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Post by dem bones on Sept 2, 2018 18:10:57 GMT
Julian Kilman - The Golden Caverns: Eerie Adventure and Mammoth Treasure Were Found in The Golden Caverns. A Condensed Novel. An eleven man expedition through Brazilian desert and rain forest is bloodily whittled down in the treasure-laden, multi-booby trapped Caverns of the Ataruipe, a people who died out two thousand years ago. The attentions of the ruthless Spaniard de Silva's party further threaten the survivors. A high body-count, ghastly, inventive deaths, bags of action. For this reader, Kilman's contributions have been the best thing about these early issues.
Lacking copies of The Moon-Terror (reputedly awful), The Death Cell and, sadly, the articles, that's pretty much me done with the May 1923 issue for time being. A previous encounter with The Closed Cabinet left me in no hurry to repeat the experience and the lengthy Culpeper Chunn & Laurie McClintock collaboration proved one challenge too many in current fragile state, though plan to come back to that one at a later date.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 2, 2018 18:13:18 GMT
Edwin Baird (ed.) - Weird Tales (Rural Publishing Corp., June, 1923) Heitman Sixteen Thrilling Short Stories ... Two Complete Novelettes Two Two-Part Stories ... Interesting, Odd and Weird Happenings Paul Ellsworth Triem - The Evening Wolves [Part I] Harold Freeman Miners - Desert Madness Hamilton Craigie - The Jailer of Souls Edwin McLaren - Jack O' Mystery Adam Hull Shirk - Osiris Julian Kilman - The Well Otis Adelbert Kline - The Phantom Wolfhound Edgar Allan Poe - The Murders in the Rue Morgue A. G. Birch - The Moon Terror [Part II] Walter Noble Burns - The Man the Law Forgot George Warburton Lewis - The Blade of Vengeance Loual B. Sugarman - The Gray Death Henry Leverage - The Voice in the Fog Hugh Thomason - The Invisible Terror Helen Rowe Henze - The Escape Tarleton Collier - The Siren Herbert Hipwell - The Madman Dr. Harry E. Mereness - The Chair
Preston Langley Hickey - The Cauldron: True Adventures Of Terror The EyrieAccording to Marvin Kaye, he selected Kilman's The Well for the 'Best of' as it is "the only story worth preserving from the fourth issue." Elsewhere, Rob Weinberg identifies Walter Noble Burns' The Man the Law Forgot as another terrible offering. Osiris is another very minor title to add to our mummy listing. I really like Heitman's Murders In The Rue Morgue cover painting, though rest assured, inside he is back to his usual form. Heitman
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Post by dem bones on Jan 4, 2021 10:07:10 GMT
Welcome first book of 2021 Blurb: This is the readers‘ edition Weird Tales Vol. l, No. 4, published in June 1923. Weird Tales is the hugely Influential Pulp Magazine that went on to define many ideas of modem fantasy and supernatural horror. It spawned the careers of writers such as H. P. Lovecraft and Robert. E. Howard.
This edition strips the original manuscript of ads and irrelevant news items, keeping only the stories and the notes from the original editor. It presents these stories in a way that is easier for modern readers on modern devices. PDF scans of the original magazine, as it would have been read in 1923, are available online.
About the Pulp Fiction Collection
Our modern popular culture would not exist in its current form without the enormous influence of pulp fiction. So named due to the cheap wood-pulp paper used in the printing process, pulp magazines brought affordable fiction options to the masses.
This collection attempts to create a modernized version of these magazines, taking the short stories from each public domain issue and assembling them in a more modern collection format. For a scanned facsimile of the original issue, complete with original ads and formatting, visit Mythbank.com Mythbank links to WeirdtalesissuesChristmas present finally showed up yesterday. Sure, a facsimile, ads 'n all reproduction of the original would be preferable, but this readers edition (see blurb) does the job for those of us who take little pleasure in reading longer pieces from a screen. Herbert Hipwell - The Madman: A Night of Horror in the Mortuary. Two freshmen plan a spooky surprise for Peter Stubb, the live-in caretaker at the Medical College, who rooms next door to the mortuary. Very ludicrous. Tarleton Collier - The Siren: A Storiette that is 'Different'. Railroad worker Joe Wilson nightly sneaks from his tent to meet a mystery woman by the black stream. And each night 'Sadie' entices him to drink contaminated water. "Fever and maybe that damn' typhoid. He's the sickest man I ever saw." Loual B. Sugarman - The Gray Death: It was a Frightful, Incredible Thing They Found in the Amazon Valley. Anthony relates how he and Sigmund Von Hausmann, the great naturalist, came under attack from a voracious fungus seeking its next meal ... The illustrations are too small, typoes abound but three stories in, this book has already cheered me up something alarming.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 4, 2021 19:25:40 GMT
Walter Noble Burns - The Man the Law Forgot: In All The World There Was No Man Quite Like This One. Guisseppi, a young bank robber convicted of a murder he did not commit, survives the gallows thanks to the swift application of a pulmotor by undertakers in the employ of his parents. Revived from the dead, he shoots dead the real killer, Cardello the Devil, before turning himself in. At the subsequent trial, the judge has no option but to release him. Guisseppi, technically a ghost, "is in some fourth-dimension legal state beyond the reach of justice." To celebrate his freedom, Guisseppi next pays a visit to Rosina Stefano, hoping to pick up where they left off. But Rosina, a good Catholic girl, despises him as an Incubus. Guisseppi is left to rue the many disadvantages of being declared ghost. "A man legally dead is less than nothing."
Adam Hull Shirk - Osiris: Have You Been Reading About King Tut? If so, You'll be Interested in 'Osiris', The Weird Tale of an Egyptian Mummy. Sir Richard Parmenter returns to London from a successful excavation, knowing his time is short. His doom was sealed when he prized open the sarcophagus of the Lord of Death!
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Post by dem bones on Jan 5, 2021 19:37:52 GMT
Heitman, bloody Heitman Otis Adelbert Kline - The Phantom Wolfhound: Otis Adelbert Kline, Author of "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes," Spins Another "Spooky" Yarn for the Readers of WEIRD TALES. Mr. Ritsky is a haunted man. Ever since he shot dead her dog, Olga's grasping guardian has been persecuted by an ever-growing spectral Russian wolfhound. A "hopelessly horn-swoggled" Detective Hoyne refers Ritsky to his friend, Doctor Dorp, master of the supernatural, author of Investigations of Materialization Phenomena & Co. Helen Rowe Henze - The Escape: Helen Rowe Henze Spins a Compelling Yarn: Ten years on from the unsolved murder of his wife, John Donalson is diagnosed with appendicitis. Will the dreadful truth flow from his lips while under anaesthetic? Dr. Harry E. Mereness - The Chair: An Electrocution, Vividly Described By An Eye Witness: Unflinching account of capital punishment in Sing Sing prison. Related by an attendant physician who witnessed sixty-seven such executions over six years while working at the prison.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 5, 2021 20:12:16 GMT
Otis Adelbert Kline (OAK) is somebody I think of as producing knockoffs of other authors. I particularly associate OAK with Edgar Rice Burroughs-styled interplanetary "romances." I learned of OAK's work centuries ago (well, it feels that way) from a book by Richard Lupoff, I believe.
Very nice drawing.
H.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 6, 2021 14:28:39 GMT
Heitman George Warburton Lewis - The Blade of Vengeance: A Gripping, Powerful Story by a Man Who Always Tells A Good Tale. Henry Fayne's brief marriage to flighty adventuress Leonor came at cost of his sanity and all friendship. Some years later, when their paths cross again, he is scraping a living as a boatman at the Pacific entrance of the Grand Canal. She, thirty, beautiful and loaded, is disillusioned with life. She fails to recognise her ex as he takes their boat out toward the weir in the Devil's Channel ... Hugh Thomason - The Invisible Terror: An Uncanny Tale of the Jungle. Slater Creek, Colorado. Sheriff Bert Parker and Doc Horace Morse resolve to destroy the invisible thing prowling the alfalfa meadow, which, to date, has torn apart two men, three hounds and several sheep. The law man's cunning plan involves a look-out post up a tree, a long hose and a ten gallon tub of whitewash. Very enjoyable, essentially, What Was It?/ The Damned Thing with a distinctive early Weird Tales makeover. Julian Kilman - The Well: A New Story by Julian Kilman, Master of Weird Fiction. Farmer Harper unwisely taunts humourless neighbour Jeremiah Hubbard over likely outcome of their long-standing boundary dispute now the matter has reached court. Hubbard beats him to death, dumps the corpse down the well by the old Eldridge place, and puts it around that Harper's walked out on his family. The missing man's little daughter is not so sure, takes to sitting on the rim of the dangerously crumbling well for hours at a time. A lightening storm heralds the beginning of the end ...
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Post by dem bones on Jan 7, 2021 22:25:44 GMT
Harold Freeman Miners - Desert Madness: A Fanciful Novel Of The red desert. "Love has no part in my scheme of things. Hate rules the world, and hate is my creed. Love makes people soft and indolent. Hate makes the world go round." Such is the philosophy of Arthur Ward, embittered ex-Wall Street hotshot turned mad torture fiend. We'd best start at the beginning.
When his gal runs off with a bigger wallet, Stanley Ross, adventurer and drifter, packs the mules, Archibald and Percy, and takes to the desert to heal his wounds. Some days into his trek he chances upon an extraordinary sight - a young woman manacled to rocks. Stanley frees the girl, only for her to slip away in the night as he sleeps. Her message in the sand reads "Please go away. There is only great danger if you investigate further."
Hardly has our hero had time to plot his next move before a surly stranger pulls a gun on him. Stanley is frogmarched at gunpoint to the aforementioned Ward's desert prison and served dinner. His crazed host is obsessed with a guy called Warring, an old Wall Street rival who brought about his downfall, to the point where he now believes every young man he dislikes on sight must be the bastard's son. The girl, Virginia Carver, is Wards niece. Her once kindly uncle has decided she will marry another of his cronies, Larson Beebe, piggy-eyed rapist, for no other reason than that she despises him. As a prelude to the wedding festivities, Stanley will be cruelly done away with at dawn. Throughout the meal, Wong, the stage Chinese cook, watches Stanley and the girl with that inscrutable gaze all these Yellow Peril types have, so we've no way of knowing whose side he's on. Great fun, this one.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 8, 2021 14:41:35 GMT
Heitman Edwin McLaren - Jack O' Mystery: A Modern Ghost Story. On the recommendation of a friend, Mrs Peyton hires Herbert Barry, private detective, to investigate her new residence, a quaint old-fashioned house in Hubbard Wood. The place has recently acquired a bad reputation due to the previous owner, North Shore millionaire, Willard Claybury, killing both his wife and himself in a fit of insanity. Now no servant will stay for fear of "a ghastly looking old man with white hair and a beard" who appears nightly to leave dire warnings of what will happen should they not leave him alone here. Scott Peyton, a deeply superstitious man, is in a terrible state. He was against his wife buying the property from the first, and maybe he was right. Super-brain Barry has the case solved before leaving his office, but accompanies Mrs. Peyton home and moves in as "the new cook" for forms sake. By this stage I was thinking a possible 'best of issue' contender, which just goes to show how wrong you can be.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2021 18:35:29 GMT
Heitman Henry Leverage - The Voice in the Fog: The Author of "Whispering Wires" Offers Another Thriller to WEIRD TALES readers ..... Paul Richter, the chief engineer aboard the ocean tanker, Seriphus, detests that his daughter, Hylda, is sweet on Gathright, the ships engineer. So he locks the young fool inside the the spare boiler. As is the case with Jack O'Mystery, a 'modern ghost story.' Don't say you weren't warned.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 12, 2021 11:58:49 GMT
Heitman Hamilton Craigie - The Jailer of Souls: A Powerful Novel of Sinister Madmen That Mounts To An Astounding Climax. Black Steve Annister, gunslinger, adventurer and two-fisted secret agent, travels to Dry Bone, Carter County in search of his missing father. The town is under the control of a corrupt attorney, crooked sheriff, bent mayor and their muscle, the SSS, "the name and symbol of masked and hooded violence." A kindly railway guard recommends Annister leave the place well alone - "tar and feather is just a picnic with that gang. They're a stemwinding bunch of assassins, I'll say." - but Black Steve ain't the leave well alone type. Besides, he's a score to settle with Hamilton Rook, evil lawyer who he believes is somehow involved in the baffling disappearance of, not only Annister snr., but several top capitalists. Between multiple men of violence interludes we learn that the SSS have been bankrupting their captives then delivering them to the sanatorium of the Devil's dermatologist, Dr. Elphinstone - for enforced face transplants! This edition also includes The Eyrie though not, sadly, short lived readers' true weird experiences column, The Cauldron, conducted by Preston Langley Hickey. All criticisms aside (see above), I'm just thrilled to have physical copies of stories I never thought I'd ever get to read.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 13, 2021 11:04:54 GMT
Lacking copies of The Moon-Terror (reputedly awful), The Death Cell and, sadly, the articles, that's pretty much me done with the May 1923 issue for time being. Turns out I wasn't missing much. Heitman F. K. Moss - The Death Cell: ( Weird Tales, May 1923). Strange Indeed, Are The Possibilities of the Human Mind. A Weird Example is Found In. James McKay shoots dead his best friend, William Larson, in the mistaken belief he's been interfering in his love life. McKay instantly regrets his action and surrenders to the police. At subsequent trial, he refuses to submit a plea of temporary insanity and accepts the death sentence calmly and without bitterness. His friends, however, plan to deliver him from the jaws of death by means of a bribed undertaker, a getaway ambulance, pulmotor and restoratives. What could possibly go wrong, as usual? Story an obvious inspiration for Walter Noble Burns' The Man the Law Forgot in the next months issue.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 13, 2021 15:12:03 GMT
Thanks for the scan, Kev! I know it's macabre to say this, but I love the detail of the hat bouncing off the chap's head.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Feb 27, 2021 16:40:53 GMT
One of very few magazines I've read entirely from a screen, but for some of us there is no adequate substitute for a hard copy, and now Mythbank have obliged. Better still, unlike their previous efforts, it's a facsimile of the original. No illo's, print occasionally feint, and some of these stories are truly dreadful, and I am so, so thrilled to have one.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 26, 2021 10:45:29 GMT
Edwin Baird [ed.] - Weird Tales, November, 1923 (Wildside, Sept. 2021). John Martin Leahy - Draconda [Part 1 of 6] P. A. Connolly - The Crawling Death Maebelle McCalment - The Closed Room Walter F. McCanless - The Phantom Violinist John D. Swain - Lucifer Arthur Edwards Chapman - The Spider Effie W. Fifield - The Amazing Adventure of Joe Scranton [Part 2 of 2] Francis D. Grierson - The Iron Room J. Paul Suter - Prisoners of the Dead Oscar Schisgall - The Death Pit Burton Harcourt - The Wax Image Farnsworth Wright - Poisoned Mary S. Brown - The Magic Mirror Sonia Greene - The Invisible Monster Valens Lapsley - The Pebble Prophecy Edgar Allan Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart Seabury Quinn - Weird Crimes #2: The Grave Robbers Edwin G. Wood - The Survivor
Unattributed articles A Heroine of the Black Hole - Girl, Gypsy All Her Life, Turns from Wilds - Gas Bombs to Check Forest Fires - Wife Slayer Drives All Night with Body in Auto - World-Famed "Blue Man" Dies - "Devil's Grip" Spreading - New Mecca for Divorce Hunters - British Missionaries Slain by Chinese Bandits - Saved from Fiery Death by Locomotive Bell - $600,000 for Study of Spiritualism - Will Use Tear Gas on Bootleggers
The EyrieSame size as the Betancourt & Kaye edited Best of Weird Tales 1923 selection, which, unfortunately, on this occasion means eye-murdering tiny text, the first page of The Wax Image providing a particularly formidable challenge. Entirety of the interior illustrations would appear to be Heitman's work, although not all are signed. Writing in the aforementioned Best of ... the editors advise; "November's sixteen stories, including two by Farnsworth Wright and J. Paul Suter, were notably inferior .... " Be that as it may, am so looking forward to getting to grips with the thing over coming days.
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