Weird Tales

This page is about the fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine and its heirs. Information on the Golden Smog album can be found at Weird Tales (Album)

Related Topics:
Fantasy - Horror fiction - Golden Smog - Weird Tales (Album)

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Weird Tales was an American fantasy fiction and horror pulp magazine first published in March of 1923. It was set-up in Chicago by J.C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre. Edwin Baird was the first editor of Weird Tales, and his assistant was Farnsworth Wright.

Related Topics:
American - Fantasy fiction - Pulp magazine - 1923 - J.C. Henneberger - Edwin Baird - Farnsworth Wright

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Baird was replaced by Farnsworth Wright after fourteen issues. Wright (who suffered from Parkinson's disease) gave Weird Tales a unique identity, and began to publish stories by H.P. Lovecraft, as well as the hugely popular Jules de Grandin stories of Seabury Quinn. Another successful contributor was Robert E. Howard, whose Conan the Barbarian stories, amongst many others, were hugely popular. Wright also gave early opportunities to such highly regarded pulp writers as Robert Bloch and Clark Ashton Smith. Wright continued as editor until March 1940, dying in June of that year.

Related Topics:
Parkinson's disease - H.P. Lovecraft - Jules de Grandin - Seabury Quinn - Robert E. Howard - Conan the Barbarian - Robert Bloch - Clark Ashton Smith

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Weird Tales always struggled financially and, like most pulp magazines including the similarly legendary crime fiction title Black Mask, suffered competition from comic books, radio drama, and eventually inexpensive paperback books. After the death of Lovecraft and retirement of Wright, Weird Tales took on a different flavor, but commercially generally declined until it ceased publication in September 1954 after 279 issues. Its later years, under the editorship of Dorothy McIlwraith, were characterised by an influx of newer writers, including such major figures as Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Theodore Sturgeon, and Margaret St. Clair, a somewhat more eclectic range, and occasional pieces of "lost" Lovecraft completed, and Lovecraftian pastiches written, by his self-appointed literary executor August Derleth, who also wrote better fiction for the magazine in his own voice.

Related Topics:
Crime fiction - Black Mask - 1954 - Manly Wade Wellman - Fritz Leiber - Henry Kuttner - C. L. Moore - Theodore Sturgeon - Margaret St. Clair - August Derleth

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After several shortlived reincarnations, including four issues as a magazine in the early 1970s edited by Sam Moskowitz and published by Leo Margulies. Robert Weinberg & Victor Dricks purchased the title following Marguiles' death and licensed a series of four paperback anthologies edited by Lin Carter from 1981-1983. Weird Tales was revived under license by publisher/editors George H. Scithers, John Gregory Betancourt, and Darrell Schweitzer in 1988, beginning with issue 290. Some combination of these three have edited it since. The magazine has been reasonably commercially successful, as far as fiction magazines go, publishing notable modern writers such as Tanith Lee, Brian Lumley, and Thomas Ligotti. It became part of the DNA Publications chain for several years around the turn of the millennium, and has since been sold to a combination of this revival's founders, as a Terminus and Wildside Press Publication.

Related Topics:
Sam Moskowitz - Leo Margulies - Lin Carter - George H. Scithers - John Gregory Betancourt - Darrell Schweitzer - 1988 - Tanith Lee - Brian Lumley - Thomas Ligotti - DNA Publications

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