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Post by dem bones on Dec 2, 2013 18:18:34 GMT
Marvin Kaye & John Gregory Betancourt (eds.) - The Best Of Weird Tales: 1923 (Bleak House/ Wildside Press Press, 1997) Steve Fabian Marvin Kaye -Introduction: Back To The Haunting Past
Orville R. Emerson - The Grave. Herbert J. Mangham - The Basket J. Paul Suter - Beyond the Door Lyle Wilson Holden - The Devil Plant Herman Sisk - The Purple Heart Julian Kilman - The Well Valma Clark - The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other James Ravenscroft - The Bloodstained Parasol P. D. Gog - The Dead-Naming of Lukapehu Farnsworth Wright - An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension Frank Owen - The Man Who Owned the World H. P. Lovecraft - Dagon John D. Swain - Lucifer
Marvin Kaye - AfterwordBlurb: Weird Tales has always been the most popular and sought-after of all pulp magazines. Its mix of exotic fantasy, horror, science fiction, suspense, and the just plain indescribable has enthralled generations of readers throughout the world.
Collected here are I3 of the best short stories published in Weird Tales first year of publication, 1923—classics by many who would later play an integral part in the Unique Magazine, such as H. P. Lovecraft, Frank Owen, and Farnsworth Wright.Weinberg's book is also fairly blunt about how much dreck the early issues of the magazine included. One story that he singles out as being particularly bad is "The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other," which does sound awful. He lays much of the blame on Edwin Baird, who was editor before Farnsworth Wright. This one kind of doubles as a slimline (130 p.) companion to Rob Weinberg & friends' mighty 100 Wild Little Weird Tales. The stories are, for the most part, of five-six page duration - Mr. Weinberg's fave rave is the longest by some considerable distance - and very entertaining after their own strangely strange fashion. On the strength of the four sampled to date, this is going to be a book I fall in love with. Herbert J. Mangham - The Basket: The late occupant of the basement flat in Mrs. Buhler's boarding house was a man of few words. After two years, all anyone knew about him was that he hailed from Catawissa, Pennsylvania (where no-one has heard of him) and answered to the name of Dave Scannon, The only mail he ever received was from a company promoting a miracle cure for hay fever. Before his corpse is discovered, crawling with flies, little Mrs. Varner on the second floor has a strange dream of undertakers removing a body from the house in a laundry basket. "A hauntingly understated vignette that reminds me of the bleak existential fiction of Albert Camus" writes Mr. Kaye in his introductory note, and who am I to disagree? Herman Sisk - The Purple Heart: Lost in the fog, the narrator arrives at a remote cabin and begs shelter from the bundle of rags within. The bedraggled host bids him welcome, says he has been expecting him, for tonight is the tenth anniversary of his father's murder, by a stranger such as he. To gain his freedom, the traveller must first survive the terrors of the haunted cabin until dawn. A floating phantom organ visits him in the darkness. James Ravenscroft - The Bloodstained Parasol: He was among the brightest sparks at the medical college, destined for great things. Now he languishes in a lunatic asylum, prognosis terminally stark raving mad, and all because of a bloody parasol, an invisible house, and - as is invariably the case - a WOMAN, namely his former fiancée. Whatever possessed the dizzy young floozy to pay a surprise visit to the laboratory just as he was halfway through the vivisection of a live doggie? mtf ....
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Post by dem bones on Dec 3, 2013 8:54:29 GMT
Orville R. Emerson - The Grave: Mount Kemmel, Flanders, October 1918. An Oberleutnant in the German infantry is the sole survivor of a mortar attack on the trench. Buried beneath a ton of rubble, he begins the long, arduous dig for the surface. With his meagre rations exhausted, the soldier survives on a diet of rat and contaminated water. Fortunately for the reader, he finds the strength from somewhere to record a journal of his progress. Lyle Wilson Holden - The Devil Plant: I do so love a demon flower power shocker, and this one is brilliant, bone-crushing fun. Rodriguez dupes his odious unfriend, Silvera Castelar, into believing that to sip juice from the 'octopus plant' is to attain eternal youth. Castelar, who has cost Rodriguez his career, blackened his character, and stolen his fiancée, has no cause to doubt him.
P. D. Gog - The Dead-Naming of Lukapehu: Black mumbo jumbo, Hawaiian style. On the advice of the white plantation owner, the skilled young fisherman defies Kapukapu, the wizened old village sorcerer, who retaliates with a death curse.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Dec 3, 2013 19:12:16 GMT
This one kind of doubles as a slimline (130 p.) companion to Rob Weinberg & friends' mighty 100 Wild Little Weird Tales. The stories are, for the most part, of five-six page duration - Mr. Weinberg's fave rave is the longest by some considerable distance - and very entertaining after their own strangely strange fashion. On the strength of the four sampled to date, this is going to be a book I fall in love with. Good to know. I've thought about buying this, having read and enjoyed many of Kaye's other anthologies, but the reputation of the early issues put me off of it. Was the original plan to publish a selection from each year? If so, then it's too bad no other installments have ever appeared. Also, any word on how bad "The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other" really is?
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Post by dem bones on Dec 3, 2013 19:34:52 GMT
Hi CB. Well, I'd be the first to admit that i've no idea of what constitutes 'good' or 'bad' horror fiction, but I know what I like, and it's this book! Mr. Kaye certainly intended at least one companion volume - a forthcoming The Best Of Weird Tales 1924 is mentioned in his commentary - but as is the way with these things, we're still living in hope.
The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other runs to a terrifying 26 pages, so am saving it until such times as i've an hour to spare to do it justice. That will be tomorrow, then ...
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Post by dem bones on Dec 6, 2013 5:45:59 GMT
Heitman Valma Clark - The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other: Meh. Turns out Valma's morality tale drags on a bit, and the final revelation isn't much cop, but I've read far worse, and so too has Mr. Weinberg. It's certainly not in the same league as E. W. Mayo's majestically unremarkable A Dream of Death, that's for sure. Professors Gooding and Bauer fall out over two fragments of pottery liberated from an archaeological dig at the Acropolis, and smuggled out of Greece aboard a liner. Bauer wants the vase for his private collection, Gooding claims it on behalf of the museum. When their ship is lost in a storm, the bitter rivals wash up on a desert island, each with murder foremost in their mind. Both men effect their unlikely escapes, with the one convinced he has slain the other and vice versa. While Bauer loses no sleep over his crime, Gooding is so consumed with guilt, that, on his return to America, he lives out his remaining years in poverty and solitude under the name 'Tinker' Twining. And now, forty years later, fate has brought the two non-fatally dead men together. There's also some love interest provided by a Miss Lorna Story, though I can't remember her having the least bearing on events. Marvin Kaye argues that, while his friend, Rob Weinberg, has a poor opinion of The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other " .... despite its improbable plot, I like the evocative style and feel that Clark's language comes closer to poetry than the doggerel verse usually printed in Weird Tales." A point well made. Unfortunately.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Dec 6, 2013 18:30:46 GMT
Thanks for the update on "The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other," and hats off to Weinberg and Kaye for debating the merits of an otherwise utterly obscure tale!
Duty (or pedantry) compels me to point out that Mayo's "masterpiece" is actually "Dream Justice." Andrew Daw is the one responsible for "A Dream of Death," which I remember as being merely mediocre. It appears in Weinberg et al.'s 100 Wild Little Weird Tales right after "Dream Justice," because for some reason the editors arranged the contents in alphabetical order by title. And neither should be confused with Elwood F. Pierce's "The Dream of Death," which comes next and is equally forgettable.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 18, 2013 16:14:49 GMT
Trust me to get my dreams all tangled up! Dream Justice is the one I was thinking of and, to date, nothing in Best Of Weird Tales 1923 is remotely as poor.
Julian Kilman - The Well: A dispute over boundary lines leads the combustible Hubbard to murder his neighbour, Harper, and dispose of his body down the disused well. The dead man's eight year old daughter takes to sitting on the crumbling masonry as she whiles away the days until Dad returns. Eventually, he does.
Marvin Kaye singles Kilman out as one of the more accomplished of the early Weird Tales authors, and I like the sound of The Mystery Of Black Jean (March, 1923), "a particularly nasty study in sadism, murder and bestiality."
John D. Swain - Lucifer: As related by Royce, a former intern at a London Hospital. Sir William Hutchinson, adventurer and sportsman, is distraught that his only son was born a cripple. After the death of his wife, Sir William devotes all his wealth. energy and resources to finding a cure for the boy's deformities. When Watts-Beddoe, the day's most celebrated surgeon, concedes defeat, Hutchinson turns to the Luciferians for diabolical assistance. A rotund Cockney devil-worshipper assures Sir William that his master is the man for the job, but the results may not be to his liking. Sir William regards this as a risk worth taking.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 27, 2013 14:55:36 GMT
"Some tales I read then [late 1950's] stay with me still. J. Paul Suter's Beyond the Door terrified me with its gradual accumulation of eerie detail, though I was later to realise that the dreadful realisation of the climax - "not a dog" - was probably lifted from The Diary of Mr. Poynter - Ramsey Campbell, Weird Tales Remembered, Paperback Fanatic #25, March 2013. Joseph Eberle ( Weird Tales, May, 1954) J. Paul Suter - Beyond the Door: ( Weird Tales, April 1923; May, 1954). "Not the slab in the cellar! Not that! Oh, my God! Anything but that! Anything ...." New York. Robinson interrogates the taciturn housekeeper, Mrs. Malkin, over the death of his reclusive uncle Godfrey Sarston, leading entomologist, and the disappearance of young Lucy Lawton who'd been romantically involved with him before allegedly returning home to Australia. Mrs. Malkin eventually surrenders the old boy's diary which hints at something terrible in the bug-museum of a cellar. Actually, "hints" is understating the matter. Robinson calls in a policemen and a detective to inspect the disused well in the cellar ... According to Marvin Kaye, one of very few early Weird Tales stories to receive the approval of H. P. Lovecraft. Dashiell Hammett liked Suter's haunted house story enough to revive it for Creeps by Night. Frank Owen - The Man Who Owned The World: Due to a slight abnormality of the brain, skeletal Greenwich Village tramp John Rust believes the entire world belongs to him and it's population are his slaves. When "cured" following an altercation, the realisation that his treasure trove is a filthy, abandoned cellar and he does not, after all, own every restaurant in NYC proves too much for him.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 29, 2013 5:44:19 GMT
To complete a sometimes brilliant, often ludicrous, but impossibly entertaining collection.
Farnsworth Wright - An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension: A warning against reading Einstein in bed. Micro-men from Jupiter, who look like human ears covered in teeth, visit Chicago. Professor Nutt, who seems to know an awful lot about them, persuades Farnsworth Wright to surrender his hip flask as the aliens only drink whiskey. According to Marvin Kaye, this whimsical piece is the best of the legendary editor's short fiction. Well, we can't all be E. W. Mayo.
H. P. Lovecraft - Dagon: World War I. An American seaman escapes German captivity by stealing a lifeboat. As he drifts aimlessly on the Pacific Ocean, the seabed erupts unearthing a gigantic monolith covered in primitive paintings of a most disturbing nature. Eventually rescued and returned to New York, he is hunted down and driven to suicide by the monstrous Dagon. First published in 1919, a very early example of HPL obsessing over Elder Gods and man-fish hybrids, and already operating at a level beyond parody.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Feb 2, 2014 17:10:57 GMT
a sometimes brilliant, often ludicrous, but impossibly entertaining collection. I'm halfway through this book. Thanks for recommending it. I thought the first two stories were only OK (if still far from the worst WT material I've read), but the next four are all quite entertaining (I'd already read "Beyond the Door," but not the other three). Next up is Valma Clark's opus . . .
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Post by dem bones on Feb 3, 2014 12:20:07 GMT
a sometimes brilliant, often ludicrous, but impossibly entertaining collection. I'm halfway through this book. Thanks for recommending it. I thought the first two stories were only OK (if still far from the worst WT material I've read), but the next four are all quite entertaining (I'd already read "Beyond the Door," but not the other three). Next up is Valma Clark's opus . . . It's a shame he didn't opt for Julian Kilman's The Mystery Of Black Jean and G. A. Wells' The Ghoul and the Corpse over the already widely available Suter and Lovecraft stories. As to Valma Clark; My spidy sense tells me that, on this occasion, you're more likely to incline toward Mr. Kaye's verdict over Mr. Weinberg's ....
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Feb 3, 2014 17:00:00 GMT
As to Valma Clark; My spidy sense tells me that, on this occasion, you're more likely to incline toward Mr. Kaye's verdict over Mr. Weinberg's .... And you'd be right, even though I was expecting to agree with Weinberg. It's not particularly "weird," but "The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other" is a readable tale. Added bonus for the unexpected low-key ending.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 17, 2016 18:46:29 GMT
Rather than reprint HPL's Dagon for the umpteenth time, its a shame Messrs. Kaye & Betancourt didn't go with this one - it's absolutely adorable!
Loual B. Sugarman - The Gray Death: (Weird Tales, June 1923). "It was a field of gray: almost, I might have said, a field of living gray. And yet it did not give the impression of life. It moved, although there was not a breath of wind; not a leaf on the trees quivered, but that mass of gray wriggled and crawled and undulated as though it were a huge gray shroud thrown over some monstrous jelly-like Thing. And that thing was writhing and twisting."
Anthony returns from the Amazon and immediately gets off on the wrong foot with his old pal by refusing to shake hands with his wife, Laura. The reason? She is all dressed in grey, and after what happened to his friend, Sigmund Van Housmann, the late, great German naturalist, he can't abide the colour. On their most recent expedition, he and Van Housmann stumbled upon the field of gray, an expanse of jungle stripped clean by a voracious fungi that absorbs everything in its path - except glass. Alas, poor Van Housmann. He would insist on procuring a sample ....
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Post by dem bones on Sept 22, 2016 6:39:36 GMT
An astounding tale that will hold you spellbound and will make you breath fast with a new mental sensation..
Willard E. Hawkins - The Dead Man's Tale: (Weird Tales, March 1923). "Whatever vague hope I may have had, however, of vicariously enjoying the delights of love were disappointed. I could not have explained why - I only knew that something barred me from intruding upon the sacred intimacies of their life, as if a defensive wall were interposed. It was baffling, but a very present fact, against which I found it useless to rebel. I have since learned - but no matter ..."
A novelette from the début issue, surprisingly quite spicy for its time (voyeurism, the odd bare bosom, etc.). Dick Devaney death during the second battle of the Marne, July 24th 1918, temporarily puts paid to his plan to murder Louis Winston, his once best friend turned despised love rival, Louis having stolen the heart of Velma "Winkie" Roth. Despite sustaining a serious leg wound, a weeping Louis drags his old pal's corpse from the field of fire for decent burial.
While Louis is convalescing in hospital, the embittered spectre of Dick hovers at his bedside, intent on further malice. "A series of experiments convinced me that I could, to a slight degree, impress my thoughts and will upon Louis, especially when he was tired or on the borderland of sleep."
Two months after his return to England, Louis weds Velma. Far from disappointed at this development, Dick's ghost steps up his campaign of terror. The combined rigours of a new job, marriage, and a gammy leg take their toll, making it ever easier for the fiendish interloper to influence Louis' thoughts and deeds. Lunacy and murder are but a step away. Soon Velma will look upon her beloved husband with horror and loathing!
Others we might consider for a rival Best Of Weird Tales 1923, commented upon elsewhere, include.
William P. Barron - Jungle Beasts ( Weird Tales, May, 1923) Anthony M. Rud - A Square Of Canvas ( Weird Tales, May, 1923) Seabury Quinn - The Phantom Farmhouse ( Weird Tales, Oct. 1923)
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Post by dem bones on Jul 26, 2018 6:38:12 GMT
Edwin Baird (ed.)- Weird Tales (Rural publishing, March, 1923) R. R. Epperly Twenty-two remarkable stories
Julian Kilman - The Mystery of Black Jean Orville R. Emerson - The Grave Joel Townsley Rogers - Hark!The Rattle! Bryan Irvine - The Ghost Guard G. A. Wells - The Ghoul and the Corpse David R. Solomon - Fear Merlin Moore Taylor - The Place of Madness Farnsworth Wright - The Closing Hand Howard Ellis Davis - The Unknown Beast Herbert J. Mangham - The Basket Meredith Davis - The Accusing Voice Walter Scott Story - The Sequel W. H. Holmes - The Weaving Shadows R. T. M. Scott - Nimba, the Cave Girl ? ? ? ? - The Young Man Who Wanted to Die William Sanford - The Scarlet Night Joseph Faus & James Bennett Wooding - Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni George Warburton Lewis - The Return of Paul Slavsky F. Georgia Stroup - The House of Death I. W. D. Peters - The Gallows Harold Ward - The Skull James B. M. Clark, Jr. - The Ape-Man
Three Unusual Novelettes Willard E. Hawkins - The Dead Man's Tale Anthony M. Rud - Ooze Hamilton Craigie - The Chain
A Strange Novel in Two Parts Otis Adelbert Kline - The Thing Of A Thousand Shapes
The Editor - The Eyrie Also a number of odd facts and queer fancies, crowded in for good measure.*** The debut. We met The Grave ("A soul gripping story of terror"), The Basket ("A queer little story about San Francisco"), and The Dead Man's Tale in Kaye & Betancourt's 'Best of ...' compilation. Anthony R. Rud's Ooze ("A Remarkable short novel by a master of 'gooseflesh' fiction" is familiar from Peter Haining's Weird Tales. The late, truly great Rob Weinberg would have it that the Baird issues contain some of the very worst fiction published in the magazine's lengthy, stop-start history. "For every good story in these early issues there were dozens of terrible ones." Julian Kilman - The Mystery of Black Jean: A story of blood curdling realism, with a smashing surprise at the end. A French-Canadian who scratches a living by running a limekiln in the woods and wrestling his two pet whiskey-loving bears outside the tavern. One afternoon the fun gets out of hand. The female bear claws him and a furious Black Jean sticks his knife in her eye. That same night the brute avenges herself in kind, slashing his eyeball from its socket. When his wife leaves him, Black Jean hooks up with a mad schoolmistress who scandalises the district by moving in with him. This woman is a sadist who tortures the bears with a poker. When the smaller bear retaliates, the couple hang the poor creature in chains and whip it to death. Happiness again reigns in the household - until Black Jean's wife returns. A promising opener, strange and grim. If they're all like this we've come to the right place. Farnsworth Wright - The Closing Hand: A brief story powerfully written. Sisters Edith and 'Goosie' bed down for the night in the attic of the haunted house where the Berkheim girl was murdered. Edith, the eldest, investigates a disturbance downstairs. She's been gone a while. Gothic horror! Infinitely livelier than An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension. Walter Scott Story - The Sequel: A new conclusion to Edgar Allen [sic] Poe's "Cask of Amontillado." "Lucky it was that I had the bodily strength of two ... the staples of the chain tore loose from the half-rotten stone in which they were fastened." If he only can prize loose a brick or ten before the cement sets, Fortunato will be in time to keep his date with Montressor's wife! I. W. D. Peters - The Gallows: An out-of-the-ordinary story. Confession of a condemned man on the eve of his execution, hoping against hope he's not granted a reprieve for throttling wife Gladys' lover. Better death than spend another miserable moment in the company of that rotten cheating self-centred sow! ? ? ? ? - The Young Man Who Wanted to Die: An anonymous author submits a startling answer to the question, "What comes after death?". Having composed a lengthy suicide note the lovesick young man who always wanted to know what lies beyond the veil turns on the gas-tap. The afterlife is no improvement. G. A. Wells - The Ghoul and the Corpse: An amazing yarn of weird adventure in the frozen North. Gold prospector Chris Bonner cuts free the body of a prehistoric ape man from a glacier and leaves him to thaw. Returned to life, the fanged creature attacks Bonner with a knife carved from ivory. Think it was RAWL - or possibly Robert Weinberg? - identified this story as the absolute pits but, as with Valma Clark's similarly maligned The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other, it's really not so bad at all. William Sanford - The Scarlet Night: A tale of an eerie thrill. When the narrator, an alcoholic, refuses to grant his wife a divorce, her lover, Dr. Langley, drugs him, buries him alive and writes a death certificate. Now it's time for Sanford to retrieve the corpse for the dissecting room. Proper ghoulish hackneyed melodrama.
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