Weird Tales

The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.
H. P. Lovecraft

According to HP Lovecraft, "The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."

In other words... we're talking about stories that aren't merely about ghosties and goblins.

Take a horror story... add a bit of mythology, maybe stir in some fantasy, or a bit of science fiction. Starting in 1923, Weird Tales published the stories that mainstream magazine and book publishers wouldn't touch. These were too scary, lurid, sensational, frightening for most... so these authors found a home in the pulp magazine until 1954.

In the early 1970s, Weird Tales made a comeback... but only lasted a few issues. Finally in 1988, Weird Tales went back into magazine production, and with a few changes, continues to print the stories that don't quite fit into the mainstream.

Today, the Pulp Magazine has gone digital. I imagine the great authors of the 20s and 30s would be fascinated to see their words online, sent out to millions.

quote taken from "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction" by HP Lovecraft http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/nwwf.asp

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
H. P. Lovecraft

"He was writing non-fiction...."

HP Lovecraft was the father of the modern horror story. He started the concept of Cosmic Horror, the idea that the universe is hostile to humans. Firmly believing that people couldn't know everything that was happening around them , he began writing the Cthulhu Mythos.  These stories were based around the idea that the "Great Ones", beings from another world, had landed on earth to cause all sorts of problems. Most of his stories seem to involve a plunge into insanity. His writing became more influential after his death in 1937. Great modern horror writers like Stephen King were greatly influenced by Lovecraft's work.

His parents died when he was young (his father from Syphilis), so Lovecraft was raised by indulgent aunts, and grew up to become a sickly man because they coddled him and fed him candy to keep him happy. The house he grew up in was dirty and filled with cobwebs... more like a haunted mansion than a regular home. Before he was fifteen, he had already suffered a nervous breakdown. It is no wonder that his works are so dark. Oddly, he never graduated High School, but you'd never know reading his works. The language is rich and the prose pulls you in. You can feel the fear and the madness that his characters feel.

HP Lovecraft developed a following, and others began writing the stories for the Cthulu Mythos. He was a great letter writer, he corresponded regularly with August Derleth, Robert E Howard, and Robert Bloch. They would write for Weird Tales magazine as well, and even contribute to the Cthulu Mythos.

August Dereleth was a writer and a publisher known for starting the publishing company, Arkham House, the first publishing company that would print Horror Fiction in the US. His first story for Weird Tales was "Bat's Belfry", but he went on to publish many more stories.. for Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. Derleth published HP Lovecraft's stories, and wrote stories of his own to further the Cthulu Mythos. He and Lovecraft corresponded for years, from the time he was a teenager, until Lovecraft's death.

Despite being such an important writer and publisher in Weird Fiction, Derleth also wrote poetry, historical fiction and biographies. He was a teacher, the PTA president, and a parole officer. A native of Wisconsin, he wrote many books and stories about his native state.

In his lifetime, August Derleth wrote over 100 books and 150 short stories.... only a fraction of them were Weird...

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
Robert E. Howard

Robert E Howard all but invented the sword and sorcery genre with his Conan the Barbarian Stories. Before his suicide at 30, Howard's Conan stories could only be found in Weird Tales.... seems no one else wanted to publish him. He was a bit of an eccentric, possibly mentally ill, and living in a small Texas town with his mother. A movie, called "The Whole Wide World" starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Renee Zellwiger, based on his life, especially centering on his relationship with schoolteacher, Novalyn Price, was made in 1996.

Conan the Barbarian stories are set in an imagined historical setting, called the Hyborian Age. Conan wanders his world performing heroic feats with a sword. His adventures bring encounters with monsters and wizards... and a few girls along the way, just to spice things up. As Conan ages, he amasses followers, and eventually becomes a king himself.

After Howard's death, his stories, both finished and unfinished were edited and revised, and it became difficult to find the original stories. The edited versions were considered diluted, and not what Howard originally had in mind for Conan. Fortunately, in 2003 Wandering Star in England, and Ballentine Books in the United States restored his original manuscripts and published them in a 3 Volume Set- Conan of Cimmeria, so you can read the stories, as they were meant to be read.

Although a lawyer specializing in Mortuary Law (makes you wonder where his stories came from), Seabury Quinn was better known for his Jules de Grandin stories that were published in Weird Tales from 1925 to 1938. Jules de Grandin was an occult detective, who with his assistant Dr Towbridge would uncover the mystery, usually an insane or evil person, behind the mysterious werewolves and hauntings. (Think of a very scary, realistic, well written Scooby Doo episode with naked women) (OK, that's lightening things up too much...) Seabury Quinn wrote over 90 chilling Jules de Grandin stories of the supernatural, filled with violence and blood.

The most prolific writer published in Weird Tales.... Jules de Grandin was published by the magazine 160 times.

The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
H. P. Lovecraft

"Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk,"
Robert Bloch (not Stephen King)

Although he is best known for writing the novel, Psycho, which was turned into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Bloch was a rather prolific writer who was published over 100 short stories and several novels. Another worshiper of HP Lovecraft, Bloch started out writing supernatural stories, but later, after Lovecraft's death, his writing evolved to be more about the evil found in the human psyche. His first story for Weird Tales was called, "The Feast in the Abbey", but he went on to contribute many more stories.