dr. Gencarella's theorizing are somehow related to capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism at the turn of the century, and the American occupation of Haiti. First, American troops did not go into Haiti until 1914, and the actual occupation didn't begin until the following year. So unless you're really math-challenged, 1914-1915 still isn't "around the turn of the 20th century." On the other hand, it's only 14 to 15 percent of a century. That's the same percentage that the New York Times gave as Donald Trump's chances of winning the presidency, so maybe it's accurate after all. As we all know, the New York Times is never wrong.

Second, the American occupation of Haiti was ordered by President Woodrow Wilson, a man who was a lot of the things that academics, journalists, and other people on their side of the political spectrum really love: college professor and college president; Progressive, Democrat, and internationalist; member of the academic, political, and intellectual élite; a hero for presiding over the implementation of the progressive income tax and the direct election of senators. As a bonus, he also presided over a controlled economy during World War I, suppressed dissent in America (just like universities do today), and advocated for the centralization of political power in a supranational organization, the League of Nations. And he really liked golf, just like our most recent ex-president, whom you might call a Wilson revenant. (3)

Third--and this is a bigger part of the story--the United States has been since its inception an opponent and even a destroyer of empires. Since 1775, we have fought wars against the British Empire, the Spanish Empire, the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Japanese Empire. We have also fought wars against states that were de facto empires, Russia under the Bolsheviks, Italy under the Fascists, and Germany under the Nazis, for example. And we have opposed other empires with which we did not go to war, such as the Mexican and French empires. You could make a good case that the United States established an internal empire on the North American continent, but as far as an overseas empire goes, there was never very much of one (the Philippines, Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc.), and we willingly gave up most of it, or we have allowed our possessions their autonomy and have provided for their prosperity in ways that aren't very imperialistic-y. For example, no one thinks of Puerto Ricans as being a bunch of poor, oppressed people, laboring under the yoke of American imperialism and yearning for their freedom and independence. In fact, when they have been offered their independence, they have said no thanks. 

Anyway, like in most other places, American forces eventually pulled out of Haiti--not a very imperialistic-y thing to do, either. So now we're on the horns of dilemma: how can we possibly lay American capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism as the cause for zombies at the feet of a Progressive and Democrat like Woodrow Wilson? Well, don't worry, I'm about to let you off the hook: Wilson came from a family of slaveholders and is supposed to have been a racist. He was also a supporter of eugenics (as most good Progressives were in those days). And he committed a sin against liberalism (and against the Constitution, I might add) by clapping socialist (and Bernie Sanders equivalent) Eugene V. Debs in prison for sedition. (I'm surprised that a photograph of a young Bernie with an old Debs hasn't surfaced yet.) So maybe Wilson and his capitalist, imperialist lackeys caused zombies after all.

Wait, there's more: American troops remained in Haiti throughout the 1920s under Republican presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. Bad, bad Republicans. The troops finally came out under Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934. Yay, FDR! There's still more in which leftists can take heart in their attempts to link zombies with capitalism: William B. Seabrook's book The Magic Island was published in 1929, the year of the stock market crash. White Zombie was released in 1932 in the worst year of the Great Depression. All of those events took place during the presidency of Herbert Hoover, one of our favorite bugaboo presidents. Oh, but wait a minute, Hoover is sometimes seen as a technocrat, i.e., as an expert, as one of a governing élite. We like élites. He was also something of a Progressive. We really like Progressives. And he worked for Woodrow Wilson during Word War I. We really, really like . . . wait, was Wilson a good guy or a bad guy? I can't remember now. Anyway, Hoover caused people to live in shantytowns in the Great Depression like a bad capitalist oppressor. Boo! On the other hand, he was, like Bill Nye the Science Guy, an engineer. Hooray! We love Bill Nye. He knows everything about global warming, even if he is only a mechanical engineer. Now I'm confused. Was Hoover good or bad? Was he a capitalist and an imperialist, or was he a Progressive and a technocrat who saved Europeans (who we know are superior to us) from the scourges of the bad, bad German Empire during World War I? (4) Didn't he oppose war? Didn't he have an American-Indian as his vice-president? And didn't he arrange for the American withdrawal from Haiti before leaving the presidency to his smiling successor? Too bad it all didn't happen under Calvin Coolidge, the worstest and most heartless capitalist we had as president until Ronald Reagan came along. If Coolidge had caused zombies, then we could all really put our minds at ease.

Anyway, there were zombis in the popular American press from as early as 1838 to the early decades of the twentieth century. There have been zombies in popular culture since 1929. In recent years, they're everywhere and have taken over everything. Today they actually live rent-free in the minds of academics and journalists. (I guess you could say that zombies have consumed their brains.) But what about the period of, say, 1900 to 1929? Where were zombis or zombies then? Well, where else but in pulp magazines?

To be continued . . .

Notes

(1) Please don't make the argument that 1929 was "around the turn of the 20th century." That's like saying World War II ended around the time of the Battle of the Somme.

(2) From "At the Elwood," evidently a canned press release for the movie White Zombie, printed in the Call-Leader of Elwood, Indiana, Dec. 23, 1932, p. 6. For those who haven't been there, Elwood is one long, straight, well-lighted street.
(3) Update (Feb. 5, 2017): And guess who was in charge of the operation in Haiti? Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, who claimed to have rewritten the Haitian constitution. Here is a quote from an article by Roosevelt from 1928: "In Haiti a worse situation faced us. That Republic was in chronic trouble, and as it is close to Cuba the bad influence was felt across the water. Presidents were murdered, governments fled, several time [sic] a year. We landed our marines and sailors only when the unfortunate Chief Magistrate of the moment was dragged out of the French Legation, cut into six pieces and thrown to the mob. Here again we cleaned house, restored order, built public works and put governmental operation on a sound and honest basis. We are still there. It is true, however, that in Santo Domingo and especially in Haiti we seem to have paid too little attention to making the citizens of these states more capable of reassuming the control of their own governments. But we have done a fine piece of material work, and the world ought to thank us." From Foreign Affairs, Volume VI, 1928, pp. 573-586. This quote is from a secondary source on the Internet; I have not looked for it in its original. The point again is that if American colonialism and imperialism are related somehow to zombies in America, then that colonialism and imperialism were carried out not by one party "around the turn of the 20th century" but by the other party half a generation later. The simpler explanation is to separate zombie-ism in our popular culture from American colonialism and imperialism and call it a cultural rather than a political development.
(4) And what about the German Empire? Yeah, they did horrible things to black people in Africa, but they stood against American imperialism in the Caribbean, plus they implemented a program they called State Socialism. As long as your program is socialist, it's okay to do horrible things to black people in Africa. Just ask Robert Mugabe and his apologists in the West. One more great thing the German Empire did: in 1917, they put Lenin in a train car from Switzerland to Sweden so that he could re-enter Russia. Revolution forced Russia out of the war, and after that, Lenin and his comrades created a workers' paradise in the new Soviet Union. Or was it that he and they sent millions of Russian workers to Paradise? I can't remember.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Dwarves on the Cover of Weird Tales

In his book Danger Is My Business: An Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines: 1896-1953 (1993), Lee Server recounted the story of the weird menace magazines of the 1930s, titles that included Dime Mystery Magazine, Terror Tales, and Horror Stories. Despite the shared word "weird" (and despite some overlap between the two), weird menace and weird fiction are separate genres. Mr. Server explains:

The "terror" or "Weird Menace" stories, as they came to be known, had many of the trappings of the horror genre, but there were distinct differences. Unlike the traditional scary story, the new form eschewed the supernatural. . . . No ghosts or vampires or black magicians, but equally creepy types out of real life, the mutilated and the psychotic, renegade scientists and crackpot cult leaders. (p. 106)

Weird menace was inspired by a trip that pulp publisher Henry Steeger made to Paris, more specifically to the le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, where he saw theatrical violence, cruelty, and gore in abundance. "We could do a magazine like that," Steeger realized, "with the same sort of emphasis." (Quoted on page 106.) Lee Server sees other possible influences, writing:

Steeger may also have had an eye on such contemporaneous movies as Island of Lost Souls, Mystery of the Wax Museum, and Freaks, each offering similar modern-dress horrors--vivisectionists, deformed maniacs, denizens of the carnival sideshow, all staples of the Weird Menace world. (p. 106)

He continues:

Villains, when they did materialize, were a mix of scheming psychopaths--mad scientists, religious cultists, vengeful old crones--and their repellent assistants--gnarled dwarves, brainless mutants, horny hunchbacks. They invariably came equipped with a panoply of elaborate devices for torture and slow death, bubbling vats, buzz saws, iron maidens, branding irons, or flame throwers. (p. 109)

Note the phrases "gnarled dwarves" and "horny hunchbacks."

Now, I can't say that Weird Tales was influenced by the weird menace magazines in its depiction of dwarves. After all, four of the eight covers shown here predate the arrival of Dime Mystery Magazine, the first of that type, in 1933. Instead, it seems to me that weird fiction and weird menace both drew from popular culture, folklore, fairy tales, and other sources in how they treated dwarves, hunchbacks, and other people not deemed of normal stature, build, or appearance. I suppose the idea was that sin or moral failings are expressed in the physical appearance of sinners. Even Tolkien's dwarves, heroes that they are, are sometimes lacking in moral fiber. Writers and artists of the pulp era fell too easily into stereotyping not only black people (as seen in a previous posting) but also dwarves. One difference is that black stereotypes in art are often about appearance, whereas stereotypes of dwarves seem to be about their moral character or about their role in the human drama. Either way, the pulps were not always kind to little people.

I count eight covers of Weird Tales showing dwarves or other little people. Six of the eight show dwarves as bad guys, or suggest that they are. One is neutral. And only one, the last, is positive. Note that the first dwarf cover following the advent of the weird menace magazines, from May 1937, could easily pass as one among that genre. The blurb on the cover--"a powerful tale of weird horror"--should remove any doubt that Weird Tales, usually "The Unique Magazine," was in this case imitating rather than standing alone.

Weird Tales, March 1926. Cover story: "Lochinvar Lodge" by Clyde Burt Clason. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. You could call this the classic image of the dwarf in fantasy. He could easily have been one of J.R.R. Tolkien's inhabitants of Middle Earth. Unfortunately, it looks like the dwarf here is a villain. On top of that, he is about to be walloped.

Weird Tales, April 1926. Cover story: "Wolfshead" by Robert E. Howard. Cover art by E.M. Stevenson. I'm not sure that this is a depiction of a dwarf, but he looks pretty small in stature. Whatever he is, the man here is a villain, and he appears to be animated by the spirit of a wolf.

Weird Tales, March 1927. Cover story: "The City of Glass" by Joel Martin Nichols, Jr. Cover art by C.C. Senf, another bizarre cover by the artist. The dwarf's bodily distortions make it almost like something from a hallucination or a dream. I still can't figure out what is that thing on his foot. Update (Dec. 21, 2016): Now I've got it. That's not a thing on his foot. It's a stool. Apparently the woman has been sitting. Upon getting up, she has upset the stool and his foot is behind it. I'm an artist and even I had a hard time reading this picture.

Weird Tales, July 1929. Cover story: "The Corpse-Master" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C.C. Senf. Update (Jan. 9, 2017): Again, here's a threatening dwarf and again he's green. 

Weird Tales, July 1930. Cover story: "The Bride of Dewer" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C.C. Senf. The dwarf here is not obviously a bad guy. The depiction here appears to be neutral at worst.

Weird Tales, May 1937. Cover story: "The Mark of the Monster" by Jack Williamson. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. I'm not sure that the male figure here is a dwarf, either, but again, he looks small in stature. Even if he is a normal-sized man, he has physical deformities, making him a suitable weird menace villain. Margaret Brundage drew a lot of pictures of women being tormented by men. She was no shrinking violet, and maybe the reading public demanded it, but I wonder if she felt that way herself sometimes.

Weird Tales, July 1938. Cover story: "Spawn of Dagon" by Henry Kuttner. Cover art by Virgil Finlay. Here is the typical Virgil Finlay Tor Johnson-like muscleman or eunuch and the typical moping face on the dwarf in front of him. Note that his skin is green, like that of two of the preceding dwarves. I take the color green to be a signifier of alienness. Plants are green. So are snakes and frogs. So, too, are many monsters, like Cthulhu.

Weird Tales, May 1940. Cover story: "The City from the Sea" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Hannes Bok, who created the only obviously positive image of a dwarf on the cover of Weird Tales. It looks to me that the image of dwarves, like that of black people, softened as Weird Tales matured in the late 1930s and 1940s.

Revised January 9, 2017.
Text and captions copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley