Weird Tales

This article is about the pulp magazine. For other uses, see Weird Tales (disambiguation).

Weird Tales
Demonic figures appear to menace a man.
Cover of the March 1942 issue, by Hannes Bok
Categories
FounderJ. C. Henneberger
Founded1922
First issueMarch 1923; 101 years ago (1923-03)
CountryUnited States
Websitewww.weirdtales.com
OCLC55045234

Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18.[1] The first editor, Edwin Baird, printed early work by H. P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, and Clark Ashton Smith, all of whom went on to be popular writers, but within a year, the magazine was in financial trouble. Henneberger sold his interest in the publisher, Rural Publishing Corporation, to Lansinger, and refinanced Weird Tales, with Farnsworth Wright as the new editor. The first issue to list Wright as editor was dated November 1924. The magazine was more successful under Wright, and despite occasional financial setbacks, it prospered over the next 15 years. Under Wright's control, the magazine lived up to its subtitle, "The Unique Magazine", and published a wide range of unusual fiction.

Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos stories first appeared in Weird Tales, starting with "The Call of Cthulhu" in 1928. These were well-received, and a group of writers associated with Lovecraft wrote other stories set in the same milieu. Robert E. Howard was a regular contributor, and published several of his Conan the Barbarian stories in the magazine, and Seabury Quinn's series of stories about Jules de Grandin, a detective who specialized in cases involving the supernatural, was very popular with the readers. Other well-liked authors included Nictzin Dyalhis, E. Hoffmann Price, Robert Bloch, and H. Warner Munn. Wright published some science fiction, along with the fantasy and horror, partly because when Weird Tales was launched, no magazines were specializing in science fiction, but he continued this policy even after the launch of magazines such as Amazing Stories in 1926. Edmond Hamilton wrote a good deal of science fiction for Weird Tales, though after a few years, he used the magazine for his more fantastic stories, and submitted his space operas elsewhere.

In 1938, the magazine was sold to William Delaney, the publisher of Short Stories, and within two years, Wright, who was ill, was replaced by Dorothy McIlwraith as editor. Although some successful new authors and artists, such as Ray Bradbury and Hannes Bok, continued to appear, the magazine is considered by critics to have declined under McIlwraith from its heyday in the 1930s. Weird Tales ceased publication in 1954, but since then, numerous attempts have been made to relaunch the magazine, starting in 1973. The longest-lasting version began in 1988 and ran with an occasional hiatus for over 20 years under an assortment of publishers. In the mid-1990s, the title was changed to Worlds of Fantasy and Horror because of licensing issues, the original title returning in 1998.

The magazine is regarded by historians of fantasy and science fiction as a legend in the field, Robert Weinberg considering it "the most important and influential of all fantasy magazines".[2] Weinberg's fellow historian, Mike Ashley, describes it as "second only to Unknown in significance and influence",[3] adding that "somewhere in the imagination reservoir of all U.S. (and many non-U.S.) genre-fantasy and horror writers is part of the spirit of Weird Tales".[4]

  1. ^ John Locke, "The Birth of Weird" in The Thing's Incredible: The Secret Origins of Weird Tales (Off-Trail Publications, 2018).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :37 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference :38 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).