Page:Weird Tales Volume 30 Number 02 (1937-08).djvu/128

 and the fantastic that would be! An even greater treasure would be a compilation of his masterly, though enormous, correspondence; yet what splendid reading his letters would make, even though they ran to a number of volumes! Yet, great as these are, they can go but a little way to approach the greatest treasure of ail for those who were acquainted with him: the man, Howard Phillips Lovecraft himself." [Since Mr. Lovecraft's death we have obtained several posthumous stories and poems from his inspired pen, and these will be published in forthcoming issues of this magazine. Your question as to a collection of his stories is answered in the opening paragraph of the Eyrie.—]

Here are a few random jottings which may be interesting to Weird Talers—notes on what's what in the fantasy world these days C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner have collaborated on a new weird tale in which Jirel of Joiry meets Northwest Smith and Yarol Mrs. Seabury Quinn didn't care for the Old Marster's Children of the Bat at all. Thought it a trifle too gory Otto Binder has written all the more recent 'Eando' stories by himself. As he now lives in New York City and Earl in Chicago, collaboration would be difficult John R. Speer, who authored Symphony of the Damned and, in part, The Carnal God, used to be an actor by profession. The depression hit him hard, so he joined the U. S. Navy Another fan magazine which has dropped out of the field is Science-Fantasy Correspondent Earl Pierce, Jr., and Bruce Bryan, both of Washington, D. C., have collaborated on The White Rat—a revision of Peirce's The Surgery Master, which was previously rejected by Editor Wright Satan's Palimpsest, Seabury Quinn's latest, appears in the September WT. Virgil Finlay will do a portrait of Jules de Grandin for the story. Cover by Brundage.

H. Sivia, of Palestine, Texas, writes: "I can't forget Virgil Finlay's illustration for Hazel Heald's The Horror in the Burying-Ground. It's so eery and wild. And the caption was so appropriately chosen. I think I have been to places like the one she describes in the piny woods. And believe me, when the wind blows, a person can hear almost anything out there—even the awful 'Comin' again some day.' Your serial The Last Pharaoh looks promising, although the writing style seems a shade on the English side. Edgar Daniel Kramer and Dorothy Quick came through splendidly with exquisite verse. It seems to me that Mr. Kramer never has that dreamy tone to any of his verses except those printed in WT. Undoubtedly he is a past master at the art of slanting. I notice Henry Kuttner tried his hand at aping Lovecraft. Not bad either Best story, or at least the one I most thoroughly enjoyed in the May issue, was Duar the Accursed by Clifford Ball. I would say, in a muted undertone, that Ball writes like the late Robert E. Howard—but that would be sacrilege."

Arthur D. Hall, of Nappan Station, Nova Scotia, writes: "Something I saw in the December issue of your magazine has moved me to write to you in protest. In fact I wish to raise a controversy on the subject and get it settled for good and all. I refer to a passage in The Cyclops of Xoatl. On page 576 Bart Leslie is saying, referring to the German: 'He'll damn soon confine his efforts to butterfly chasing.' This is the question I wish to raise. Why do writers when they wish to convey the impression of a timid sissyfied man, most often describe him as a butterfly chaser, and why is a collector of moths and butterflies spoken of in terms of contempt? I am, myself, what I suppose would be called a butterfly chaser, having been interested in entomology, particularly Lepidoptera, all my life. Yet I do not think I am either particularly timid, or a sissy. I have worked at jobs which do not convey that impression anyway, having been among other things, a sandhog, a deep-sea diver, a dynamite charger and firer. I was at the Great War for four years and at a couple of little ones before that. I have sailed the seven seas, and been in some little-known places. I have 'shot it out' in places where the pistol was law, and been trapping alone, where I never saw a soul for months at a time. Even the actual catching of moths is not such a sissyfied occupation as one might think. These are mostly caught at night, and I've seen some of your 'red-blooded men' who would hesitate to go (as we go, and