Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 2 (1926-08).djvu/139



HE illusion of reality! That seems to be the key to the amazing success of. Stories that take one far from the sordid, humdrum, everyday life of the world into a deathless land of fantasy, of imaginative unrealities that seem real; stories that plumb the future with the eye of prophecy, explore the spaces between the stars, cross the threshold of death and deal boldly with devil-worship and black magic, witchcraft and voodoo, ghosts, forces of occult evil and occult good; yet the stories seem real—otherwise they could not hold the thrill that has given its fame. When it was first decided to put out a magazine that should be truly different from all others in the world, convincingness was made the essential test for all stories. Tales that amaze, yet convince; tales that thrill—and seem true. Some of the stories in are absolutely impossible (as far as we know what is possible and what is not), but even the impossible stories seem probable. They carry the illusion of reality.

The classic example of impossibility made probable is Dracula, which was written by Sir Henry Irving's manager, Mr. Bram Stoker. It deals with vampires—the Undead who come out from their tombs at night and prey upon the living; an absolutely impossible story, treating of things that nobody believes in any more (though such beliefs were once common enough); yet so carefully and convincingly does the author develop his theme that the story seems entirely real while we are reading it, and thus we are able to become tremendously excited over the thrilling adventures therein described. And it is the aim of to keep this thrill that comes of the illusion of reality, even in stories that deal with what is called the impossible. They seem possible while we are reading them; otherwise they could hold no thrill.

It is much more difficult for an author to write a convincing weird tale now than it was when the Arabian Nights Entertainments were written, when everyone believed in magic, in jinns and occult influence. It is real art to write a thoroughly convincing story in which the planet Mars hurtles in flaming destruction straight toward Earth, pulled from its orbit by creatures on this world with power to repel or attract the planet by stabbing across space with red or green rays of light. Across Space, the story by Edmond Hamilton, which begins next month in, is replete with thrills, because it is written so convincingly that nothing in it seems impossible, and the reader is carried along in the sweep of hopes and fears that beset the world, for the story seems utterly probable in every detail. It is pseudo-science, but it is based on sound scientific principles. And it is this magazine's in-