Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/119

 The Other Worlds

OR all of you who enjoy adventures into the worlds beyond (and it goes without saying that, as a reader of WEIRD TALES, you are a connoisseur of the uncanny)—there's a swell book called The Other Worlds (Wilfred Funk, $2.50); it's an anthology of outside-this-life fiction edited by Phil Stong, one of America's more successful writers, an expert on the unknown, and a front rank critic of weird fiction.

The Other Worlds carries the "twenty-five most outstanding modern stories of free imagination of the past decade" the "best since Frankenstein and Dracula."

The book is divided into three sections: "Strange Ideas" "Fresh Variants," and "Horrors." The "Strange Ideas" are short story notions which, Mr. Stong says, appealed to him because he had never heard of them before.

"Fresh Variants" is of much the same genre, except that the ideas of origin are of earlier use, though pleasantly and ingeniously diverted into new channels and conclusions.

"Horrors" is the most conventional. The language of this type of tale, the compiler feels, should be simple and unpretentious. Concerning such hair raisers, Mr. Stong writes: "The ghost story per se is not necessarily a horror story, because a great many or nearly all of them can be read without any psychic discomfort. The final desideratum of the horror story is that this feeling should be translated to the hair on the back of the neck—that is, physically experienced. This feat is accomplished about once in a literary coon's age, so that it is not strange that in the following collection only one has this effect on me. I shall not name it; but I think the reader will discover it." We think we know which one Mr. Stong means. When you read the book, we'd be interested to hear what story you believe it is.

Ghost stories, weird stories and horror stories, he says, are three differently feathered birds—and while the horror story is almost invariably weird, the ghost and weird tales are seldom horrible.

There are, you will be glad to hear, no stories about Mars or monkeymen. Instead, the book contains horror tales that would reduce the temperature of a smelting plant—and humorous fantasies to balance off the "grims" with "grins" that are really laugh making. And although every story is convincing while it is read, you will not find any tale here that is even remotely possible. For, as Phil Stong says, " this crop is not marred by any appeals to reason. If you dig up a god in your garden who assures you that your worst lies are not only true but always have-been, don't bother Einstein; come and see me."

Or better still—if you are always seeking an answer to questions that are unanswerable—stay with us as a permanent reader of WEIRD TALES.

Writing l.g. After Your Name

NOTHER recent book, which we arc sure will appeal to WEIRD TALES readers, is a very modern story of lycanthropy. This is Franklin Gregory's The White Wolf (Random House, New York, $2). The story is set in that part of Pennsylvania where he who rides may see many hex signs on the barns, and where the horned finger sign for warding off the evil eye is universally recognized; so a modern werewolf fantasy fits uncommonly well into that background.

Opening in Philadelphia, a lovely young socialite develops such amazing symptoms that her father begins to think she has inherited some strange powers from her remote ancestors. Studies of family records indeed show the mystic symbols l.g. after some of their names—and this can only mean loup garou. How this appalling heritage is brought home to a group of intelligent modern skeptics—a group which includes news reporters, press photographers and a consulting psychiatrist, not to mention the earnest young gentleman farmer who is the girl's fiance—offers good