Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 5 (1927-05).djvu/137



EIRD TALES is now four years old. When it first appeared on the news stands, many thought it was "just another magazine," but it was soon discovered that Weird Tales was a "different" magazine, with a wholesome disregard for the self-imposed editorial limitations of other publications. The fantastic monsters of ancient legend stalked through its pages; werewolves lived again; ghosts and apparitions took on modern trappings; specters wailed in haunted houses; and scientists performed weird experiments in their laboratories. Magazine pages were again opened to the rich literature of the bizarre and fantastic, and with the return of weird fiction to the news stands came the new literature, of which is the foremost exponent—the weird-scientific story. The forward leap that science has taken in the last fifty years has stimulated the imaginations of authors, and in the pages of Weird Tales the future of the world is rolled back, the void of Space is peopled with flying ships, which can go backward and forward in Time as well as Space; mad scientists strive to destroy the world; tremendous dooms rush in upon the Earth from the sky.

The amazing success of has been built upon three types of stories—the weird tale proper; the bizarre and fantastic story; and the weird-scientific story. That these types of stories, which take one away from the humdrum environment of everyday life, are appreciated by the reading public is shown by the steady growth of. We shall continue to give you the kind of stories we have given you in the past. And if you like these stories, if you want to aid in building up an even greater success for your magazine, you can do so by calling the attention of your friends to the feast of imaginative reading it contains and letting them share the good things therein.

The Rev. Henry S. Whitehead, himself an author of note, writes: "Congratulations on the March issue. I think Lovecraft has struck twelve with The White Ship. It is one of the finest things of its sort I have ever seen. It is literature."

Harold S. Farnese, of Los Angeles, writes to The Eyrie: "As to the pro and con of reprints, I think it ludicrous to generally praise or condemn them. You have given us some very good reprints, notably What Was It? and The Upper Berth; also the two last ones were entertaining. The one by Andreyeff shows the hand of a masterly author; it affected me strangely days after I read it. But Ligeia by Poe was awfully drawn out, almost pointless, pages of ravings over the beauty of a certain woman, exhausting the dictionary, as it were,