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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 9, 2012 1:28:30 GMT
A few to be getting along with. I've read both of your Counselman picks and likewise wouldn't object to either. Looking back at them I realize that she ventures into dark territory more often than I recalled. Swet is a new one to me, so I'll defer to your judgment on her! Now, four more of my selections, this time from authors with relatively few appearances in the magazine: Evangeline WaltonI have you to thank for recommending Walton's The End of the Corridor (1950) to me. The author of Witch House wrote only one story for WT, but it's a morbid little gem about a Greek vampire, or vrykolakas. Frances GarfieldGarfield wasn't as prolific a writer as her husband, Manly Wade Wellman, but she did publish three stories in WT. Of the two I've read, I'd give the nod to The Forbidden Cupboard (1940), which concerns a demon with an unusual hiding place. A revised version was reprinted as Don't Open That Door in David Sutton and Stephen Jones' The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales.Leah Bodine DrakeDrake wrote two stories for WT, both recently revived by Gregory Luce in the Horror Gems series. I like both Whisper Water (1953) and Mop-Head (1954) but give a slight edge to the latter. It concerns a creature that comes to life in the bottom of a Kentucky well--sort of a cousin to "It" from the famous Theodore Sturgeon story. Zealia BishopWith the assistance of H. P. Lovecraft, Bishop penned three stories for WT. The Mound (1940) is interesting but overly long. Medusa's Coil (1930) is both weak and egregiously racist--for the tale to work, one would need to share the authors' horror at the prospect of "passing." That leaves The Curse of Yig (1929), an enjoyable lurid story about the vengeance of an irate snake-god. |
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Post by dem on Aug 9, 2012 13:49:51 GMT
I'm very glad you've come up with a story to represent Frances Garfield as she should be in there, but the only ones i've read - including the magnificent The House At Evening and Come To The Party - are from far later in her career. Of the Lovecraft revisions, I opted for Zealia Brown Bishop's The Curse Of Yig and Hazel Heald's The Horror In The Museum the latter on the assumption that ''Hazel Heald' was, indeed a flesh and blood entity and a female one. They're likely both over familiar to many readers, and i guess The Horror In The Burying Ground makes for an acceptable substitute but it lacks a character named Stephen Jones. Further contenders for consideration: Signe Toksvig was another one-hit wonder, at least as far as Weird Tales was concerned. Christine Campbell Thomson reran The Devil's Martyr (June 1928), a story of witchcraft and religious persecution in By Daylight Only. Thought i'd desecrated everything in there, but typically, Signe's novella, a story so florid it would not be out of place in Peter Haining's Gothic Tales Of Terror From Europe & America, is one of three overlooked, so will get onto that later. Elizabeth Sheldon's The Ghost That Never Died (Nov 1931), as reprinted in CCT's Grim Death the following year. My favourite quote from Stephen Gresham's aforementioned interview. Mary E. Counselman's response when asked "What did WEIRD TALES accomplish?" I feel that it was the one pulp that had no restrictions and no taboos. You could write as long a story as you wanted to or as short a story as far as the length requirements. And you could try out a lot of things that got several writers into trouble, such as devil-worship and witchcraft. You wouldn't believe the trouble that Seabury Quinn got in with his La Grandin novels. Then along came Brundage and used nudes; not only nudes but sadism and other things that were just considered out-and-out taboos by other pulp magazines, but we were allowed to use them in WEIRD TALES. Farnsworth Wright and Dorothy McIlwraith were very broad-minded about things like that. So which Marion Bondage cover have you decided to go with? |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 9, 2012 19:25:42 GMT
So which Marion Bondage cover have you decided to go with? I was all set to go with the January 1938 cover, but it seems that Vanguard Productions is using it as the cover for a collection of her artwork (good for them!), so back to the drawing board. I love both "The House at Evening" and "Come to the Party"; I only wish that Garfield had written more stories. I can never keep the various Lovecraftian stories by Heald straight in my memory, so I'm glad that you made a choice there (and one based on irrefutable logic, too). Sheldon's story is included in Horror Gems Volume Two, so I'll be getting to that one soon. I've never run across Signe Toksvig before, but her story sounds fun. Plus, I dig the name "Signe." I'd be curious to hear if her novel The Last Devil is worth a look. |
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Post by dem on Aug 10, 2012 19:09:38 GMT
Anything like The Devil's Martyr and, if nothing else, it should be a lot of fun. Two that made my initial list but, as with Pearl Norton Swet, now I'm not so sure: Loretta G. Burrough - Creeping Fingers: (August, 1931) A hotel room haunted by the ghost of a man who drowned his wife in the bath-tub. Great title, decent story, would benefit from a nastier ending. Reprinted, At Dead Of Night, (Selwyn & Blount, Nov, 1931) Katherine Yates - Under The Hau Tree: Nov. 1925). Gentle ghost story, happy ending. Love conquers death. On reflection, too sweet by far for this collection. Reprinted, Magazine Of Horror #11, October 1965. |
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Post by dem on Aug 11, 2012 14:08:24 GMT
God knows, Everill Worrell's The Gray Killer should be work of literary madness enough for one anthology but to be on the safe side, let's throw in ... Amelia Reynolds Long - The Thought Monster (March 1930). When several members of a hick community are found dead in mysterious circumstances at a rate of five in three days, the mayor seeks assistance from the city police. The NYPD duly forward one of their finest, "a keen-witted intelligent man named Gibson, with a long list of brilliant exploits behind him," who wastes no time in psychologically profiling a chief suspect. "Those people have died of fright," he said. "There is someone, probably an escaped lunatic, hiding in the woods who is so hideous that the very sight of him frightens the beholder to death. Since all the deaths occurred within a mile of each other, you will find him hiding somewhere within that comparatively small area."
"But we searched the woods," objected the chief. "We searched them thoroughly. There wasn't the sign of a thing."
"Did you ever search at night ? " asked Gibson.
"Well, no" the chief admitted.So Gibson sets out alone after dark and that's the last we see of him for a week until he shambles into town a week later, "a mouthing, gibbering idiot!" I wonder if mad scientist Dr. Walgate, who lives in that rambling old mansion half a mile from town, can shed any light on the mystery? Includes scenes of grave robbing, joyriding dead folk, a "mental vampire," and Michael Cummings, the world's least charismatic psychic investigator. As reprinted by - who else? - Christine Campbell Thomson in Switch On The Light |
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michelp
Crab On The Rampage
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Post by michelp on Aug 12, 2012 12:12:06 GMT
For years I wanted to read The Thought Monster because it was the basis of that great little b&w British monster movie, Fiend Without a Face - the one with the flying brains with tentacles! When I eventually found the story and read it, it didn't seem to have much to do with the movie, which was a regular on the old Sundays-only double-horror-bill cinema circuit. The stop-motion creatures were very effective for the time (seem to to remember reading that the brains were filled with Heinz tinned spaghetti so they splattered nicely.) If it had been an American film they would have done a remake and a couple of sequels by now... God knows, Everill Worrell's The Gray Killer should be work of literary madness enough for one anthology but to be on the safe side, let's throw in ... Amelia Reynolds Long - The Thought Monster (March 1930). When several members of a hick community are found dead in mysterious circumstances at a rate of five in three days, the mayor seeks assistance from the city police. The NYPD duly forward one of their finest, "a keen-witted intelligent man named Gibson, with a long list of brilliant exploits behind him," who wastes no time in psychologically profiling a chief suspect. "Those people have died of fright," he said. "There is someone, probably an escaped lunatic, hiding in the woods who is so hideous that the very sight of him frightens the beholder to death. Since all the deaths occurred within a mile of each other, you will find him hiding somewhere within that comparatively small area."
"But we searched the woods," objected the chief. "We searched them thoroughly. There wasn't the sign of a thing."
"Did you ever search at night ? " asked Gibson.
"Well, no" the chief admitted.So Gibson sets out alone after dark and that's the last we see of him for a week until he shambles into town a week later, "a mouthing, gibbering idiot!" I wonder if mad scientist Dr. Walgate, who lives in that rambling old mansion half a mile from town, can shed any light on the mystery? Includes scenes of grave robbing, joyriding dead folk, a "mental vampire," and Michael Cummings, the world's least charismatic psychic investigator. As reprinted by - who else? - Christine Campbell Thomson in Switch On The Light |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 15, 2012 0:24:10 GMT
Two that made my initial list but, as with Pearl Norton Swet, now I'm not so sure: Loretta G. Burrough - Creeping Fingers: (August, 1931) A hotel room haunted by the ghost of a man who drowned his wife in the bath-tub. Great title, decent story, would benefit from a nastier ending. Reprinted, At Dead Of Night, (Selwyn & Blount, Nov, 1931) Katherine Yates - Under The Hau Tree: Nov. 1925). Gentle ghost story, happy ending. Love conquers death. On reflection, too sweet by far for this collection. Reprinted, Magazine Of Horror #11, October 1965. I haven't read either of these. The Yates story is also in Kurt Singer's Tales of the Uncanny (which I thought I owned, but it turns out that I don't--I was thinking of his Tales of Terror, or maybe his Weird Tales of the Supernatural--it's so difficult to keep track of his anthologies sometimes). Includes scenes of grave robbing, joyriding dead folk, a "mental vampire," and Michael Cummings, the world's least charismatic psychic investigator. This sounds fun. I sometimes want to take a brick to John Silence's face, so I'm curious to see who could top him. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 18, 2012 0:18:30 GMT
Two more sure things, two more maybes, and I'm at the end of my list:
Mildred Johnson
Johnson wrote a pair of stories for WT. Having read both, I give the edge to The Cactus (1950) which is about a killer . . . cactus. Style points for a climax that involves spiny death.
Kelsey Percival Kitchel
The title of her one and only WT contribution, Mummy (1929), won't win any prizes for creativity. The story itself, however, provides some nice shivers and a mummy that hails, not from Egypt, but the Andes.
Maria Moravsky
I've only encountered one of her five stories in the magazine: Green Brothers Take Over (1949), another exercise in death-by-the-plant kingdom. There are better stories on the same theme, including the aforementioned Johnson entry.
Loretta G. Burrough
I've read two of her WT stories, What Waits in Darkness (1935) and A Visitor from Far Away (1936). Given that neither made a strong an impression on me, I'd defer to Dem's choice of Creeping Fingers (1931), which certainly has the best title of the three.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 22, 2012 11:34:06 GMT
Elizabeth Sheldon's The Ghost That Never Died (Nov 1931), as reprinted in CCT's Grim Death the following year. I just read this last night. It's a solid little tale. I particularly like the magazine office setting. The more I think about it, the more I lean toward a two-volume format that allows for more stories from some of the top writers (if one is dreaming, why not dream big?). Here's one potential set of listings: Weird Tales by Women Writers, Volume IEveril Worrell - The Canal (1927)
Bassett Morgan - The Wolf-Woman (1927)
Zealia Bishop - The Curse of Yig (1929)
Kelsey Percival Kitchel - Mummy (1929)
Greye La Spina - The Devil’s Pool (1932)
G. G. Pendarves - The Withered Heart (1939)
C. L. Moore - Hellsgarde (1939)
Frances Garfield - The Forbidden Cupboard (1940)
Mary Elizabeth Counselman - Parasite Mansion (1942)
Dorothy Quick - The Cracks of Time (1948)
Allison V. Harding - The Underbody (1949)
Evangeline Walton - At the End of the Corridor (1950)
Mildred Johnson - The Cactus (1950)
Leah Bodine Drake - Mop-Head (1954)
Margaret St. Clair - Brenda (1954)Weird Tales by Women Writers, Volume IIGreye La Spina - The Gargoyle (1925)
Christine Campbell Thomson/Flavia Richardson - Out of the Earth (1925) or The Gray Lady (1929)
Bassett Morgan - pick a brain transplant story, any brain transplant story
Eli Colter - The Last Horror (1927)
G. G. Pendarves - The Eighth Green Man (1928)
Signe Toksvig - The Devil’s Martyr (1928)
Everil Worrell - The Gray Killer (1929)
Amelia Reynolds Long - The Thought Monster (1930)
Elizabeth Sheldon - The Ghost That Never Died (1931)
Hazel Heald - The Horror in the Museum (1933)
C. L. Moore - one of her NW Smith stories
Pearl Norton Swet - The Medici Boots (1936)
Allison V. Harding - The Damp Man (1947)
Mary Elizabeth Counselman - The Smiling Face (1950)
Margaret St. Clair - Professor Kate (1951) or another of her stories
Fifteen stories each, with the first volume dominated by my choices and the second volume by yours (each with a Brundage cover!). Now all that's left is pesky details like finding a publisher and securing the rights, and then the living like kings off the fat royalty checks that anthologies of obscure more-than-half-century-old stories undoubtedly produce. |
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Post by dem on Aug 22, 2012 16:50:15 GMT
The more I think about it, the more I lean toward a two-volume format that allows for more stories from some of the top writers (if one is dreaming, why not dream big?). .... Unless, of course, we go with the Robinson 'Mammoth' model, which might just accommodate the contents of both volumes in one. Either way, one/ two cracking selection(s), and still room for manipulation should some further gems come to light. Very well done! And, of course, we could always run to a volume three - Women from Strange Tales, the Spicy's, Shudder Pulps & Co. Haven't given up on trying to find more women of Weird Tales contenders, just i'm swamped with stuff to finish before the assault on Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback. One thought: while for some (many?), no matter how accomplished, anything published under the title Weird Tales post-1954 isn't really Weird Tales, my experience of all those Stephen Jones 'Mammoths' has taught me that Robinson will suffer a hefty dose of vintage pulp just so long as it's off-set with a tidy proportion of contemporary-ish material to appease the modern audience. Do you think we should rope in Tanith Lee, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Nancy Springer, Jessica Amanda Salmonson & Co., (can't say i'd be much help in that department) or do we stick with the 1923-1954 crowd and be damned? |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 22, 2012 17:24:59 GMT
And, of course, we could always run to a volume three - Women from Strange Tales, the Spicy's, Shudder Pulps & Co. Now there's an intriguing next step. Adding Unknown to the mix might help--that would open the door to Jane Rice, who wrote a few classic horror stories, plus maybe one or two writers. One thought: while for some (many?), no matter how accomplished, anything published under the title Weird Tales post-1954 isn't really Weird Tales, my experience of all those Stephen Jones 'Mammoths' has taught me that Robinson will suffer a hefty dose of vintage pulp just so long as it's off-set with a tidy proportion of contemporary-ish material to appease the modern audience. Do you think we should rope in Tanith Lee, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Nancy Springer, Jessica Amanda Salmonson & Co., (can't say i'd be much help in that department) or do we stick with the 1923-1954 crowd and be damned? That's one I've been wrestling with. Marvin Kaye, for one, included some pieces from the latter-day WT incarnations in his anthology Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies (with varied results, in my mind). Like you, however, I'm not that familiar with any of those incarnations--with the exception of Lin Carter's four-volume paperback series from the early 1980s; I have the first two of those. The only story by a women writer I would include from either would be Tanith Lee's terrific When the Clock Strikes (1980), which I first encountered in another Kaye anthology ( Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural). In fact, that was the first Lee story I ever read, and I've been a fan of hers ever since. |
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Post by dem on Aug 23, 2012 5:52:32 GMT
Now there's an intriguing next step. Adding Unknown to the mix might help--that would open the door to Jane Rice, who wrote a few classic horror stories, plus maybe one or two writers. i'm on the case and a provisional list is shaping up. I prefer your strictly vintage, 15 stories per volume blueprint, so am sticking with that, and have self-imposed an "early seventies" ceiling to accommodate selections from RAWL's mighty Magazine Of Horror and Startling Mystery Stories. We'll soon be retiring with our millions! |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 23, 2012 11:34:02 GMT
i'm on the case and a provisional list is shaping up. I prefer your strictly vintage, 15 stories per volume blueprint, so am sticking with that, and have self-imposed an "early seventies" ceiling to accommodate selections from RAWL's mighty Magazine Of Horror and Startling Mystery Stories. We'll soon be retiring with our millions! That would put the early decades of F&SF and the brief but solid run of Beyond into play as well, right? Maybe reprints should be out of bounds, however (for example, the Mary Wilkins-Freeman stories from the Magazine of Horror) . . . As a preview: so far, I have a Sophie Wenzel Ellis story Strange Tales, a Jane Rice story from Unknown, and a Leigh Brackett (!) story from Strange Stories. |
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Post by dem on Aug 23, 2012 12:22:27 GMT
That would put the early decades of F&SF and the brief but solid run of Beyond into play as well, right? Maybe reprints should be out of bounds, however (for example, the Mary Wilkins-Freeman stories from the Magazine of Horror) . . . As a preview: so far, I have a Sophie Wenzel Ellis story Strange Tales, a Jane Rice story from Unknown, and a Leigh Brackett (!) story from Strange Stories. No reprints. The stories have to be original to a pulp publication. Are we going to include stories by women who already feature in Weird Tales volumes, or do we go for an all-new 'rivals of WT' line-up? Early contenders: Nell Kay - The Voice (originally Our Haunted Taxi Ride: Ghost Stories July 1928. Reprinted in Magazine Of Horror #20, March 1968. Marion Brandon -The Dark Castle ( Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Sept. 1931: reprinted in Weird Vampire Tales 'Donald Dale' (Mary Dale Buckner) - Bodies Born For Slaughter ( Terror Tales, Sept. 1940) Jane Rice - Idol Of The Flies ( Unknown, June 1942, and, unsurprisingly, anthologised on several occasions. Maybe too obvious a choice, but what a powerful horror story! Janet Hirsch - The Seeking Thing ( Magazine Of Horror #3, Feb., 1964) Joanna Russ - Come Closer ( Magazine Of Horror #10, August, 1965) Dorothy Norman Cooke - The Parasite ( Startling Mystery Stories #14, Winter 1969) And another for Women Of Weird Tales consideration. Phyllis A. Whitney's The Silver Bullet from February, 1935. Will get back to you when i've finished it but - looking good.  |
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Post by dem on Aug 23, 2012 19:05:10 GMT
Phyllis A. Whitney - The Silver Bullet: ( Weird Tales, February, 1935. Reprinted in Startling Mystery Stories # 16, 1970).  Vincent Napoli. Gordon Ramsay (!) and wife drive up Loon Mountain on the advice of her doctor who suggests that, if Linda is to conquer her neurosis it will require a return to her roots for a confrontation with the traumatic past. Some terrible incident she can no longer recall caused Linda's mother to send her from the mountains, and this is the first she's seen of home since childhood - or it would be, were it not for the thick fog. Hopelessly lost, the Ramsay's stop at the usual dilapidated old house five miles from town, where a beautiful Morticia Adamms lookalike puts them up for the night. The only other occupant of the house, a corpse-like gent, sits immobile, staring into the void. The beautiful host, noting that Linda has a birthmark in the shape of an inverted cross on her shoulder, slips her a silver bullet, telling her that she hopes she'll find the courage to use it when the hour arrives. Come the following morning, both women have disappeared. The locals insist that no such women as Ramsay describes lives on the mountain, even when her corpse is discovered in a disused quarry. That night Ramsay realises the appalling truth. Loon Mountain is a community of Satanists! Can he save his bride before she's sacrificed to the Devil? That'll be The Silver Bullet included then, if needs be at the expense of The Medici Boots, though they're relatively short and we should be able to squeeze in both.
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