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Post by Swampirella on Jul 9, 2021 19:27:24 GMT
Can I ask what a good introduction would be to these sort of tales? Is there one? They often sound bizarre, I'd like to try some. Maybe old copies are available on Internet Archive. Do people have favourite authors who have never been reprinted? And can only be found in these old magazines? There are quite a few Weird Tales on Archive, if you care to try one or two of them.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jul 9, 2021 19:41:06 GMT
Can I ask what a good introduction would be to these sort of tales? Is there one? They often sound bizarre, I'd like to try some. Maybe old copies are available on Internet Archive. Do people have favourite authors who have never been reprinted? And can only be found in these old magazines? There are quite a few Weird Tales on Archive, if you care to try one or two of them.
Thank you. What issues are recommended?
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Post by Swampirella on Jul 9, 2021 19:54:30 GMT
There are quite a few Weird Tales on Archive, if you care to try one or two of them.
Thank you. What issues are recommended? I'm afraid whichever I've read (all ?) I've forgotten. Since they're short stories, liking or disliking a story is subjective anyhow.
You might also be interested in this site; this link is a link to the periodicals (incl. pulp fiction) section but there are also plenty of fiction & for all I know, poetry too.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 10, 2021 11:18:47 GMT
"Fools! Madmen! I disown and utterly deny you!"Andrew Brosnatch Jan Dirk - Clay-Covered Justice: A Strange East Indian Judgement Was Passed on Bull Orthcutt. Braithwaite outraged at the despicable crimes of a fellow white, resolves to take him into custody. He is too late. 'Bull' Orthcutt has terrorised the peaceful hill and jungle folk for too long. His murder of old Bey the potter's daughter - for her "refusal of certain demands" - is offence too many. The victim's intended, Jamal the Brahman, King of the hill tribe, takes matters into his own capable hands. Orthcutt's punishment is not what you might expect from accompanying illustration, which is rather a shame. E. Hoffmann Price - The Stranger from Kurdistan: Blasphemies of the Devil-Worshippers Receive a Strange Rebuke. The stranger attends a Black Mass held in a subterranean vault at the base of the tower of Semaxii. He's not impressed. Robert E. Howard - Spear and Fang: Tale of the Cavemen - Neanderthatalers and Cro-Magnards. Fair A-aea is abducted by a cannibal man-ape, meat on his fangs, rape and murder in his little red piggy eyes. Ga-nor the cave-artist impulsively runs to the rescue. Can intelligence and guts defeat brute strength? The Stranger from Kurdistan my pick of the three. Clay-Covered Justice anti-climactic. Spear and Fang is REH does Nimba the Slave Girl.
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Post by helrunar on Jul 10, 2021 12:00:56 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Jul 10, 2021 17:09:17 GMT
Andrew Brosnatch H. Warner Munn - The Werewolf of Ponkert: They Flayed Him Alive and Wrote His Story on His Tanned Skin. Testimony of Wladislaw Brenryk, a wealthy Hungarian jeweller, attacked in the forest by a pack of grey, tail-less wolves led by a four-legged black fiend with eyes of ember. In a one-sided struggle Brenryk slays a furry assailant, whereupon 'the Master' offers him a stark choice. Either he join the werewolf clan or they feast on his flesh. Wladislaw reluctantly joins the pack, but his crimes in wolf form appal him so that he plots against the leader. On discovering the were-jeweller's scheme, the Master bewitches him to butcher his beloved wife and deliver their infant daughter to the pack. Past all hope and longing for death, Brenryk surrenders to soldiers. Before his welcome torture-porn execution, he agrees to lead them to the Master's lair.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 11, 2021 8:41:48 GMT
"Let us skin him alive and cover our tom-toms with his hide!" shrieked an old hag as she squirmed through the crowd.Andrew Brosnatch John Lee Mahin, Jr. - The Red Lily: The White Lily Turned Red At Last and Terrible Was its Turning. Jim Creighton junior didn't come home from war. His father despises Birndale folk for proclaiming the boy town hero - the hypocrites never had a good word to say for him when he lived among them. The embittered old man informs all he meets that he is building a greenhouse for the cultivation of blood red lilies, "each one a dead man's soul." So far, he's had no luck. Unknown to his neighbours, Creighton is the state executioner, paid handsomely for lowering the copper lever. He takes obscene delight in his work - until the night he recognises the young man frying before him .... W. J. Stamper - Fidel Bassin: A Gruesome Tale of the Black Republic. As black dysentery ravages the small village community of Hinche, an old magistrate leads a revolt against the self-serving Bassin, whose desperation for promotion to a captaincy comes at the expense of his own people. Lieutenant Stamper's Haitian torture tales have a nasty ring of authenticity to them, this example being no exception. Truly horrible. CCT chose well. Elwood F. Pierce - The Dream of Death: The Mind of the Scientist Controlled That of the Half-wit Prof. Anderson Breton conducts an experiment in mind control with his landlady's imbecile brother, Gus Acre, as his subject. What could possibly go right (again)? As revived in Dziemianowicz, Greenberg & Weinberg's 100 Wicked Little Weird Tales, a Vault suggested starter pack for the WT curious.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 20, 2021 11:22:56 GMT
Andrew Brosnatch Stephen Bagby - Whispering Tunnels: Novelette of Verdun, the World War, and Devil-Worship. Left this one until I had a spare hour to give it my full attention as not only is it the longest piece in the issue, but the one I was most looking forward to reading. According To Robert Weinberg, this "less-than-inspired ghost story" was a readers favourite and "for a number of years was ranked the second most popular story ever to be published by 'The Unique Magazine'." Aamazing, then, that it doesn't appear to have been anthologised (?). The novella concerns events which took place beneath Fortress Vaux, N. E. France, in August 1923. After the Battle of Verdun in 1916, the Fort fell into the hands of the German enemy, due, it's believed to the disgraced Jules Chauman, a formerly revered young officer turned traitor to his country. We have this from the testimony of Captain Emile DeBray, who discovered Chauman's treachery shortly before the latter's cowardly flight from justice. The tunnels beneath the Fort are haunted by multiple ghosts (one of them, a mournful Jules Chauman), the most feared being a phantom whistler - those who hear it either die or go insane shortly afterward. The worst affected section long operated as a torture chamber, and it was here that Guilbert Savannes, Devil-Worshipper and Sorcerer, met an agonising end in 1791, but not before he had cursed the King, his hirlings and the scene of his suffering. "My familiar, Grothar, created in blood, nourished in blood, shall be awakened by blood to wreak vengeance on all who dwell here." Dr. Littlejohn, veteran spook-hunter teams up with Miles Cresson, a young American soldier, to solve both the mystery of the tunnels and the unanswered questions surrounding the fall from grace of the latter's best friend, the supposed traitor, Jules Chauman. Miles is sweet on Jules' sister, Audrey, the most beautiful woman in the history of humankind, and sworn to clear the man's name. Alas, Audrey has already promised herself to the dubious Captain DeBray on the understanding that he will provide new evidence to the effect that Jules was, after all, innocent. Audrey is not looking forward to her wedding night. "My friend. I despise him," she said feelingly. "Yet I have made mother believe that I love him. It is only because she loves me that she would permit it. Mother is unaware of the bargain - DeBray's promise to restore the estate in her name after the ceremony. The wedding is to take place two weeks from today. The banns have been published, and alas, I must go through with it." On receiving such crushing news, Cresson is almost relieved to return to the tunnels to confront the whistling menace. In true Gothic tradition author Bagby piles horror upon startling revelation upon mounds of skeletons as Littlejohn and Cresson confront Savannes' shapeless black mass of an elemental to gain access to a foul-smelling vault beneath the tunnel. Meanwhile, a distraught Audrey prepares to walk down the aisle with the odious DeBray ... I can see why it was popular and just as easily understand how it fell out of favour once Lovecraft, CAS and the Mythos mob came into fashion. Am very glad for opportunity to have read and thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed "Whispering Tunnels," too. The maze beneath the fort makes for a spooky setting, and there's an interesting balance between 18th century black magic and the then-recent horrors of World War I. Given the reported popularity of the story, I'm surprised Bagby didn't try to spin out a series of tales starring Dr. Littlejohn: Spook-Hunter.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jul 20, 2021 20:53:21 GMT
Andrew Brosnatch Stephen Bagby - Whispering Tunnels: Novelette of Verdun, the World War, and Devil-Worship. Left this one until I had a spare hour to give it my full attention as not only is it the longest piece in the issue, but the one I was most looking forward to reading. According To Robert Weinberg, this "less-than-inspired ghost story" was a readers favourite and "for a number of years was ranked the second most popular story ever to be published by 'The Unique Magazine'." Aamazing, then, that it doesn't appear to have been anthologised (?). The novella concerns events which took place beneath Fortress Vaux, N. E. France, in August 1923. After the Battle of Verdun in 1916, the Fort fell into the hands of the German enemy, due, it's believed to the disgraced Jules Chauman, a formerly revered young officer turned traitor to his country. We have this from the testimony of Captain Emile DeBray, who discovered Chauman's treachery shortly before the latter's cowardly flight from justice. The tunnels beneath the Fort are haunted by multiple ghosts (one of them, a mournful Jules Chauman), the most feared being a phantom whistler - those who hear it either die or go insane shortly afterward. The worst affected section long operated as a torture chamber, and it was here that Guilbert Savannes, Devil-Worshipper and Sorcerer, met an agonising end in 1791, but not before he had cursed the King, his hirlings and the scene of his suffering. "My familiar, Grothar, created in blood, nourished in blood, shall be awakened by blood to wreak vengeance on all who dwell here." Dr. Littlejohn, veteran spook-hunter teams up with Miles Cresson, a young American soldier, to solve both the mystery of the tunnels and the unanswered questions surrounding the fall from grace of the latter's best friend, the supposed traitor, Jules Chauman. Miles is sweet on Jules' sister, Audrey, the most beautiful woman in the history of humankind, and sworn to clear the man's name. Alas, Audrey has already promised herself to the dubious Captain DeBray on the understanding that he will provide new evidence to the effect that Jules was, after all, innocent. Audrey is not looking forward to her wedding night. "My friend. I despise him," she said feelingly. "Yet I have made mother believe that I love him. It is only because she loves me that she would permit it. Mother is unaware of the bargain - DeBray's promise to restore the estate in her name after the ceremony. The wedding is to take place two weeks from today. The banns have been published, and alas, I must go through with it." On receiving such crushing news, Cresson is almost relieved to return to the tunnels to confront the whistling menace. In true Gothic tradition author Bagby piles horror upon startling revelation upon mounds of skeletons as Littlejohn and Cresson confront Savannes' shapeless black mass of an elemental to gain access to a foul-smelling vault beneath the tunnel. Meanwhile, a distraught Audrey prepares to walk down the aisle with the odious DeBray ... I can see why it was popular and just as easily understand how it fell out of favour once Lovecraft, CAS and the Mythos mob came into fashion. Am very glad for opportunity to have read and thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed "Whispering Tunnels," too. The maze beneath the fort makes for a spooky setting, and there's an interesting balance between 18th century black magic and the then-recent horrors of World War I. Given the reported popularity of the story, I'm surprised Bagby didn't try to spin out a series of tales starring Dr. Littlejohn: Spook-Hunter. This states Audrey is the most beautiful woman in the history of humankind, please amend as soon as possible.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 22, 2021 22:58:42 GMT
The February issue. Some of the smaller fry to get started. ... James C. Bardin - Death: An Essay. Author wonders if death, no matter how violent, is actually painful. Cites case of a knight who, wondering at the amount of suffering endured by men on a gallows, conducted a small experiment with himself as guinea pig. [CB goes into essay-grading mode] Absurd premise, unconvincing evidence, poor development. Bardin gets a D on the assignment. Would be an F, but I always give at least a D if the student turns in anything at all. As uneven an issue as you might expect. Some stories have not aged well, others were probably considered awful even at time of publication, but no matter, I'm hooked. Personal favourites to date would be The Figure of Anubis, Death and - give or take weedy ending - For Sale ā A Country Seat. A Broken Lamp-Chimney and Hunger have their moments. Best still to come ... Two of the "small fry" stories I've read have aged very poorly, but I also agree that the following one is a highlight so far: Edward Podolsky - The Figure of Anubis: A Bizarre Tale of a Mummy, An Egyptian Goddess, and a Terrifying Adventure Among the Grand Ruins of Thebes. Richard Held, recently bereaved, is persuaded by well-meaning friends to join their sponsored excavation of a site at Ombos. Held throws himself into the work, his spirits revive he decides to carry on living. But one night when the loss of his beloved Fleurette weighs heavy, he wanders, dejected and alone, through Thebes. Lost in the dark, he chances upon the entrance to a ruined tomb and within, the sarcophagus of an Egyptian Princess. She reaches for her neck, removes the bandage from her face to reveal .... I was worried when the author kept using "soft," "amethyst," and "mellow" in the first few paragraphs, but once the narrator arrived in Egypt the story picked up considerably. Greye La Spina - The Scarf of the Beloved: The Looting of a Grave - and What Befell Thereafter. A very winning Fashion victim conte cruel. A grave-robber providing corpses for dissection at the local medical school, unwittingly violates the grave of someone he wishes he hadn't. Not my favorite La Spina tale, but I still appreciated the chance to read it. Louise Garwood - Fayrian: She Killed Her Husband ā and then Found She Wanted Him. Jealous at the attention he was paying another woman, Lady Ermengarde poisoned husband Fayrian, allowing his enemy, Polevay, to swing for the murder, Cheated of a heroic death, Fayrian relentlessly haunts his beloved to her doom. Almost more like a gothy prose-poem than a story. It caught me in the right mood.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 26, 2021 19:17:03 GMT
Strickland Gillilan - An Unclaimed Reward: Two Boys Enjoy Four Wonderful Hours of Ghastly Fear. A pair of mischievous lads and a very reluctant Hunkydory the carpenter, assist a fugitive killer in evading the men with dogs so he may pay a visit to his wife. Not particularly weird filler. Reads like a leftover purchase from the Edwin Baird year. Sounds about right. "My fondness for the dead weaned the living from me. One by one, even my closest relatives deserted me, until finally only my mother tolerated me." Andrew Brosnatch Alice I. Fuller - The Tomb-Dweller: A Cataleptic Who Lived in a Mausoleum. Two stories in one. The first, most likely inspired by C. M. Eddy's The Loved Dead, is the autobiography of a man who far prefers the society of the dear departed to the living. Financially independent thanks to a generous inheritance, his life mission is to travel the country visiting every graveyard he can find. Arriving in New England he meets an old man who occupies a mausoleum in his very own cemetery. The hermit relates the story of a life blighted by horror, bereavement, revenge and premature burial. Identical twin brothers fall for the same girl. When the girl finally chooses between them, Ronald, the rejected party, plots to murder his rival, our narrator, until Death - or something like it - saves him the trouble. A cataleptic attack sees the groom-to-be pronounced dead and laid to rest in the family vault. He revives just as Ronald pays a final gloating visit ... This was modestly entertaining, though staid compared to Eddy's masterpiece. The "two stories in one" seem oddly stitched together. Staying with the morbid mood, three old friends. Victor Rowan - Four Wooden Stakes: A Tale of Vampires. A Dracula tribute act terrorises the Holroyd estate. As a last roll of the dice, young Remson, last of the line, calls on his phantom fighting pal for help. Highly traditional, but much better than all the stories in this issue that treat "foreign" as "weird"--I've wound up skimming those.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 26, 2021 19:47:40 GMT
This was modestly entertaining, though staid compared to Eddy's masterpiece. The "two stories in one" seem oddly stitched together. I agree, but can't help but love The Tomb-Dweller. The issues are uneven, so many of the stories are mediocre or just plain rank, and yet I'm hopelessly addicted and can't wait for the next. It's great that Gilman House are also planning further reissues (the Jan 1937 reissue comes in at a very bargain Ā£7.50 in the UK).
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 26, 2021 19:54:10 GMT
This was modestly entertaining, though staid compared to Eddy's masterpiece. The "two stories in one" seem oddly stitched together. I agree, but can't help but love The Tomb-Dweller. The issues are uneven, so many of the stories are mediocre or just plain rank, and yet I'm hopelessly addicted and can't wait for the next. It's great that Gilman House are also planning further reissues (the Jan 1937 reissue comes in at a very bargain Ā£7.50 in the UK). The narrator does have a charming "I'm too morbid for the world, just like Edgar Allan Poe" proto-goth vibe going on. And I plan to keep an eye out for new reprints! The ones I've been reading have pushed me to revisit an old idea: trying to pick stories for a series of imaginary DIY Weird Tales anthologies. I'd split it into six volumes: 1923-1926, 1927-1930, 1931-1934, 1935-1938, 1939-1945, and 1946-1954 (with the dates for the last two volumes reflecting the switch to six issues a year). No more than one story per author per volume.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 26, 2021 20:18:45 GMT
The narrator does have a charming "I'm too morbid for the world, just like Edgar Allan Poe" proto-goth vibe going on. How beautifully put. Captures exactly what I love about the story. The ones I've been reading have pushed me to revisit an old idea: trying to pick stories for a series of imaginary DIY Weird Tales anthologies. I'd split it into six volumes: 1923-1926, 1927-1930, 1931-1934, 1935-1938, 1939-1945, and 1946-1954 (with the dates for the last two volumes reflecting the switch to six issues a year). No more than one story per author per volume. You know I'm going to hold you to that, don't you?
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 26, 2021 20:30:02 GMT
You know I'm going to hold you to that, don't you? All good, so long as you provide suggestions--I've played around with Volume I and it's a challenge. I suspect later volumes will be easier.
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