Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Weird Tales, May 1942

This is certainly an odd cover by Ray Quigley on the May 1942 issue of WEIRD TALES. But it's eye-catching, so it did its job. There are some fine authors inside this issue, too: Seabury Quinn (with a Jules de Grandin story), Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, Robert Arthur, George Armin Shaftel, Greye La Spina, Malcolm Jameson, Dorothy Quick, and several I hadn't heard of: Weston Parry, Alice-Mary Schnirring, and Alonzo Deen Cole. There are interior illustrations by Hannes Bok and Boris Dolgov. I realize WEIRD TALES was past its peak by the Forties in the opinion of many fans, but I've enjoyed the issues from that era I've read. I haven't read this one, but I'll bet there's plenty to like in it.

Review: The Bride of Osiris - Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline didn’t always look to Edgar Rice Burroughs for his inspiration, although his short novel THE BRIDE OF OSIRIS (serialized in the August, September, and October 1927 issues of WEIRD TALES) does have a subterranean civilization in it. SPOILERS AHEAD. That civilization, modeled after ancient Egypt, is located under Chicago, as young man-about-town Alan Buell discovers when his beautiful fiancée Doris Lee is kidnapped from a nightclub by some shady characters. The local head of detectives in the police department appoints Buell as a special agent and partners him with another detective, two-fisted Dan Rafferty. Buell and Rafferty track the kidnappers but wind up captured themselves and taken underground, where they encounter the usual evil high priests, sacrificial rites, and daring rescues, escapes, and recaptures. Once again, Kline mixes some A. Merritt with his Burroughs and throws in a little Sax Rohmer as well.

If you can buy the premise—and it’s a real stretch—this is a mildly entertaining yarn. There’s nothing you haven’t read before, but there’s plenty of action, a colorful setting, and some despicable villains. However, I was never able to work up a lot of enthusiasm about it. For one thing, Dan Rafferty’s grotesque Irish brogue is so thick and overdone that he’s really annoying, even though he does some admirable things and seems to be a good guy. For another, the plot seems to be building up to a climax that it never delivers. I know, you’re supposed to review the book as it is, not the way you wish it was, but I really felt like we were going to have a squad of hardboiled Chicago cops with tommy guns bust in at the end to do epic battle with a horde of crazed Egyptian cultists. Instead, although there’s some action at the end and the prospect of apocalypse, the story sort of just peters out.

There was a chapbook reprint of THE BRIDE OF OSIRIS published in the Seventies by Robert Weinberg, with a cover by Frank Hamilton, and there are e-book and trade paperback editions available on Amazon now, but it never received any sort of mass market reprint. The length probably had something to do with that, but the fact that it’s just not very good probably did, too. There are some nice scenes and concepts in THE BRIDE OF OSIRIS, but to me, overall, it’s a misfire.

Review: Tam, Son of the Tiger - Otis Adelbert Kline

Many, many years ago I read one or two novels by Otis Adelbert Kline and remember enjoying them, but I couldn’t tell you exactly which books I read. I do know, however, that TAM, SON OF THE TIGER wasn’t one of them, because I just read it and I'm certain I’d never read it before.

This adventure yarn was serialized in the June/July through December 1931 issues of WEIRD TALES, all with covers by C.C. Senf, by the way. It was reprinted in hardback by Avalon Books in 1962, probably in an abridged edition because most of Avalon’s editions were abridged. The pulp version was reprinted in 2010 by Pulpville Press in trade paperback and hardcover editions that are still available from the publisher. The pulp version can also be found on-line.

Kline is remembered primarily as a literary agent for some of the best-known authors of science fiction and fantasy from the pulp era, but he wrote several novels himself. They were heavily influenced by the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others. TAM, SON OF THE TIGER definitely shows that ERB influence as Tam Evans, the two-year-old son of an American soldier and adventurer in Burma, is carried off by a rare white tigress. She raises Tam to be a tiger (just like the apes raised Tarzan to be an ape), but eventually he meets an aged lama who befriended the tigress many years earlier, and this man educates Tam and teaches him how to use various weapons. Combined with his own strength and agility, these attributes make 20-year-old Tam a deadly and intelligent fighting man. So naturally, he soon runs into a beautiful princess wearing golden armor who is fighting some four-armed warriors. All of them come from a vast underground world populated by various races that gave rise to the legends of the Hindu gods, and when Tam ventures into this subterranean world to help the princess, he’s drawn into a war between those semi-deities just as you’d expect. Oh, and his father, who is still an adventurer and has believed for many years that Tam is dead, shows up, too, along with a scientist friend of his.

As you can tell from that description, TAM, SON OF THE TIGER is a real kitchen sink book. Kline keeps throwing in complication after complication, peril after peril, and in true Burroughs fashion splits his characters up and lets them have separate but interweaving storylines. Coincidences abound. While ERB is the most obvious influence in this novel (both Tarzan and Mars series), I also detected echoes of A. Merritt and Ray Cummings. Some of the vivid, bizarre descriptions of the underground world really reminded me of Merritt’s work, and I couldn’t help but think of Cummings’ THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM, too.

If I had read this when I was twelve years old, sitting on my parents’ front porch on a lazy summer day, I would have thought it was one of the best books I’d ever read. No doubt about that. Reading it now when I’m much older, I still had a pretty darned good time racing through it. Derivative or not, Kline was a good storyteller and knew how to keep the reader turning the pages. I think I’m going to have to read more by him. These days, pure entertainment is what I want most of the time, and TAM, SON OF THE TIGER definitely provided that.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: King of the World's Edge - H. Warner Munn

Originally serialized in the September through December 1939 issues of WEIRD TALES, H. Warner Munn’s KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE was a prime candidate for reprinting in the Sixties paperback fantasy boom sparked by Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and J.R.R. Tolkien. It features swordplay, magic, and lost civilizations. What else do you need?

Well, an Arthurian angle doesn’t hurt. There’s also a nice framing sequence in which a mysterious bronze cylinder is discovered in Key West following a hurricane, and inside the cylinder there’s an ancient document purportedly written by one Ventidius Varro, a Roman legionnaire posted in Britain at the time of Arthur’s rise to power. Like Jack Whyte’s Camulod novels and the movies THE LAST LEGION and KING ARTHUR, KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE is set during the last days of Roman occupation in Britain, when most of the Roman soldiers are actually second- or third-generation Britons. Ventidius Varro is one of them. Cut off from Rome, these hold-out legionnaires align themselves with Arthur and the enigmatic mage Myrdhinn in order to oppose the invading Saxons and unite the various British tribes. After Arthur’s efforts are crushed and he himself is mortally wounded in battle, Myrdhinn places him in what amounts to suspended animation, hides his body, and then sets sail with a band of legionnaires commanded by Varro in search of a place where they can regroup and figure out a way to retake Britain.

Things don’t work out that way, however. Instead, Myrdhinn and the rest of these British adventurers wind up in a new world far to the west, across the ocean, where they are captured by, escape from, and wind up doing battle with various groups of native tribes. Along the way Varro becomes the staunch ally of a native leader named Hayonwatha, founds his own empire in the new world, and battles to overthrow the evil Mia, who have extended their grasp over the entire continent.

Part of the fun of a book like this is seeing the way Munn comes up with new explanations for all the history and legends of early North America, from Florida up to the Great Lakes, across the continent to the Rocky Mountains and down to Texas. Varro, Myrdhinn, and their friends wander all over and have numerous adventures. The pace is a little slow at times and the writing style is old-fashioned, but after all, the story is being told by Ventidius Varro in a letter intended to be carried back to whatever emperor is currently in power in Rome.

Though it lacks the storytelling power of a yarn by Howard or Burroughs, KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE is an entertaining, inventive novel with quite a bit of action. Getting the book back in print from Ace was enough to prompt the never prolific Munn to write a sequel, THE SHIP FROM ATLANTIS, almost thirty years after the original. I have that one, too, and hope to read it soon. (I believe both novels were also issued in a combined volume called MERLIN’S GODSON, from Del Rey in the Eighties, but I have the Ace editions.)

Update: Don Herron informs me that there's a third book in the series, MERLIN'S RING, and refers to it as Munn's masterpiece. He also recommends Munn's historical novel THE LOST LEGION. There's two more books for me to look for!

(I'm sure it will come as no surprise to any of you that despite what it says above, I haven't read another word by H. Warner Munn since this post first appeared almost exactly fifteen years ago on November 6, 2009. Will I read more by him in the future? No way of knowing for sure, but at this late date, I wouldn't bet a hat on it.) 

The Lake of Life - Edmond Hamilton

Most of you know that it’s hard to go wrong with Edmond Hamilton’s fiction. THE LAKE OF LIFE is a novel of his that I hadn’t heard of until recently. Originally serialized in the September, October, and November 1937 issues of WEIRD TALES, it was reprinted in 2019 by Armchair Fiction, the edition I read.

At first glance, THE LAKE OF LIFE bears a superficial resemblance to a Doc Savage novel. The protagonist’s name is even Clark . . . Clark Stannard, an adventurer and explorer who finds himself in financial straits and needs money to help his family. Because of this, he agrees to take on a job for millionaire Montgomery Burns—I’m sorry, I mean Asa Brand, but when you read this description from Hamilton, you’ll see why I made that mistake: “The old man was quite bald, and his hairless, yellowed skull and wrinkled hatchet face and scrawny neck made him look like an ancient, unclean vulture.”

Anyway, Brand hires Clark Stannard to find the legendary Lake of Life, which is supposedly located in deepest, darkest Africa behind a range of mountains known as the Mountains of Death. The legendary part comes in because the water from the Lake of Life is supposed to confer immortality on whoever drinks it, and Brand is willing to pay a high price for eternal life. In order to accomplish this, Stannard recruits a crew of five assistants (there’s that possible Doc Savage influence again) who are highly competent but who have suffered some sort of setback in life: Ephraim Quell, a sea captain who lost his ship in an accident and was stripped of his captain’s license; Mike Shinn, a heavyweight boxer whose career ended after he was paid to take a dive; John Morrow, an former army officer dishonorably discharged for punching a superior officer in a fight over a woman; gangster Blacky Cain, who had to leave the States because the law is after him; and Link Wilson, a gunfighting Texan on the run from a murder charge arising from a deadly shootout in a bordertown cantina.

Are all these stereotypes? Sure they are. Do I care? Not one bit, because Hamilton uses them to tell a very fast-paced tale full of colorful settings and breathless adventure and even a little bit of philosophy. Stannard and his crew find a way through the Mountains of Death, of course, and discover the Lake of Life, but at the same time they also discover a war between two lost races (a favorite plot of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as most of you probably are thinking right now). Our heroes get mixed up in that war, naturally, and equally naturally, there are two beautiful young women on hand, one good, one maybe not so good. Will Clark Stannard and his men survive the epic battles between one group that wants to protect the Lake of Life and another that wants to use it for evil?

I had an absolutely wonderful time reading this novel. It’s a Front Porch Book, for sure. The plot is nothing we haven’t all seen before, but Hamilton does such a superb job of spinning his yarn that I couldn’t stop turning the pages. I’m shocked that this was never published as half of an Ace Double in the Sixties, as some of Hamilton’s other pulp work was. If it had been, I’d have been right there on my parents’ front porch with it, galloping through it on a summer day with a big grin on my face. If you’ve read this far, you already know whether or not you like this kind of stuff. If you do, I give THE LAKE OF LIFE a very high recommendation.

A note on the cover of the Armchair Fiction edition: That’s actually a Robert Gibson Jones cover from the August 1951 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. As soon as I saw it, I thought to myself that it must have been a FANTASTIC ADVENTURES cover. It just has that look. But it kind of fits THE LAKE OF LIFE, too, if you squint your eyes and hold your mouth just right. I put that image at the top of this review because I wanted it to pop up when I share the post on Facebook. I figured the original WEIRD TALES covers by Margaret Brundage, which you can see below, might catch me a jail term from the censors over there.

Forgotten Books: Lost in the Rentharpian Hills: Spanning the Decades With Carl Jacobi - R. Dixon Smith

As I mentioned that I might, prompted by reading Hugh B. Cave’s memoir MAGAZINES I REMEMBER, I dug out my copy of LOST IN THE RENTHARPIAN HILLS: SPANNING THE DECADIES WITH CARL JACOBI and read it. This volume by R. Dixon Smith is part biography and part bibliography, and now that I’ve read it, I think it’s safe to say that between it and the Cave book, I’ve read more about Carl Jacobi and his work than I’ve read of Jacobi’s actual fiction.

The biography section, while not exhaustive, provides a good background on Jacobi’s personal life but focuses primarily on his career as a writer, which isn’t surprising that Jacobi’s life really centered on that aspect. He was a reasonably successful author of pulp stories in several different genres—horror, science fiction, mystery, and adventure—but was never very prolific because of the time he spent researching and revising his stories. As a result, he never made his living as a full-time writer except for brief stretches, but his stories are well-regarded and I have several collections of them on hand to read. He was persistent, too, staying with the writing game, off and on, from the Twenties up into the Eighties, when he sold a few stories to Chuck Fritch at MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE during the same era when I was writing for MSMM. I probably read those yarns, although I have no memory of them, and if I did, it’s unlikely I would have connected that Carl Jacobi with the same one who wrote for the pulps.

Smith rounds out this volume with an excellent bibliography of Jacobi’s work and a section of letters to Jacobi from various writers and editors, including Cave, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, and Farnsworth Wright. Overall, LOST IN THE RENTHARPIAN HILLS is an excellent book, probably more so if you’re already a fan of Jacobi’s work, but I found it very entertaining, as well.

Of course, “entertaining” is a relative term. This book left me with the same feeling about Jacobi that Cave’s memoir did, a mixture of admiration and sympathy. He doesn’t really seem to have been cut out to be a pulp writer, and yet that was where he found his most success, and then only for a relatively short amount of time. Never married, spending a big chunk of his adult years taking care of his parents, unable to adjust to changing markets, beset by physical ills and a variety of mishaps, but still trying to write even though he had limited success at it in his later years . . . I have to give him credit for his determination. I wish he’d had more luck.

But his stories remain, and I hope to get to some of them soon.

Classic Adventure/Horror Pulp Stories: Spotted Satan - Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price

 

I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of stories by E. Hoffmann Price, but I’ve never read that much by Otis Adelbert Kline. I know I read one sword-and-planet novel by him many, many years ago and recall liking it. However, that’s all I remember about it. I don’t know who wrote what in this collaboration between the two of them, which originally appeared in the January 1940 issue of WEIRD TALES with a fine Virgil Finlay cover. I can tell you, however, that “Spotted Satan” is a highly entertaining novella.

The protagonist is a rugged American hunter named Harrison Steele (a stalwart pulp hero name if there ever was one!), who is hired to kill a leopard that’s terrorizing a teak camp in Burma. When Steele travels there with his trusty Afghan sidekick, he discovers that all the natives believe the leopard is really a supernatural creature that has been sent to punish them for cutting a road through sacred territory. The American manager of the camp isn’t much help and is prone to mysterious disappearances.

Well, you can probably see where this plot is going just as well as I can, but Kline and Price manage to pull off a fairly nice twist at the end. They also provide a suitable amount of action and plenty of local color, along with some good characters and a touch of humor now and then. Achmet, Steele’s Afghan friend, is both comedy relief and plenty tough and competent when circumstances warrant, as the best sidekicks are.

Despite the weird elements, “Spotted Satan” is really more of a good, solid pulp adventure yarn. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read it in the original pulp, but it’s also available in THE E. HOFFMANN PRICE FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION MEGAPACK published by Wildside Press.

Classic Horror Stories: The Dunwich Horror - H.P. Lovecraft

I know when I'm beaten. After reading "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and now this story, I have to take hat in hand and humbly say that yes, yes, I am an H.P. Lovecraft fan. I have been won over.

"The Dunwich Horror", which appeared originally in the April 1929 issue of WEIRD TALES, takes place around a farming community in Massachusetts, in an area where the hills have ancient stone circles atop them and some of the folks who live thereabouts have strange habits, like the Whately family, especially young Wilbur Whately, who is born and grows up in the course of this story but grows up to be something other than human . . . and that's just the beginning of the weird, potentially cataclysmic things that happen.

Once again, Lovecraft injects some dialogue and action into this yarn to go along with the all the richly detailed creepy stuff. The climax is downright thrilling. Not only that, but there are also a few unexpected (at least by me) touches of humor in this story. Granted, the lines are more droll than they are laugh-out-loud funny, but still, I'll give Lovecraft credit for making me smile.

I know I said I might continue with this series after Halloween, but I believe I've changed my mind. Honestly, as much as I've enjoyed the tales, I'm about Cthulhu-ed out. I'm sure I'll return to the series, and to other horror stories, in the future, and right now I'm planning to make a whole month of it again for Halloween next year. I'll have one more horror-related post tomorrow (not Lovecraft or Cthulhu), and after that I plan to go back to reading Westerns and mysteries for a while.  

Classic Adventure/Horror Stories: The Fire of Asshurbanipal - Robert E. Howard

Now this is a yarn! One of my favorite Robert E. Howard stories, and one of my favorite WEIRD TALES covers, with art by the great J. Allen St. John. This story is considered part of the Cthulhu Mythos, and rightly so, but for most of its length it's a classic adventure tale with one of Howard's two-fisted American adventurers in the Middle East, Steve Clarney, who, along with his Afghan sidekick Yar Ali, ventures into the desert to find a lost city where a fantastic, mysterious gem known as the Fire of Asshurbanipal rests in the skeletal hand of a long-dead emperor. Along the way they have to battle Bedouin bandits and an Arab outlaw and slave-trader.

Well, even if you've never read this story (and I'll bet most of you have, some multiple times like me), you can guess that Steve and Yar Ali will find what they're looking for, and more besides, and it's that more that ties this yarn in with Cthulhu and his outfit. If I have one quibble with the story, it's that our heroes act more like Lovecraft protagonists in the end, rather Howard protagonists, but I can accept that in exchange for all the great stuff along the way. I reread this in the Del Rey edition THE HORROR STORIES OF ROBERT E. HOWARD and thought it held up just fine. 

Classic Horror Stories: The Space Eaters - Frank Belknap Long

I was surprised when I started reading this story from the July 1928 issue of WEIRD TALES to discover that the protagonists are none other than Frank Belknap Long (who wrote it) and his buddy H.P. Lovecraft (here just called Howard) their own selves. It starts with them discussing horror fiction and Howard complaining that he can’t really achieve the effect he’s going for with his stories, because the real depths of true horror can’t be described, only suggested.

Then one of Frank’s neighbors shows up at the door, walking around with a hole bored in his head that ought to have killed him, and tells them about a strange encounter he just had in some nearby woods. And just like that, hellity-blip, as Robert Leslie Bellem would say, we’re off on a wild adventure as the two writers battle cosmic monsters from outer space.

Having Long and Lovecraft starring in this story gives it something of a goofy, contemporary feel, as if it might have been written today. I don’t know of any other pulp stories in which the author appears so openly as a character. And yet it has some really creepy moments, too, and the menace it presents is certainly Lovecraftian. An odd mix, to be sure, but Long makes it work. I really enjoyed “The Space Eaters”. (The entire issue, including a story by August Derleth and poems by Robert E. Howard and Donald Wandrei, is available to read on-line.)

Classic Horror Stories: The Shadow Over Innsmouth - H.P. Lovecraft

Okay, now, this is a terrific story. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” is the best Lovecraft yarn I’ve read so far, by far. It’s the tale of a bookish young man who’s making a tour of New England towns between his junior and senior years in college, so he can study their history and architecture. He winds up in the decaying fishing town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, even though he’s been warned against going there because the inhabitants are, well, strange. Turns out, that’s putting it mildly.

After complaining about the slow pace and lack of dialogue in other Lovecraft stories, this one is much different. It still doesn’t just race along, but it moves fairly well, there’s a lot of dialogue, and Lovecraft actually shows us most of the action instead of just summarizing it, achieving some real suspense along the way. And then at the end, there’s a twist that’s a real gut punch.

“The Shadow Over Innsmouth” was published originally as a stand-alone novella by some outfit called Visionary Press in 1936, then reprinted in the January 1942 issue of WEIRD TALES. I’m sure those of you who are more familiar with Lovecraft and his career than I am know a lot more about the origins of this tale than I do, and if you’d like to weigh in in the comments, please do. I’m going to settle for saying that this is a wonderful yarn, and I have a feeling it’s going to stick with me. I kind of wish I’d read this sitting on my parents’ front porch in the summer of 1967 or ’68 . . . 

Classic Horror Fiction: No Light for Uncle Henry - August Derleth

August Derleth’s short story “No Light for Uncle Henry” appeared in the March 1943 issue of WEIRD TALES. It was reprinted in a couple of Derleth collections, one from Arkham House and one from Battered Silicon Dispatch Box. It’s the first thing I’ve read by Derleth in quite a while, but I enjoyed it. It’s the story of a young man who goes to live with a bachelor uncle in a small Midwestern town. Another uncle had lived in the same house until recently, when he died. The surviving uncle gives the young protagonist strict instructions that no light is to be taken into the dead uncle’s former bedroom . . . but we wouldn’t have a story if the guy didn’t do exactly that, would we? What does he find when he steps into that deserted room and lights a match?

A sinister shadow cast on the wall, even though there’s nothing there.

I’m about as far from a scholar of Derleth’s work as you could find, but even without being that familiar with it, I get the feeling this is a pretty minor tale. The plot is fairly predictable, with the “twist” at the end not coming as much of a surprise. And yet, it’s a pretty entertaining yarn, a nice little slice of mild, rustic, Americana horror. I enjoyed it enough that I wouldn’t mind reading more by Derleth.

Classic Horror Stories: The Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft

I decided to go ahead and read more of the Cthulhu Mythos stories, so why not go right to the source? H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” was published in the February 1928 issue of WEIRD TALES and reprinted many times since. It’s a very impressive piece of inventiveness. In this one story, Lovecraft lays out the basis for a huge number of stories by many different authors: the Great Old Ones, vast cosmic beings that come from beyond the stars, landed on Earth in the planet’s infancy and are still alive, although dormant and hidden away in vanished cities, waiting to be called back to life by a cult of their devoted followers, at which time they will lay waste to humanity, or at least try to. Although not necessarily evil by their own standards—they’re beyond the concept of good and evil—to humans they represent the greatest horrors imaginable, or, in some cases, unimaginable.

“The Call of Cthulhu” itself is a good story, fast-moving by Lovecraft’s standards, in which the narrator investigates several related series of events that gradually reveal the terrible truth to him. One section of the story set in the Louisiana swamps and another on a mysterious South Seas island could have been really good adventure yarns if Lovecraft had done more than summarize them. Even at that, they’re pretty exciting, especially the climactic battle between a ship and the reborn Cthulhu.

This is a good example of why so many authors latched on to the Cthulhu Mythos and wrote their own stories set against that background. It’s such an epic concept, filled with the potential for drama, conflict, and action, that born yarn-spinners such as Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, and many others, naturally would see the possibilities. From what I’ve read so far, it seems to me that Lovecraft’s stories function more as a series bible than as satisfying stories of their own (although I’m warming up to his style and see its appeal).

I’m going to continue reading these stories, including some of the other authors who wrote Mythos stories, and even though this started as a Halloween-related project, it’ll probably take me longer than that. So bear with me, even though many of you probably read all these stories years or even decades ago. They’re new to me.

Classic Horror Stories: The Hounds of Tindalos - Frank Belknap Long

I’ve seen Frank Belknap Long’s name in books and magazines countless times over the decades, but I’ve read very little by him. The title of his story “The Hounds of Tindalos” sounded familiar to me, so I decided to give it a try. It was published originally in the March 1929 issue of WEIRD TALES, reprinted in the July 1937 issue of WT, in AVON FANTASY READER #16 in 1951, and in many collections and anthologies since then. I read it in THE CTHULHU MYTHOS MEGAPACK, an e-book anthology published by Wildside Press.

I’m not well versed enough in all the Mythos stuff to know exactly how “The Hounds of Tindalos” is connected to Lovecraft’s work, so I read it as I would any other yarn, looking to be entertained. And I was. It’s the tale of Frank Chalmers, a student of the occult who is convinced that through a combination of drugs and mathematics that he can see into both the past and the future. He enlists the aid of a friend of his, the narrator of the story, who is supposed to pull him out of his drug-induced trance if things start to go wrong.

Well, don’t things always go wrong in stories like this? There are things man was not meant to know, after all, and when you stare into the abyss, be careful that the abyss doesn’t stare back at you. (Hint: It always does.) So when Chalmers discovers cosmic horrors beyon his ken, those horrors discover him, as well, and decide to follow him back to our earth.

I can see where this is a Lovecraftian story, but Long spins his yarn with a lot more dialogue and narrative drive than the Lovecraft stories I’ve read so far, but also without the really creepy style at which Lovecraft was so skilled. As a result, “The Hounds of Tindalos” is faster and more fun but lacks some of the impact of Lovecraft’s tales. I enjoyed it quite a bit anyway and am glad I read it.

I do have a very indirect connection with Frank Belknap Long. In the Sixties and Seventies, he worked for Leo Margulies’ Renown Publications and was the associate editor of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE for quite a while. Not while I was selling to MSMM, however. Sam Merwin Jr. came in to run the magazine a few years before I started submitting stories there, but if I’d gotten around to it a little earlier, I might have gotten rejection slips from Long, too.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Weird Tales, November 1941

This cover by Hannes Bok seems appropriate for a few days before Halloween. I like the 1940s issues of WEIRD TALES. Great lineup of authors in this one: Edmond Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry Kuttner, August Derleth, Frank Gruber, Clifford Ball, Robert H. Leitfred . . . These guys wrote some fine weird fiction.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Weird Tales, July 1943

This cover by Franklin Wittmack is on the mild side for WEIRD TALES, but what a fine issue this is. I read it a number of years ago and still recall most of the stories. In addition to Robert Bloch's classic "Yours Truly--Jack the Ripper", there are tales by H. Bedford-Jones, Ray Bradbury, Otis Adelbert Kline and Frank Belknap Long, Frank Owen, Allison V. Harding, and the underrated Harold Lawlor. I know the magazine's glory days were supposedly over by then, but I really like the 1940s issues of WEIRD TALES that I've read.

Zombies From the Pulps!: The Song of the Slaves - Manly Wade Wellman

After Howard, Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman is one of the most respected authors who contributed to WEIRD TALES, and he wrote a zombie story, too: "The Song of the Slaves" in the March 1940 issue.

Unlike the other stories in this anthology, this one is a historical yarn, set in the 1850s. Instead of the Caribbean or the United States, it goes all the way back to Africa, the land where voodoo originated. An American plantation owner has journeyed there to cut out all the middle men and capture a group of slaves to put to work back home. He does so, but the return trip doesn't go exactly as planned. And once he's back in the States, things certainly don't work out the way the planter had intended, as the song sung by the slaves during the journey haunts him and becomes more and more sinister.

This is a short but really well-written story that turns some of the genre's conventions upside down, and as a result it's a little ahead of its time, reading more like a story that could have been published in the Fifties or Sixties. I haven't read Wellman's work extensively, but everything I've read by him has been excellent, and "The Song of the Slaves" is no exception.

The Charnel God - Clark Ashton Smith

A while back John Hocking suggested that I read Clark Ashton Smith's story "The Charnel God", which originally appeared in the March 1934 issue of WEIRD TALES. Now I have, and I'm becoming more of a CAS fan after never reading much of his work until recently.

"The Charnel God" is one of Smith's Zothique stories, set on a far future, decadent Earth where magic has replaced science. The plot concerns a young couple unlucky enough to be stopping in a city where the local god demands that the bodies of anyone who dies there be placed in his temple so he can consume them. It seems that the wife has this unusual disease that causes her to fall into a death-like coma from time to time, and sure enough, a spell of it hits her while she and her husband are there. The doctor who is summoned pronounces her dead, over the husband's objections, and priests show up to cart the "body" over to the temple of Mordriggian to be consumed. The husband, the hero of the tale, is determined to break in and rescue her before she can be gobbled up.

But that's just the very beginning of the story, which gets much more complicated with a plot by a local sorcerer, reanimation spells, running around inside the temple, sinister priests who may or may not be human, and Mordriggian himself, the hungry and vengeful god whose decrees set everything in motion.

Smith spins this yarn in his typical lush prose full of vocabulary you'll have to look up (or go by context, which is what I tend to do). This isn't the sort of writing I normally like, being more a fan of the terse, hardboiled style, but damned if Smith doesn't make it work, and work beautifully. There's even some nice action and plenty of creepily vivid imagery. This one's been reprinted in a number of places and is worth seeking out. As for me, I plan to continue reading more of Smith's stories.

Forgotten Books: Herbert West: Reanimator - H.P. Lovecraft

My general dislike of H.P. Lovecraft's work, while still acknowledging its influence and historical significance in the field of Weird Fiction, has gotten me in trouble on more than one occasion in the past. But for some reason, every so often I get the urge to read something by him, maybe in the hope of finding a story that I like. And whaddaya know, I finally did.

I'm fudging a little with this week's entry. "Herbert West: Reanimator" is a novella, not a novel, but it's been published by itself enough times that I think I can count it as a book. Nor is it really forgotten, since it's readily available in any number of print and digital editions. However, if Jeff Shanks hadn't included it in his recent anthology ZOMBIES FROM THE PULPS!, I probably never would have read it, so it was pretty close to being forgotten where I was concerned.

All the things I find annoying about Lovecraft's work are present here: the long-winded prose (although this one does seem to move along at a little faster clip that the other stories I've read by him), the scarcity of dialogue, the overall wussiness of the protagonists. But the genuine creepiness of this tale of a doctor who tries to discover the secret of reanimating dead bodies won me over. It's episodic, reflecting its origins as a serial in a literary magazine in 1922, but that works for me since it serves to pick up the pace. (The novella was reprinted in WEIRD TALES in 1942, after Lovecraft's death.) There are even several instances of violent action that work pretty well.

So, being curious how other people feel about this story since I liked it, I went on-line and discovered that Lovecraft himself reportedly hated it. Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi says that it's universally reviled as Lovecraft's worst story. Somehow this does not surprise me. It figures that the one I like, many of his fans hate. But as usual, I don't care. It's the most pulpish Lovecraft story I've read so far, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. And it's got me interested enough to read something else by Lovecraft in the relatively near future. If anybody wants to recommend anything in the comments, based on my comments on this one, have at it. I'd appreciate the input.

I'll have more to say about ZOMBIES FROM THE PULPS! in due course. It'll probably take me a while to read it, since I tend to work in stories from anthologies between novels, but for me it's off to a good start with "Herbert West: Reanimator". (Side note: I've never seen the movies based on this story, which supposedly don't share much with it other than the title. I'd watch a faithful movie adaptation of it, though.)

Forgotten Books: Worlds of Weird - Leo Margulies, ed.

Normally, this collection would be a good candidate for a Forgotten Book anyway: a paperback original published in the Seventies, reprinting some great stories from the pulp WEIRD TALES, with a great cover, to boot. But it’s especially appropriate to remember this book at this time of year. Some of you already know why. For the rest of you, I’ll get to it in a minute.

But first, here’s the line-up of stories: “The Valley of the Worm” by Robert E. Howard (one of REH’s best yarns), “The Sapphire Goddess” by Nictzin Dyalhis (an obscure but often excellent author of fantasy, who published only a few stories), “He That Hath Wings” by Edmond Hamilton (a fine story by an author who is still underrated), “Mother of Toads” by Clark Ashton Smith (I’m not a huge CAS fan, but this story is enjoyably creepy), “The Thing in the Cellar” by David H. Keller M.D. (already an old-timer when WEIRD TALES was new), and “Giants in the Sky” by Frank Belknap Long (who had a long, productive career as author and editor for not only the pulps but also the digest fiction magazines). Pretty good stuff all around.

But there’s one other story in WORLDS OF WEIRD, and it’s the reason this is a good time of year to be talking about this book. It’s simply titled “Roads”, and the author is Seabury Quinn, best known for his long-running series in WT about occult investigator Jules de Grandin. “Roads” is a non-series story, and it’s also a Christmas story. You might not think so when you start reading it, but as you go along, you’ll be thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute . . . could this be . . . nah, surely not . . . yeah, it is!” I think it’s the best thing Quinn ever wrote, and it’s one of my favorite Christmas stories as well. If you don’t have a copy of WORLDS OF WEIRD, it’s probably too late to hunt one up and read “Roads” before Christmas this year, but if you have the book sitting on your shelves and have never read it, now’s the time to go dig it out. And read the other stories, while you’re at it. It’s a great book, any time of year.