Page:Weird Tales v33n05 (1939-05).djvu/152



OR sixteen years has consistently endeavored to give its readers stories that are different from any to be found elsewhere. In addition to the best weird and fantastic stories obtainable, we have sought out and printed other highly imaginative tales, so plausibly told that they seem entirely possible and convincing. That we have succeeded in our purpose of presenting utterly different literary fare is attested by the multitudinous flood of enthusiastic letters from you, the readers, throughout the years this magazine has been published. Such a different story is The Hollow Moon in this issue, the story of a lunar vampire, written by an author whose previous vampire story, The Canal, was acclaimed by no less an authority than the late H. P. Lovecraft himself as one of the greatest vampire tales ever written. The next few months will be particularly rich in such highly original and utterly different tales, notable among them being Giants of the Sky by Frank Belknap Long, Jr., an unusual tale of vast beings in a super-cosmos who make our earth the object of an experiment; King of the World's Edge by H. Warner Munn, an intriguing weird novel of America in King Arthur's time, with Merlin as one of its principal characters; and Spawn by P. Schuyler Miller, as powerful and strange a tale as it has ever been our good fortune to present to you, our readers.

Herbert Vincent Ross writes from London: " has traveled steadily upward to the very top of literary weird art. Take the tale by Manly Wade Wellman in the October issue, Up Under the Roof, which was a perfect example of the modern What a little gem that was, and fit to be included in any modern anthology! And then H. P. Lovecraft's The Other Gods, which was so typical of that great master of bizarre fiction. Was not HPL truly the master of them all, even including Poe, BeirceBierce [sic], Machen, Dunsany? I think the answer is 'yes' and that in time his work will take its proper place amongst the world's classics. Congratulations also to Clark Ashton Smith for his Maze of Maal Dweb, which was also the sort of thing we expect from this unique poet and artist; for Smith is an artist, an artist of words, and none draws more vividly or more romantically than he. The Black Monk by Pendarves was passable, but I expect better from this writer, and in any case I tumbled to the plot before I was halfway through the story. Brother Ignatius was a dead give-away for the Black Monk, and so it proved; but still it was passable. Witches on the Heath, the poem by Leah Bodine Drake, was good and also really weird; the line, 'Somebody played in the twisted tree,' left quite a lot to the imagination, which is as it should be in a work such as this. And now a grumble. I realize I am only one reader amongst many thousands, but do readers really like those 'formula' tales by Edmond Hamilton like The Fire Princess? Ah well, I suppose they do or you would not print them; but for me, although it was a hot fire, it left me cold. Hamilton can do good things, we know, for he has given us Isle of the Sleeper, Child of