Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 6 (1925-12).djvu/128



EIRD TALES, from its inception, has endeavored to seek out stories of a type that readers can find nowhere else, and most of its stories could be placed under two classifications. First, there are the occult stories and stories of psychic phenomena—such tales as have exercised the pens of many great masters: Poe, Hawthorne, Irving, Rider Haggard, Wilkie Collins, and many others. To this class belongs the greatest of Sir Walter Scott's stories, Wandering Willie's Tale, which will be published in as our next month's reprint story. The other classification is highly imaginative stories, tales of advancement of the arts and sciences to which the generation of writers who create them have not yet attained. All writers of such stories are prophets, and in the years to come many of their prophecies will come true. The most noted exponents of this type of weird tale are Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Some people turn up their noses at such stories, and delude themselves with the statement that they are too practical to read such stuff. The illustrious scientist Huxley wrote a suitable answer for them long ago: "Those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact." Certain it is that many incredible things forecast twenty years ago by Jules Verne and H. G. Wells have since come to be realities. And it is such stories that seeks to give to its readers.

A stirring story of this type is Red Ether, by Pettersen Marzoni, which will be printed soon. Imagine a nation in chaos, imagine Congress in session with the President of the United States; the huge Capitol shimmers and twists, and is reduced in ten seconds time to a cloud of red dust through etheric vibrations sent by radio. Incredible, perhaps; but scientists are actually experimenting on the atom, trying to disrupt it; and is it entirely beyond the limits of the conceivable that science may sometime discover a wave force that will counteract the vibrations of the electrons, stop their rotation, and thereby cause the atoms to simply cease to exist?

We have many imaginative tales of science in store for our readers, and a treasure-hoard of occult and mystic tales. Poe specialized in tales of terror and mystery, but even Poe never wrote a more gripping tale of terror than Seabury Quinn has penned in The Isle of Missing Ships, which will be printed month after next. And in Stealer of Souls, coining next month, Charles Hilan Craig has given you an occult story of primitive power, all the more gripping because you feel that it could occur, weird and almost incredible though it is. Imagine a town absolutely powerless to prevent four-