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eBook Category: Fantasy/Horror
eBook Description: This collection of 13 stories from the first year of pulp legend Weird Tales--including 9 that have never previously been reprinted--represents the best stories first published in The Unique Magazine. Includes H.P. Lovecraft, Paul Suter, Herman Sisk, Frank Owen, and Farnsworth Wright--who would later go on to edit the magazine! Edited by John Gregory Betancourt, former editor of Weird Tales, and Marvin Kaye, editor of Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies.

eBook Publisher: Wildside Press, Published: USA, 1997
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2002

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [165 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [181 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [133 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [514 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [150 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [235 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [200 KB] , hiebook (KML) [384 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [235 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [124 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [154 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [220 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [204 KB]
Words: 45489
Reading time: 129-181 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

I was born the same year Orson Welles panicked America. By the time I was old enough to know about events outside the Philadelphia slum block I lived in, World War II was under way and most of my uncles and cousins were in the army or the navy.

It was a frightening time for an impressionable child. On the one hand, I yearned for gentler myths than war, yet like most children, my imagination also craved stories of danger and terror, provided they culminated in victory by moral courage, fortitude and wit, those 1940s "American" virtues practiced by such heroes as Captains Marvel and Midnight, Spy Smasher, Tom Mix and especially those three intrepid musketeers of radio who rushed in where Indiana Jones might fear to tread, Carlton E. Morse's mystery-loving Jack, Doc and Reggie.

Radio and the movie theatre across the street enthralled me, but there was another powerful stimulant in our "West Philly" household at 429 North 60th Street, a pulp magazine with eerie covers and stories that, long before I had the skill or patience to read them, fired my imagination, tales with shivery titles like "The Golden Goblins," "Lords of the Ghostlands," "Let's Play Poison" or "The Music-Box from Hell"--Weird Tales, which (with minimal hyperbole) its publishers styled "The Unique Magazine."

I suppose it was my father who bought Weird Tales, though I never actually saw him holding or reading an issue. Copies just showed up from time to time till my mother tossed them out. My relatives and teachers regarded such literature as worthless, but I knew better. Throughout its long, interrupted history from 1923 to the present, Weird Tales has consistently presented the best (and worst) genre literature, from grisly murder stories through dark and light fantasy to occasional science-fiction, and has continued to feature a host of the finest category and "mainstream" writers living and dead.

As I grew up, I browsed Weird Tales whenever I could, though I seldom could afford the price of a copy. I did manage to spend a large chunk of allowance (thirty-five cents!) on the September 1954 Weird Tales, not realizing it would be the last issue to be published until Leo Margulies revived "The Unique Magazine" nineteen years later.

The magazine died and came back to life so often that when I did a Weird Tales commemorative anthology in 1988 for the Doubleday Book and Music Clubs, I dubbed it "The Magazine That Never Dies." The story of Weird Tales's many incarnations and reincarnations appears in brief in my earlier collection, and in considerably greater detail in Bob Weinberg's essential history-appreciation, The Weird Tales Story, which Wildside Press has also reissued.

In Weird Tales, the Magazine that Never Dies, I offered an assortment of forty-five selections from the magazine's seven distinct editor/publisherships. In this generous-sized volume, I included selections by many of Weird Tales's popular contributors, including such important fantasists as, for example, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown. Hugh B. Cave, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Frank Belknap Long, H. P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson, Seabury Quinn, Clark Ashton Smith and Theodore Sturgeon, as well as interesting pieces by other less-familiar authors ... yet I was then and am now keenly aware of how much "good stuff" I reluctantly had to omit.

As a collector, I've always wanted to own a complete run of Weird Tales (I'm halfway there). Thus, I heartily endorsed the suggestion of my friend and associate John Betancourt to publish a selection drawn from the first year of "The Unique Magazine" which, if successful, will be followed by similar year-by-year anthologies.

With patience, luck and the generous assistance of several collectors, notably Graham Holroyd, Bob Madle, Bob Weinberg, and Jon White, I tracked down and read every issue of Weird Tales published in 1923 and discovered that though "The Unique Magazine" did not hit its stride for several months, more good fiction appeared in the opening year than I'd expected to find. My initial fear that there wouldn't be enough first-rate material to fill a modest-sized volume not only proved unfounded, but instead, I again was faced with the frustrating task of eliminating worthwhile stories, some because they were too long, some by authors already represented (each writer was restricted to a single entry).

The thirteen tales I chose represent some of the best--and often, some of the least-known--tales to appear in the first year of "The Unique Magazine." At least one piece from each issue has been included. Month-by-month prefatory rubrics provide further comment.

Now, to paraphrase a popular rock group, welcome back, my friends, to the magazine that never ends: Weird Tales, the Beginning!

--Marvin Kaye

New York 1995