Weird Fiction & Fantasy Magazines-Weird Tales Part 4

Leo Margulies died on December 26, 1975, at age seventy-five. As I understand it, Robert Weinberg acquired the Weird Tales property from Margulies' widow. Mr. Weinberg had assembled and published a commemorative book, WT 50: A Tribute to Weird Tales, a year and a half before Margulies' death, in the same season that the last of the Margulies-Moskowitz issues of Weird Tales was published. Mr. Weinberg followed that up with The Weird Tales Story, published in 1977 by FAX Collector's Editions of West Linn, Oregon. In the meantime, the magazine itself laid dormant.

Born in 1930, Lin Carter became a fantasy fan as a child. In 1957 he went to work in advertising and publishing, only to strike out on his own as a freelance writer and editor in 1969. Many if not most of his own books were pastiches or imitations of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and other writers. A more charitable way of looking at Carter's career is that he wrote tributes to the great fantasy authors of the past, or that he wrote the books they might have written had they lived. He did his fellow fantasy fans an invaluable service by editing Ballantine Books' Adult Fantasy series of 1969-1974. He also edited the Flashing Swords series of heroic fantasy (1973-1977) and The Year's Best Fantasy Stories series for Donald A. Wollheim (1975-1980). By 1980 he was ready to give Weird Tales a try.

Lin Carter edited and Zebra Books published four "issues" of Weird Tales from 1981 to 1983. Those four issues comprise volume 48 of the series. The odd thing about them is that they aren't magazines but instead mass market paperbacks, numbered sequentially like a magazine title and even including a letters column. In his first editorial, Carter wrote that he and his publishers "concluded that the pulp magazine era is truly at an end and that such periodicals simply cannot compete in the marketplace with the enormously popular paperback book," hence the decision to "revive Weird Tales as a 'paperback periodical'." Carter sounded as though he had high hopes for the revival. Instead he got no farther (in the number of issues at least) than Sam Moskowitz had before him.

I don't think anyone would argue against the idea that the pulp magazine era had ended many years before Lin Carter's Weird Tales went to print. (The only argument might be as to when it had ended: The mid or late forties? Sometime during the 1950s? Certainly no later than the early sixties.) At first glance, you might see paperback books as one of the nails in the coffin of pulp magazines. It might be more accurate to say that paperbacks are just pulp magazines in a different format.

The relationship between pulps and paperbacks is on full display in Volume 48 of Weird Tales. That's not to say that it was a first. Donald A. Wollheim approached the idea with his Avon Fantasy Reader series of 1946-1952. Other publishers issued "paperback periodicals" in the 1960s and '70s. Leo Margulies' four-book series of Weird Tales anthologies from the 1960s may have been a model for Lin Carter's effort. Byron Preiss' Weird Heroes series of "New American Pulp," published in the 1970s, would have been closer at hand.

In any case, Weird Tales, Volume 48, was a mix of old and new material. H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and other prized writers of the original Weird Tales were represented. So were newer writers such as Ramsey Campbell, Tanith Lee, and of course Lin Carter. Like the preceding incarnation, Carter's Weird Tales lasted four issues. The gap separating it from the following volume would be narrow indeed.

Weird Tales

Spring 1981 to Summer 1983

4 issues (Volume 48)

Published by: Zebra Books (Kensington Publishing Corp.)
Edited by: Lin Carter
Format: Mass market paperback

Weird Tales, Volume 48, Number 1. The book bears a copyright date of 1980. According to Jaffery and Cook's Collector's Index to Weird Tales, the date was Spring 1981. In any case, this was the first of Lin Carter's version of Weird Tales, issued in the form of a mass market paperback. The cover art is by Tom Barber.

Weird Tales, Volume 48, Number 2, Spring 1981, with cover art again by Tom Barber.

Weird Tales, Volume 48, Number 3, Fall 1981. Tom Barber was the cover artist.

Weird Tales, Volume 48, Number 4, Summer 1983. Tom Barber was the cover artist again.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Fiction & Fantasy Magazines-Weird Tales Part 3

Sam Moskowitz may have talked Leo Margulies out of restarting Weird Tales in the 1950s and '60s, but by the early '70s, they both seemed ready to give it a try. Margulies the publisher and Moskowitz the editor put out four issues of a new Weird Tales in 1973-1974. Those four issues are roughly in the format of old pulp magazines: 6-1/2 inches by 9-1/2 inches, color covers, black-and-white interiors, ninety-six pages in length. As for content, there was a letters page ("The Eyrie"), editorial content, verse, non-fiction, illustration, and an array of short stories. Most of those short stories were reprints, though only a few came from the original Weird Tales. And thereby hangs a tale.

In an interview from 1976, C.L. Moore discussed her early short story, "Werewoman," first published in Leaves #2 in 1938:

I very foolishly . . . gave it to a fan magazine who wanted to print it. . . . The error that I made there was I didn't realize they had copyrighted it. So twenty years later, who but Sam Moskowitz . . . [ellipses original] uh, performed his usual, um, practice [emphasis hers] of jumping on things two seconds after the copyright had lapsed! So he reprinted it, of course, without paying me anything for it. Incidentally, it is simply not a thing any other publisher I know of has ever done. I have had stories of mine printed after the copyright had lapsed and I've always been paid for them. Publishers just don't do things that way, but Moskowitz is an exception to the rule and nothing can be done about that! (1)

During the 1960s, Sam Moskowitz seems to have busied himself with exhuming old and out-of-print stories from the dusty vaults where they had lain for decades. It helped that those stories were copyright-free. It helped even more when the author was in his grave. In any case, Volume 47 of Weird Tales, published between Summer 1973 and Summer 1974, relied heavily on reprints, mostly from long-dead authors who were in no position to object or to request payment. Even the cover art was mostly old: a never-published painting by Virgil Finlay, a recreation of a painting by Hannes Bok, and a swipe of a painting by Jack L. Thurston. The most conspicuously new material was the interior art, the letters in "The Eyrie," and Moskowitz's three-part critical and biographical essay on William Hope Hodgson.

In its original incarnation, Weird Tales limped along for years before meeting its end in 1954. The second and third (see the next entry) Weird Tales lasted a mere four issues each. Most imitations of Weird Tales have also met an early demise. That poses the question: Is the category of weird fiction and fantasy fiction in magazine form destined to fail? Was Sam Moskowitz right when he warned Leo Margulies against reviving Weird Tales? The latest version of Weird Tales, still breathing after twenty-five years and myriad changes in its staff, would seem to argue against that contention. More to the point, I think, is that commercial success is gravy. The genre itself is the meat. If you can make money off of it, great. Even if you can't, you keep doing it. That's why Jacob Clark Henneberger stuck with Weird Tales in 1923-1924 and why the rest of us (people like Sam Moskowitz not withstanding) still do after ninety years.

Note
(1) From Chacal, Winter 1976 (Vol. 1, No. 1), pp. 26-27.

Weird Tales

Summer 1973 to Summer 1974

4 issues (Volume 47)

Published by: Weird Tales (Leo Margulies)
Edited by: Sam Moskowitz
Format: Pulp size (6-1/2 x 9-1/2 inches)

Weird Tales, Vol. 47, No. 1, Summer 1973, with cover art by Virgil Finlay. Note the blurb: "5oth Anniversary Issue, 1923-1973."

Weird Tales, Vol. 47, No. 2, Fall 1973, with cover art by Gary van der Steur, after Hannes Bok.

Weird Tales, Vol. 47, No. 3, Winter 1973, with cover art by Bill Edwards.

Weird Tales, Vol. 47, No. 4, Summer 1974, with uncredited cover art by Jack L. Thurston, almost certainly swiped and used without his permission. Note the absence of the "fiftieth anniversary year" blurb. Note also the blurb for all-new stories, a rarity in the new Weird Tales.

So did Margulies and Moskowitz publish their new Weird Tales mostly to observe the fiftieth anniversary of the original? Did the wind go out of their sails once that year had passed? Or were they losing their shirts as Moskowitz had predicted would happen years before? Maybe Weird Tales of 1973-1974 was mostly a vehicle for stories Moskowitz had discovered in his reading of old newspapers and magazines. Publishing a magazine is one way of getting stories like that into print--and of making a little money in the process. Maybe "a little money" was actually little or no money. Whatever happened, this was the last issue of the 1970s.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Request for a Copy from Weird Tales

I'm doing some research on the author Vincent Hayes Gaddis and I wonder if anyone can provide a scan or a photocopy of Gaddis' item "Special News Bulletin" from Weird Tales, April 1939. I hope so. It would be a big help to me.

TH

Weird Fiction & Fantasy Magazines-Weird Tales Part 2

Editor and publisher Leo Margulies acquired the Weird Tales property in the 1950s after the original run of the magazine had come to an end. Rather than sit on it and guard it like the fabled dog in the manger, Margulies wanted to do something with his new title and the stories that went with it. Sam Moskowitz, an associate of Margulies, was in a position to advise him. "I twice talked Leo Margulies out of reviving the magazine," Moskowitz remembered, "once in 1958 and again in the sixties, because I thought he would lose his shirt." (1) I can't say that I like Moskowitz's advice, but I wasn't there and I don't know the circumstances. It's worth noting that Robert A.W. Lowndes' Magazine of Horror, one of the longest running magazines in the Weird Tales mold, was in print from 1963 to 1971. If he did it, I'm not sure why Leo Margulies couldn't have done it as well. Hindsight is always 20-20 of course. In any case, instead of publishing a magazine, Leo Margulies issued four paperback collections of stories from Weird Tales between 1961 and 1965. (Sam Moskowitz was ghost editor on at least two of them.) If you wanted Weird Tales in the 1960s, those four books were the place to start. (2) Of course interest in pulp fiction picked up as the decade went on. By its end, Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft were household names, at least among fantasy fans.

Mass market paperbacks are obviously not periodicals. They don't really belong in a series of blog postings about weird fiction and fantasy magazines. Here I have included these four books not just for completists but also because they may have been a model of sorts to a later incarnation of Weird Tales, Lin Carter's four-issue paperback series. Before posting something on that series, I'll write about Sam Moskowitz's 1970s version of Weird Tales.

Notes

(1) From Weird Tales #1, edited by Lin Carter and published in 1981, p. 266.

(2) Leo Margulies also published The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, a digest-sized journal in which he recycled stories from Weird Tales. For example, "Hellsgarde" by C.L. Moore (Weird Tales, Apr. 1939) appeared in the November 1967 issue. "Hell on Earth" by Robert Bloch (Weird Tales, Mar. 1942) was reprinted in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine in November 1966.

The Unexpected, published in February 1961, edited by Leo Margulies, and containing eleven stories, all from Weird Tales. The only original content was an introduction by the editor. The cover art was by John Schoenherr. I believe I have seen this book in red as well. P.S. (Aug. 11, 2013): I was mistaken when I wrote that The Unexpected was printed with a red cover as well. Actually it was The Ghoul Keepers. See below.

Schoenherr returned to create the cover illustration for The Ghoul Keepers from October 1961. Once again, all the stories in the book were originally published in Weird Tales.

Weird Tales (the book) followed in May 1964 with eight stories and an introduction, which may have been written by Sam Moskowitz. The cover was by Virgil Finlay and all of the stories inside are from the original Weird Tales.

Finally, Worlds of Weird from January 1965. (This is a reprint from 1977.) Sam Moskowitz finally received credit for his input. The seven stories inside are from Weird Tales. That's Virgil Finlay's art on the cover.

P.S. (Aug. 11, 2013): The Ghoul Keepers in the original edition with a red cover. Note that the art was cropped and reversed for the later edition with the yellow cover (above). Could Sam Moskowitz have had that process in mind when he reworked Jack L. Thurston's art for the cover of the Summer 1974 issue of Weird Tales? Thanks to Chap O'Keefe for the image.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Fiction & Fantasy Magazines-Weird Tales Part 1

Weird Tales, the first magazine devoted exclusively to weird fiction and fantasy, arrived on the newsstand with a cover date of March 1923. This year marks the ninetieth anniversary of the magazine that fantasy fans know and love, even if it ceased publication before some of them were born. Weird Tales was never on firm footing. It faltered in its first year or two in print. The magazine's founder, Jacob Clark Henneberger, believed in his creation however and did what was necessary to keep it alive. The first incarnation of what has been called "the magazine that never dies" lasted for 279 issues, finally to give up the ghost in September 1954.

Weird Tales called itself "The Unique Magazine." That descriptor--"unique"--was I suppose used to set the magazine apart in the eyes of readers, or more importantly perhaps, potential readers. Weird Tales was unique in another way however, for it was the only magazine of its kind to have lasted for more than a few issues or more than a few years. In fact, "The Unique Magazine" is still in existence. Like a cat or an interstellar creature that lies sleeping in its submarine vault, it has many lives. Other publishers have attempted to duplicate the success of Weird Tales (which was, in the end, not financial so much as cultural). It's fair to say that no one has succeeded, despite some good efforts. Some early attempts were in competition with Weird Tales. Some later attempts were self-conscious imitations, even pastiches. Since the late '60s or early '70s, fanzines and small press magazines have probably outnumbered conventional publications. Like J.C. Henneberger, hobbyists and amateur publishers have had faith in weird fiction and in Weird Tales. They have been loath to let the thing they love die. Although the original readers of Weird Tales are dwindling in numbers, the name and spirit of the magazine live on.

This is part one of a series in which I will attempt a catalogue of weird fiction and fantasy fiction magazines from 1923 to today. I'll start with Weird Tales of course. I welcome comments, corrections, and additions.

Weird Tales
The Unique Magazine

March 1923 to September 1954

279 issues (Volumes 1 through 46)

Published by: Rural Publishing Corporation (Mar. 1923 to May/July 1924); Popular Fiction Company (Nov. 1924 to Oct. 1938); Short Stories, Inc. (Nov. 1938 to Sept. 1954)

Edited by: Edwin Baird (Mar. 1923 to Apr. 1924); Otis Adelbert Kline (May/July 1924); Farnsworth Wright (Nov. 1924-Dec. 1939); Dorothy McIlwraith (Jan. 1940-Sept. 1954)

Format: Small pulp size (6 x 9 inches) (Mar. to Apr. 1923); Letter size (8.5 x 11.75 inches, sometimes called large pulp or bedsheet size) (May 1923 to May/July 1924); Standard pulp size (7 x 10 inches) (Nov. 1924 to July 1953); Digest size (5 x 7.5 inches) (Sept. 1953 to Sept. 1954)

Source: The online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

This was the original Weird Tales, perhaps more properly, the one and only, the true and original Weird Tales. Weird Tales was the home of authors H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith, as well as artists Margaret Brundage, J. Allen St. John, and Virgil Finlay. Sadly, the magazine came to its end in 1954. Leo Margulies acquired the Weird Tales property shortly after that. He wanted to revive it at least twice, but Sam Moskowitz talked him out of the idea. There are those with their grievances against Moskowitz. It's easy enough for us to say "what if" and to add his advice to Margulies to the list of grievances. In any case, Weird Tales slumbered through the 1960s except for four paperback anthologies ostensibly edited by Leo Margulies. You might call them the first reincarnation of Weird Tales. They are next in this series.

First and last covers--Weird Tales, March 1923, and September 1954. The first cover was done by Richard Ruh Epperly, the last by Virgil Finlay. These two images are not on the same scale: the first cover was six by nine inches, the last five by seven-and-a-half inches. (Please forgive the slop over into the margin. Once this posting moves down on the page, there shouldn't be any distraction.)

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Richard Matheson and Hell House

Last week I wrote about Dark Shadows, Star Trek, Richard Matheson's novel Hell House, and how fantasists use the material vs. the non-material in their storylines. In House of Dark Shadows (1970), Dan Curtis used a materialistic explanation for Barnabas Collins' vampirism. That was a neat and acceptable solution to the problem of the supernatural in an age of the merely natural. In Star Wars (1977), George Lucas implied that the Force, which holds the universe together, is non-material, and if not spiritual than at least mystical. We accepted that explanation without a word of reservation. Then, in the second Star Wars trilogy (1999-2005), Lucas reversed himself and explained the Force again as a merely material phenomenon. Lucas is a notorious tinkerer. (I'm not sure any of his tinkering has made an improvement on the original.) But we had already accepted his original explanation for the Force. We didn't need another explanation, especially a materialistic explanation. That's why I used the word disheartening in my comments the other day. I also used the word cynical. What I meant was that Lucas turned off his imagination and swallowed the materialist air of our times. He became a follower instead of a leader, that is, a leader in matters of taste, which is one of the roles of the artist. I suppose he thought he was being clever and scientific. His inspiration was obviously the existence of mitochondrial DNA within our own cells. But when he resorted to a high school biology textbook, he turned his back on the sense of awe and wonder we feel when we ponder the mysteries of the universe.

Material vs. non-material. Are they irreconcilable opposites? In his book Hell House (1970), Richard Matheson attempted an answer and created two characters to represent the material and the non-material approach to hauntings. Dr. Lionel Barrett, a scientist, believes that hauntings are merely physical or biological in nature. Florence Tanner, a spiritualist and medium, believes they are non-material and spiritual. The two become part of a four-person crew investigating the haunting at Hell House, "the Mount Everest of haunted houses." Barrett and Florence are immediately set against each other, mostly because of Barrett's dismissal of the supernatural. If you're planning to read the book, you might not want to read any further, although I won't give very much away. As it turns out, Matheson split the difference: the haunting of Hell House is both a material and a non-material phenomenon. A machine and a medium are both necessary to bring the haunting to an end.

In my research for the entry on Richard Matheson as an author for Weird Tales, I learned that he was a believer in paranormal or parapsychological phenomena. His knowledge of those fields comes through with ringing authenticity in Hell House. His catalogue of "Observed Psychic Phenomena at the Belasco House [Hell House]" runs for nearly a full page of dense type. The list is almost comic in its excess. (It reminds me of Major King Kong reading the contents of his survival kit in Dr. Strangelove.) If you know what half those words mean, you deserve a medal. Knowing that Matheson was a believer made me a little biased in my reading of Hell House. As readers, we willingly suspend our disbelief. Maybe the writer has an equal obligation to suspend his belief. Towards the end of the book, Matheson seems to speak through Dr. Barrett when Barrett calls parapsychology "science" and proceeds on a brief discourse in its defense.

I won't quibble. I enjoyed Hell House, despite its sensationalism and its attempts to shock the reader. (Like The Exorcist, Hell House uses sex as a shocker and sexual perversity or depravity as a representation of evil. Maybe there isn't any quicker way to get there, but I can think of more real and palpable evils. Any history of the twentieth century is full of examples.) Matheson's explanation of hauntings as simultaneously material and non-material phenomena is a perfectly acceptable one. In the end, we have two acceptable explanations--House of Dark Shadows and Hell House--and one unacceptable explanation--George Lucas' latter-day Star Wars.

Text copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Robert A.W. Lowndes (1916-1998)-Part 4

Robert W. Lowndes had his first science fiction published when he was a teenager. That was in 1935 when Wonder Stories printed "Letter: Report of the Plutonian Ambassador" on its letters page. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, his first paying work would have been the poem "Lurani" (as by Paul Dennis Lavond) in Unknown Fantasy Fiction for February 1940. Lowndes' first paying short story was "My Lady of the Emerald" (as by Wilfred Owen Morley) in Astonishing Stories from November 1941.

Lowndes wasn't an especially prolific author, but over the next couple of decades, he wrote several dozen stories and poems and a few novels. He was busier as an editor, essayist, and reviewer. His credits as editor include the following:

• Future Fiction (and variant titles, 1941-1960)
• Science Fiction (1941)
• Science Fiction Quarterly (1941-1958)
• Dynamic Science Fiction (1952-1953)
• Science Fiction Stories (1953-1960)
• Magazine of Horror (1963-1971)
• Famous Science Fiction (1966-1969)
• Startling Mystery Stories (1966-1971)
• Thrilling Western Magazine (1967)
• World Wide Adventure (1967)
• Weird Terror Tales (1969)
• Bizarre Fantasy Tales (1970-1971)
• Sexology

I should point out that these dates are not necessarily inclusive of all years within those dates. Also, some dates and titles come from conflicting or not entirely reliable sources and are in question. 

In the 1940s and '50s, Lowndes worked for Columbia Publications, mostly in science fiction magazines. Lowndes' titles of the 1960s and '70s were published by Health Knowledge, Inc. Most prominent among them was Magazine of Horror, a digest-sized homage to Weird Tales. The website Vault of Evil has what I think is a complete listing of stories, plus images of the covers of Magazine of Horror. Vault of Evil is well worth a look.

Robert A.W. Lowndes continued working as a writer and editor even after Health Knowledge, Inc., went under. In 1981, Lin Carter began editing a third incarnation of Weird Tales. (The first was the original run, from 1923 to 1954; the second was Sam Moskowitz's four-issue revival of 1973-1974.) Robert Lowndes contributed half a dozen poems to a series that lasted just four more issues between Spring 1981 and Summer 1983.

It has taken me a month to draw this discussion of Robert A.W. Lowndes and The Futurians to a close. This four-part series has led me to another series of postings in which Lowndes' name will appear again. Before closing I will add that Robert Lowndes died on July 14, 1998, in Newport, Rhode Island. He was eighty-one years old.

Robert A.W. Lowndes' Poems in Weird Tales

"The Courier" (Vol. 48, No. 1, Spring 1981)

"The Worshippers" (Vol. 48, No. 1, Spring 1981)

"The Guardian" (Vol. 48, No. 2, Spring 1981)

"Liberation" (Vol. 48, No. 2, Spring 1981)

"The Summons" (Vol. 48, No. 3, Fall 1981)

"The Viola" (Vol. 48, No. 3, Fall 1981)

Text copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley