Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/123

Rh artists agree that a well-done nude is the highest form of artistic expression. And Finlay and Brundage—especially the former—seem capable of doing them well. But back to the magazine itself: I don't think I'm unfair to Thing of Darkness, the featured story, when I say that it has the oldest spooky-story plot on the face of the globe. Since the time of Charles Dickens—and where he got it I can't say—it has been used so many times in books, plays, short-stories, movies, radio dramas, etc., etc., that you could get out a magazine of twice the thickness of WT every week from now to 2000 A. D., and still not reprint more than half of them. This is the only one that really got my ire up, but there were several others that I thought rather mediocre. The Abyss Under the World seemed to be written more in the style of a pulp detective thriller than a real weird story; and perhaps I'm being a bit hasty, inasmuch as there is another installment to be printed, but isn't it a bit strange that the Egyptians under the ground should speak nothing but English? I thought World of the Dark Dwellers was pretty good, although the idea of mechanical masters who had once been men living underground and preying on the 'light dwellers' is strangely like H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. I enjoyed The Mandarin's Ear, The Last Pharaoh, and the Lovecraft reprint, though, and according to the 'trailer' of next month's issue, WT seems destined to return to its former high level. Here's hoping."

Reginald A. Pryke, of Kent, England, writes: "Since way back in 1925 we (that means three of us) have been your loyal followers and admirers. In the days of Senf's covers, monthly Jules de Grandins, Henry S. Whitehead and Dunwich Horrors, into Rankin's era with his clouded, evil, misty illustrations, bursting into Howard's pulsating epics, Depression days and bimonthly issues—terrible time of famine—and so into the present day. Per ardua ad astra! You have a record to be proud of, a future to encourage you to even greater efforts, and a spirit to take the sad blows Fate has dealt you unflinchingly. A moment to think of The Fallen. Whitehead: Who  