Weird fiction

“ WHILE most of the material in WEIRD TALES is, of course, fiction, we are of the belief that there are innumerable persons who have lived through experiences as weird, terrible and horrifying as anything ever chronicled by a fictionist. ”

“ I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis. ”

“ The world is full of unexplained incidents and peculiar circumstances, the logical reasons for which are often so obscure and hidden that they are lent an illusion of the supernatural."—Robert E. Howard
We wish there were more authors and fans that were enthusiastic over the future of weird fiction and The Fantasy Fan as you and our other readers are, and were willing to support it. ”

“ In writing a weird story I always try very carefully to achieve the right mood and atmosphere, and place the emphasis where it belongs. One cannot, except in immature pulp charlatan-fiction, present an account of impossible, improbable, or inconceivable phenomena as a commonplace narrative of objective acts and conventional emotions. Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to overcome, and this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the story except that touching on the one given marvel. ”

“ Formerly I wrote only short stories, believing that this was the ideal form for weird fiction; but perusal of certain weird novels gradually changed my point of view, until after my Houtain experiments in greater length I began to map out certain of my more involved ideas as possible novels. ”

“ But the characters and events must be consistent and natural except where they touch the single marvel. In relation to the central wonder, the characters should shew the same overwhelming emotion which similar characters would shew toward such a wonder in real life. Never have a wonder taken for granted. Even when the characters are supposed to be accustomed to the wonder I try to weave an air of awe and impressiveness corresponding to what the reader should feel. A casual style ruins any serious fantasy. ”

“ Richard E. Morse's letter has impressed me as the one that really 'says something.' His thought had not occurred to me before, and it is worthwhile considering. Weird Tales allows science fiction; why not Wonder Stories weird tales? As the science fiction fan I am always eager to see stf in Weird Tales and any other magazine. ”

“ Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected, so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or “outsideness” without laying stress on the emotion of fear. ”

“ What particularly impelled me to write this letter is the story in the current issue, entitled ‘Beyond the Door.’ One reason why I single this one from such a congeries of thrilling, weird tales is that, with all its mystery and suggestion of the supernatural, the dénouement and everything that leads up to it are discovered at the end to be logically and physically ‘possible.’ So often, in mystery stories, we are called upon to accept much that simply is not naturally possible, and we turn from them, duly horrified, but unpersuaded that the tale is more than a figment of a morbid imagination. ”

“ Such books as do contain modern fantasy seek it among the "accepted" writers—the book writers who dabble in fantasy once in a while accompanied by the ohs and ahs of their select little groups of literateurs. When such a man turns out a weird yarn, he exhibits it as a charming little freak, a grotesque to be held up by the tail and exclaimed at by admiring circles of well-mannered literary clubs. And someday to appear in a select volume of weird stories, nestling between Poe and others. ”

“ Ghost stories, weird stories and horror stories, he says, are three differently feathered birds—and while the horror story is almost invariably weird, the ghost and weird tales are seldom horrible.
There are, you will be glad to hear, no stories about Mars or monkeymen. Instead, the book contains horror tales that would reduce the temperature of a smelting plant—and humorous fantasies to balance off the "grims" with "grins" that are really laugh making. ”

“ Also, and as if to compensate for the lack of the love interest, the short story has a "touch of fantasy" which gives it a distinctive charm. This quality is the hint of—not necessarily the supernatural, but rather the weird; it is a recognition and a vague presentation of the many strong influences that are not explainable by our philosophy of life. It is the intrusion into our matter-of-fact lives of the uncanny element, which the novice so grossly misuses in his tales of premonitory dreams and visions, and of most unghostly ghosts. ”

“ In such tales the real interest is usually in the weirdness of the whole affair—though, to be sure, they do not always turn out as they are expected to. For, after all, this introduction of surprise into fiction is simply an imitation of nature, and "it is the unexpected that always happens." ”

“ Each tale has at the end an unexpected turn or quick bit of action, and these endings are almost invariably tragic. The style is well suited to the character of the stories, which are wild, weird, and queer. ”

“ In fact, without the sense of the marvelous, the unreal, the wonderful, the magical, what would poetry mean to us? So we should feel a keen loss in our fiction if all the vague elements of the supernatural were effaced. Absolute realism is the last thing we desire.
Now the folk-tale, told frankly as such, with no apology for its unreality, no attempt to make of it merely an allegory or vehicle for teaching moral truth, has taken its place in our literature. ”

“ Stories of horror, of magic, of hypernatural experience, strike home zestfully to nine readers out of ten. There is no other magazine of this sort. Yarns somewhat of the type published in book form—for instance, ‘The Grim Thirteen’—invariably are recommended from one reader to a fellow, with gusto.
“WEIRD TALES need not be immoral in slightest degree. Fact, ninety from one hundred generally contain wholesome moral, at least, derivable. Even studies of paranoia or fear hysteria, pure and simple, generally are clean from start to finish. ”

“ Naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots. Moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconscious ”

“ The book can scarcely be read without shuddering; the dark maze of humane motion and human weakness-- a mingling of poetry, sentimentality, rollicking humour, wild remorse, stern gloom, blind delusion, dark insanity, over all which is thrown a veil steeped in the fantastic and the horrible--all this detracts from the artistic merits of the work, but invests it with a corresponding proportion of interest as a revealer of some of the deepest secrets and hidden phases of the human soul, if one only has the courage to wade through it. ”

“ Too intellectually cold for the purposes of poetry, too abstract and elusive for presentation in drama, and too removed by its association with the fantastic aspects of investigation and the curiosities of science to be very appropriate for tragedy, which has hitherto been the chief medium of expressing the dramatic supernatural, science finds its fitting expression in prose fiction. ”

“ But, whatever be the reasons, there has been a continuity of the ghostly in literature, with certain rise and fall of interest. There is in modern English fiction, as likewise in poetry and the drama, a great extent of the supernatural, with wide diversity of elements. Beginning with the Gothic romance, that curious architectural excrescence that yet has had enormous influence on our [3] novel, the supernatural is found in every period and in every form of fiction. The unearthly beings meet us in all guises, and answer our every mood, whether it be serious or awed, satiric or humoresque. ”

“ We may say, as a general thing, that a weird story whose intent is to teach or produce a social effect, or one in which the horrors are finally explained away by natural means, is not a genuine tale of cosmic fear; but it remains a fact that such narratives often possess, in isolated sections, atmospheric touches which fulfil every condition of the true supernatural horror-literature. Therefore we must judge a weird tale not by the author's intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot ”

“ Handling these, and states and situations equally hideous, fantastic, and grotesque, with extraordinary clearness and precision both of thought and of language, considering the often misty nature of the subjects he treats of, and pouring upon the vivid pictures he conjures up the brightness of his wit and the exuberant gaiety and grace of his fancy, he succeeds in creating scenes, situations, and characters which seem verily instinct with real life. ”

“ Further, when we remember his fine imaginative powers, his inimitable humour, his vanity, his poetic cast of mind, his bitterness against the public for not appreciating his musical talents, and his consequent fits of fierce defiance and satiric gloom, there is still less cause for wonder when we find this propensity for seeking the uncommon and the marvellous deepening and developing in time into an unconquerable penchant for what was grotesque and eccentric, for what was fantastic, unnatural, ghostly, and horrible. ”

“ What strange twist in his mind leads him to decry in art what he accepts in nature? A strange twist indeed, one which may be described as a sort of inverted sexuality, finding its pleasure not in the spring day, but in odd corners of ancient literature read only for the sake of passages which he declares to be disgusting, and in spying on modern literature, seeking out passages and expressions which might be denounced in the newspapers or proceeded against in the police court. The psychology of one of these purity mongers is more interesting to the alienist than to a man of letters. ”

“ The crucial struggles now are occult, rather than adventurous, as before, and while realism in fiction is immensely popular—never more so than now—it is likely to have supernaturalism overlaid upon it, as in De Morgan’s work, to give a single example. Recent poetry manifests the same tendency, and likewise the drama, particularly the closet drama and the playlet. ”

“ Romance is to be fed by mystery and the chase encouraged by the elusiveness of the quarry. 'But talk also how odd, how inconstant, how impetuous, how much accustomed to women of intrigue. Ask gravely, Pray don't you imagine there is something of madness in that family?' A tinge of insanity may be a pleasing dash of colour in the hero; or the suggestion may draw the attention of the fair one to extravagances which are to be noted as the fantasies of genius. ”

“ But as I have said, these are literary dramas, impossible of presentation on the stage, so that they are judged by literary rather than dramatic standards. For the most part fiction is infinitely freer in its range and choice of subjects from the supernatural than is the drama. ”

“ We see grotesque pieces given at the theatre—too grotesque and too often given—which make us laugh, but never make us think. They would not make good novels. The novel must amuse, indeed, but should amuse reasonably, from an intellectual point of view, rather than as a piece of good fun. Its object is to make one see men and women who might really live, talk, and act as they do in the book, and some of whom one would perhaps like to imitate. ”

“ It burlesques every feature of terror fiction, the high-flown language, the excited oaths, the feudal furniture, the medieval architecture, the Gothic weather, the supernatural tempers, the spectral apparitions—one of which is so muscular that he struggles with the heroine as she locks him in a closet, after throwing rapee into his face, which makes him sputter in a mortal fashion. ”

“ When the bizarre is finally reached we may still recognize it as the working imagination, but uncontrolled by reason. Our dreams which often strike us as so absurd are good instances of the play of the imagination unfettered by reason; and if our dream-land conceptions could be reduced to art we would undoubtedly have what we have called the bizarre. ”

“ And it has another and a wider claim—that it keeps up, in its own way, the element of the imaginative, of the fanciful—let us say even of the unreal—without which romance cannot live, without which novel is almost repulsive, and which the increasing advances of realism itself were to render more than ever indispensable. ”

“ I should venture that the fascination of the weird is through a vaguely masochistic pleasure that derives delight from frightening one's self! I believe the simile is ancient that our gaze will often return to the ugliest person in a room rather than the most handsome. ”

“ The receipt for a good, fantastic tale is well known: begin with well-defined portraits of eccentric characters, but such as to be within the bounds of possibility, described with minute realism. From the grotesque to the marvellous the transition is imperceptible, and the reader will find himself in the world of fantasy before he perceives that he has left the real world far behind him. ”

“ But it is through the sense of touch that the worst form of haunting comes. Seeing a supernatural visitant is terrible, hearing him is direful, smelling him is loathsome, but having him touch you is the climax of horror. ”