Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 4 (1926-10).djvu/143

 this bare theme and made a thrilling tale out of it by the sheer power of genius, and it behooves other writers to keep off the theme unless they have something new to offer. Bassett Morgan made a real story out of the sea-serpent theme for when he wrote Laocoon, but he built up a new and wonderful plot around this time-worn subject.

Another theme popular with writers of weird tales is the one that Ambrose Bierce used in his Mysterious Disappearances, where he relates a number of instances of people stepping into "holes in space" and disappearing. We have received a number of manuscripts on this theme, but these have been sent back to their authors because there was really no story. To have a horde of Mohammedan warriors disappear into thin air in the year 1211 as they were about to storm a Spanish castle—that is interesting, and it might make a good story; but to have them reappear at the same place in this year of grace 1926 and continue the assault, as J. M. Hiatt has done for you in The Assault Upon Miracle Castle; or to have some being from ten thousand years in the future reach back into the present to seize his victims, as Edmond Hamilton has done for you in The Time Raider—that makes fascinating reading, such as may well find place in. Both tales (Hiatt's and Hamilton's) are based on the same idea that is used so often—the stepping off into another dimension, into the "holes in space"; but the authors have built up the idea into fascinating plots. Both stories will be published soon.

It is such imaginative treatment of threadbare themes that makes them new and living; it makes stories that are utterly different. And it is such stories that is always looking for; for the brilliant success of this magazine has been built on stories that are really unusual.

Writes J. Vernon Shea, Jr., of Pittsburgh: "It might be interesting to you to know that you have young readers as well as old. I am just a boy of thirteen, but I am of the opinion that is the best magazine ever published. Such writers as Eli Colter, Seabury Quinn, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert S. Carr and Edmond Hamilton deserve special mention for their excellent work. I can never forget The Outsider, by Lovecraft. It was the weirdest, most thrilling and most eery tale I have ever had the good fortune to read."

Writes Floyd Anderson, of Minneapolis: "I get more excitement out of reading than seeing an exciting movie. Last November, by chance, I purchased a copy, and since then have never missed a single issue."

Gordon Philip England writes from Quebec Province, Canada: "I think The Demons of Castle Romnare one of the very best ghost stories I ever had the fortune to read. To get the full power of the story one needs to read it aloud, and then it is just wonderful."

Writes Elizabeth Adt Wenzler, of Brooklyn: "The Woman of the Wood in the August issue was delicately beautiful; The Monster-God of Mamurth truly eery and different; The Devil's Graveyard very entertaining, with frights and shivers. An excellent number."

C. F. Chapman, of Los Angeles, writes: "I want to thank you for the introduction to your pages, in The Woman of the Wood, of those interesting wights the Dryads, or Annes Colie, as we Celts did and do call them. How much I wish your readers might enjoy the masterpieces of weird fiction by Fiona McLeod in the original Gaelic! These are not only weird and uncanny to a high degree, but are literary gems with which you are no doubt familiar. I refer particularly to the group published in translation (now out of print),