Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/119

 compared with Merritt's works. By all means, H. K., write more about Elak and his friends. In an ordinary issue Jack Williamson's great novel would easily have taken first place, but Dreadful Sleep, Williamson's best since Golden Blood, must be content with second. Goetterdaemmerung, Seabury Quinn's novelette, took third place. The rest of the stories were all good I don't like short short-stories and I seriously condemn you for reprinting the classics. Short short-stories are nearly always based on the ghost or spirit entity plot and they are usually very poorly developed. My main objection to stories by Hawthorne or Poe being used is that nearly everyone has read them before. I might add that there are scores of good stories from old issues of WT that are now eligible for reprinting (Bimini, The Skeleton Under the Lamp, The Copper Bowl, The Cult of the Skull, The Tinkle of the Camel's Bell, The Silver Key, etc.) is showing constant improvement. Keep it up!"

Jam-up

H. Sivia writes from Palestine, Texas: "Thanks for a swell May issue. Everything in it is jam-up. Only one complaint: the lack of short-shorts. We must have variety, you know. My vote for first place is split between Quinn's Goetterdaemmerung and Hamilton's The Isle of the Sleeper. Especially do I like the idea back of the latter. Always glad to see one of Howard's yarns in print. The background for his piny woods stories is always authentic."

Finlay's Illustrations

Henry Kuttner writes from Beverly Hills, California: "Virgil Finlay's grease-pencil work, in the current WT, is as excellent as his pen-and-ink sketches, and seems to reproduce somewhat better on pulp paper. I was particularly struck, in the April issue, with Starrett's Cordelia's Song, which succeeded admirably in capturing the outré insane horror of The King in Yellow. Why not reprint that classic yarn, and Chambers' even more ghastly The Yellow Sign? Clark Ashton Smith's tale, The Garden of Adompha, was swell, and Virgil's pictorial