Good History of the famous Pulp magazine
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In this fascinating book (a reprint of the 1977 edition) Weinberg gives us the history of Weird Tales from 1923-54, plus the first revival in 1973-4.
The first two chapters give the magazine's history and a biography of WT's most famous editor, Farnsworth Wright.
The magazine was launched by J.C. Henneberger, a publisher of humour magazines and a Poe devotee. After a weak start, Wright took over in 1924.
Although never commerically successful, Wright managed to keep the magazine afloat and gave an outlet to many excellent writers and artists.
Wright's interesting personality-wit, music critic and admirer of French culture-is vividly brought to life by his friend, E. Hoffmann Price, who wrote the bio.
Chapter 3 is a reprinted editorial from 1924 describing the "highly imaginative" stories the magazine would publish. The editorial is largely uninteresting, but does prophetically state that the magazine hopes to discover a weird writer equal to Poe or Hawthorne.
The fourth chapter is the longest, describing Weinberg's choice of the most notable stories published during WT's duration. Regular genres included supernatural horror, science fiction (usually about mad scientists or space exploration), "conte cruels" involving torture and/or madness, and fantasy (of the "lost civilization" or "sword & sorcery" types).
Noted contributors included H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry S. Whitehead, C.L. Moore and Manly Wade Wellman.
In the 1940s, the magazine gained a new editor, Dorothy McIlWraith, who brought in Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber,Ted Sturgeon, Fredric Brown and C. Hall Thompson.
Although the magazine entered a severe decline in the 1950s, it could still publish the odd good story by writers such as Joseph Payne Brennan.
Chapter 5 details the memories of former writers and artists, such as Robert Bloch.Wellman tells of how some readers believed his monsters (the Shonokins) really existed! Bloch tells of adapting his WT stories to radio, TV and film.
Cover and interior art are covered in the next sections. WT's art, initally crude, soon developed into vivid and beautiful images by artists like Virgil Finlay, Margaret Brundage and Hannes Bok.
Unfortunately, the books' cover images are small and blurred, although the reproductions of interior art are faultless.
The next chapter include discuss the table of contents and "coming next month" sections.
A fascinating discussion of the "Eyrie", the letters page, follows. WT's readers were given a forum to praise (or savage!) the magazine and offer suggestions. There were heated arguments over whether WT's remit should include sf, or whether Howard's Conan stories were any good.
The last chapters cover rival fantasy magazines including Strange Tales, Horror Stories and Unknown Worlds, and WT's short-lived return(It has returned again, and it's still going as of 2007).
All in all, an excellent read for anyone interested in sci/fi or Fantasy.
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