Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/180



N OUR November issue we asked the readers for an expression of opinion on horror stories of the necrophilic type, and promised that we would take the word of the readers as a command. Many letters have been received in answer to the request, and more are coming in by every mail.

Up to date, those who want horror stories have distinctly the advantage, but many of them qualify their demand for thrillers by saying that the horror stories must not be disgusting. Some of our readers want the magazine to drip with gore ("the scarier they are, the better I like them," writes Bessie Douglas, of Portland, Maine); but these are in a small minority. As near as the editor can make out from the expression of opinion so far received, the readers of don't want anything nauseating, and yet they do want to read eery, thrilling and bizarre tales of the Edgar Allan Poe type—tales such as they cannot get in any other magazine. But the question is still open. belongs to you, the readers, and your opinions will be eagerly welcomed.

Many of our readers, even while casting their votes against "bloody" stories, express the fear that the tales in this magazine may cease to be weird, and that the very quality that gives it its distinction will disappear. Randall Campbell, of Henryetta, Oklahoma, writes: "When I buy a Radio News I want it to be about radio. The same with —I want it to be weird."

The same idea is expressed by C. A. Corson, of Chicago, who writes: "I am heartily in favor of publishing anything that savors of the terrible, weird, occult or unreal. To make absolutely distinctive in this era of stereotyped fiction, and in order to interest a great many readers, it seems to me that it is imperative, in order not to mislead the readers of your magazine, to make it really a magazine of weird, uncanny fiction, different from any other. I believe also that a large number of readers today are surfeited with sea stories, western yarns, etc., etc., etc., and that a large clientele will back you up in making  live up to its title. Keep your magazine up to what the name implies."

A voice on the other side is raised by W. S. Charles, of Pendleton, Oregon, who writes: "I herewith put in my oar against 'horror stories,' particularly that class that are somber and in the main vicious, beyond the realm of reason. It is bad for you from a circulation point; for when a reader for the first time picks up your magazine and reads such a story, while it for the moment fascinates him or her, to later cause insomnia, you can count on that 179