Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/125

Rh pond) were standing at the corner of West 48th Street and Broadway in New York City last summer, chewing the rag a bit before departing on our various ways. The conversation drifted to, and to H. P. Lovecraft and the Necronomicon in particular. Mort glanced at the near-by news stand and remarked: 'Suppose you went over to that stand and asked for a copy of the Necronomicon, and the fellow handed it to you. What would you do?' None of us knew exactly what course he would follow under the unusual circumstances. Otto remarked: 'Pay for it, I guess.' Mort digested this for a moment or so, then continued: 'That would make a good plot for a story—for some fan magazine, that is. You could explain that Lovetraft's readers had thought so much about the mythical Necronomicon that their combined thought-force materialized it.' As Weisinger knows Manly Wade Wellman quite well, it may be that the idea got around to the latter, who developed it into a short for WT. How about it, Manly?"

I. O. Evans writes from Tadworth, in Surrey: "As one of your many British readers, I have greatly enjoyed the stories that appear in your excellent magazine, and I look forward to reading many more of them. I was, however, surprized to find a rather startling error in a story which appeared in a recent issue—I forget its name and that of the author, but it dealt with the worship of an Egyptian beast-god in a Cornish mine. [The story was The Brood of Bubastis, by Robert Bloch, in our March issue.—] In this the author speaks of the 'Cornish countryside' as 'a region of mystic mountains, and purple peaks that towered above wild forest glens and green-grottoed swamplands.' I don't think any description could be less accurate! The highest hill in the duchy is Brown Willy, of only 1,368 feet; rhere are no forests—the bulk of the country is moorland; and rhe only 'peaks' are those of the hills of spoil from the numerous mine-workings, which can hardly be said to 'tower.' Later your author mentions local faith in 'leprechauns,' which are Irish fairies, and 'kelpies,' which are Scottish! The joke is that the 'scenery of Cornwall has eery qualities, and the people faith in spirits, which would have suited your author's story admirably had he got them right. What he