Chapter I: Front Matter

THE FANTASY FAN

THE FANS' OWN MAGAZINE

Published
Monthly

Editor: Charles D. Hornig
(Managing Editor: Wonder Stories)

10 cents a copy
$1.00 per year

137 West Grand Street,
Elizabeth, New Jersey

Volume 2
September, 1934
Number 1
Whole Number 13

[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

NOTICE!

Many subscriptions expire with this issue. We urge all those whom this effects to send in a dollar for their renewal immediately. We cannot at this time afford to let the circulation of THE FANTASY FAN go down and continue monthly publication. Will you co-operate? Thank you!

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OUR READERS SAY

Well, we are one year old with this issue, and just to celebrate, have added the smooth, glossy cover that you admired so much as you took the issue out of the envelope. We may continue this every month if circulation allows. After all, circulation means everything. The more readers we have the more money comes into our treasury, and the more improvements we can give you. Will you subscribe (if you haven't already), and urge your fantasy friends to do likewise? Every little bit counts.

Our motto, by-word, or whatever you want to call it, is "The Fans' Own Magazine," as you will notice, and we have made this issue consist of 100 per cent fan material (except for the poetry), in order to emphasize this. We have chosen some of our choice articles and columns and provided an extra-long instalment of H. P. Lovecraft's excellent serial-article, "Supernatural Horror in Literature," Part Twelve of which appears in this issue. Only about one-third of it has been published. However, when we find it possible to increase the number of pages, much longer instalments will appear and we may clear it up in less than two years more. Even so, we know you will be sorry to see it end. So many of you have claimed it the best thing in our little magazette.

Just because there are no stories in this issue is no indication that we have ceased to publish them. During the past year we have given you brand-new masterpieces by the inimitable Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August W. Derleth, Eando Binder, R. H. Barlow, and other great writers, and have many on hand to use during the months to come--several by Smith and Lovecraft, Binder, etc. You won't want to miss these. They have never seen print before and are well up to the standard set by these authors in the more professional magazines. We want to keep THE FANTASY FAN a magazine for the fans, of the fans, and by the fans--the authors being the very best of fans. If you feel capable of writing any fan material, we would be glad to consider it for publication. Payment for such consists of four copies of THE FANTASY FAN of the issue in which the article appears per each page of article, until our magazine is on a paying basis.

If you would be willing to pay a quarter for a double alphabetical index (according to authors and names) of the first volume of THE FANTASY FAN, September, 1933, to August, 1934, please inform the editor at once. If enough requests are received, the index will be prepared.

Here's a special offer. To all those who have not subscribed to THE FANTASY FAN yet and wish to do so, we will make a 10 per cent discount on a two-year entry--$1.80 for two full years. This offer expires on October first.

This issue has gone to press before the publication of the August number, so we have very few letters on hand from the readers:

"Some extra fine stuff in the last TFF. I see, also, that you have added a new newshound to the mag. All are doing good work. 'Your Viewpoint' is better out as I don't believe there was much left to write about, unless one had the time and inclination to puzzle something out."--Kenneth B. Pritchard, Pittsfield, Mass.

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"I was delighted with the fine line-up the latest TFF contained. The green cover is the best color you have used yet. Green always reminds me of something fresh and the July issue was indeed fresh and snappy.

"'Weird Whisperings' by Schwartz and Weisinger ought to be another half-page at least. Their dope is always interesting to me and I know that other fans appreciate the column. I like 'Famous Fantasy Fiction' by Emil Petaja very well and would enjoy an article like this every issue. 'Science Fiction in English Magazines' is good too. Keller is good as usual with his fast-moving and very interesting tale, 'Rider by Night.' Keller has the knack of making a story interesting no matter how condensed or short it is. I am looking forward to more by him. Lovecraft's article is becoming so interesting that I can hardly wait for the next instalment to appear. You should give this treatise on weird literature at least two sheets. Make it a little longer, at least.

"'The Epiphany of Death' by Clark Ashton Smith is easily the best thing published in TFF this issue. Glad you are getting Smith's shorter tales for publication and I hope that they are enjoyed as much by others who read them as by myself. Smith has an in inimitable style--subtle, with many fine figures of speech. 'Dreams of Yith' by Duane W. Rimel was one of the finest poems you have so far published. After about three or four readings, I began to see the real imagery of it. The heading was surprisingly good and just the thing. I hope you can use them right along, as they give a fine effect.--F. Lee Baldwin, Asotin, Washington.

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"Enjoyed your last TFF and am anxiously awaiting the next. I especially like the little newsy items about all the different authors, and what they're doing."--Natalie H. Wooley, Rosedale, Kansas.

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Write us a letter, reader, and let us know what you think of this issue of TFF. What do you like in it, what would you rather not have, and what suggestions have you to offer? We appreciate your letters and have found many helpful hints in them in the past.

See you again next month.

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SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE

by H. P. Lovecraft

Part Twelve

(Copyright 1927 by W. Paul Cook)

In this same period Sir Walter Scott frequently concerned himself with the weird, weaving it into many of his novels and poems, and sometimes producing such independent bits of narration as "The Tapestried Chamber" or "Wandering Willie's Tale" in "Redgauntlet," in the latter of which the force of the spectral and the diabolic is enhanced by a grotesque homeliness of speech and atmosphere. In 1830 Scott published his "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft," which still forms one of our best compendia of European witch-lore. Washington Irving is another famous figure not unconnected with the weird; for though most of his ghosts are too whimsical and humorous to form genuinely spectral literature, a distinct inclination in this direction is to be noted in many of his productions. "The German Student" in "Tales of a Traveller" (1824) is a slyly concise and effective presentation of the old legend of the dead bride, whilst woven into the cosmic tissue of "The Money Diggers" in the same volume is more than one hint of piratical apparitions in the realms which Captain Kidd once roamed. Thomas Moore also joined the ranks of the macabre artists in the poem "Alciphron," which he later elaborated into the prose novel of "The Epicurean" (1827). Though merely relating the adventurers of a young Athenian duped by the artifice of cunning Egyptian priests, Moore manages to infuse much genuine horror into his account of subterranean frights and wonders beneath the primordial temples of Memphis. De Quincey more than once revels in grotesque and arabesque terrors, though with a desultoriness and learned pomp which deny him the rank of specialist.

This era likewise saw the rise of William Harrison Ainsworth, whose romantic novels teem with the eerie and the gruesome. Capt. Marryat, besides writing such short tales as "The Werewolf," made a memorable contribution in "The Phantom Ship," (1839) founded on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, whose spectral and accursed vessel sails for ever near the Cape of Good Hope. Dickens now rises with occasional weird bits like "The Signalman," a tale of ghostly warning conforming to a very common pattern and touched with a verisimilitude which allies it as much with the coming psychological school as with the dying Gothic school. At this time a wave of interest in spiritualistic charlatanry, mediumism, Hindoo theosophy, and such matters, much like that of the present day, was flourishing; so that the number of weird tales with a "psychic" or pseudo-scientific basis became very considerable. For a number of these the prolific and popular Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton was responsible; and despite the large doses of turgid rhetoric and empty romanticism in his products, his success in the weaving of a certain kind of bizarre charm cannot be denied.

"The House and the Brain," which hints of Rosicrucianism and at a malign and deathless figure perhaps suggested by Louis XV's mysterious courtier St. Germain, yet survives as one of the best short haunted house tales ever written. The novel "Zanoni" (1842) contains similar elements more elaborately handled, and introduces a vast unknown sphere of being pressing on our own world and guarded by a horrible "Dweller of the Threshold" who haunts those who try to enter and fail. Here we have a benign brotherhood kept alive from ages to ages till finally reduced to a single member, and as a hero an ancient Chaldean sorceror surviving in the pristine bloom of youth to perish on the guillotine of the French Revolution. Though full of the conventional spirit of romance, marred by a ponderous network of symbolic and didactic meanings, and left unconvincing through lack of perfect atmospheric realization of the situations hinging on the spectral world, "Zanoni" is really an excellent performance as a romantic novel; and can be read with genuine interest today by the not too sophisticated reader. It is amusing to note that in describing an attempted initiation into the ancient brotherhood, the author cannot escape using the stock Gothic castle of Walpolian lineage.

In "A Strange Story" (1862) Bulwer-Lytton shows a marked improvement in the creation of weird images and moods. The novel, despite enormous length, a highly artificial plot bolstered up by opportune coincidences, and an atmosphere of homiletic pseudo-science designed to please the matter-of-fact and purposeful Victorian reader, is exceedingly effective as a narrative; evoking instantaneous and unflagging interest, and furnishing many potent--if somewhat melodramatic--tableaux and climaxes. Again we have the mysterious user of life's elixir in the person of the soulless magician Margrave, whose dark exploits stand out with dramatic vividness against the modern background of a quiet English town and of the Australian bush; and again we have shadowy intimations of a vast spectral world of the unknown in the very air about us--this time handled with much greater power and vitality than in "Zanoni." One of the two great incantation passages, where the hero is driven by a luminous evil spirit to rise at night in his sleep, take a strange Egyptian wand, and invoke nameless presences in the haunted and mausoleum-facing pavillian of a famous Renaissance alchemist, truly stands among the major terror scenes of literature. Just enough is suggested, and just little enough is told. Unknown words are twice dictated to the sleep-walker, and as he repeats them the ground trembles, and all the dogs of the countryside begin to bay at half-seen amorphous shadows that stalk athwart the moonlight. When a third set of unknown words is prompted, the sleep-walker's spirit suddenly rebels at uttering them, as if the soul could recognize ultimate abysmal horrors concealed from the mind; and at last an apparition of an absent sweetheart and good angel breaks the malign spell. This fragment well illustrates how far Lord Lytton was capable of progressing beyond his usual pomp and stock romance toward that crystalline essence of artistic fear which belongs to the domain of poetry. In describing certain details of incantations, Lytton was greatly indebted to his amusingly serious occult studies, in the course of which he came in touch with that odd French scholar and cabalist Alphonse Louis Constant ("Eliphas Levi") who claimed to possess the secrets of ancient magic, and to have evoked the spectre of the old Grecian wizard Appollonius of Tyana, who lived in Nero's time.

The romantic, semi-Gothic, quasi-moral tradition here represented was carried far down the nineteenth century by such authors as Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, Thomas Preskett with his famous "Varney, the Vampyre" (1847), Wilkie Collins, the late Sir H. Rider Haggard, (whose "She" is really remarkably good), Sir A. Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Robert Louis Stevenson--the latter of whom, despite an atrocious tendency toward jaunty mannerisms, created permanent classics in Markheim, "The Body Snatcher," and "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde." Indeed, we may say that this school still survives; for to it clearly belong such of our contemporary horror tales as specialise in events rather than atmospheric details, address the intellect rather than the impressionistic imagination, cultivate a luminous glamour rather than a malign tensity or psychological verisimilitude, and take a definite stand in sympathy with mankind and its welfare. It has its undeniable strength, and because of its "human element" commands a wider audience than does the sheer artistic nightmare. If not quite so potent as the latter, it is because a diluted product can never achieve the intensity of a concentrated essence.

Quite alone both as novel and as a piece of terror-literature stands the famous "Wuthering Heights" (1847) by Emily Bronte, with its mad vista of bleak, windswept Yorkshire moors and the violent, distorted lives they foster. Though primarily a tale of life, and of human passions in agony and conflict, its epically cosmic setting affords room for horror of the most spiritual sort. Heathcliff, the modified Byronic villain-hero, is a strange dark waif found in the streets as a small child and speaking only a strange gibberish till adopted by the family he ultimately ruins. That he is in truth a diabolic spirit rather than a human being is more than once suggested, and the unreal is further approached in the experience of the visitor who encounters a plaintive child-ghost at a bough-brushed upper window. Between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw is a tie deeper and more terrible than human love. After her death he twice disturbs her grave, and is haunted by an impalpable presence which can be nothing less than her spirit. The spirit enters his life more and more, and at last he becomes confident of some imminent mystical reunion. He says he feels a strange change approaching, and ceases to take nourishment. At night he either walks abroad or opens the casement by his bed. When he dies the casement is still swinging open to the pouring rain, and a queer smile pervades the stiffened face. They bury him in a grave beside the mound he has haunted for eighteen years, and small shepherd boys say that he yet walks with his Catherine in the churchyard and on the moor when it rains. Their faces, too, are sometimes seen on rainy nights behind that upper casement at Wuthering Heights. Miss Bronte's eerie terror is no mere Gothic echo, but a tense expression of man's shuddering reaction to the unknown. In this respect, "Wuthering Heights" becomes the symbol of a literary transition, and marks the growth of a new and sounder school.

(Next month Mr. Lovecraft takes up "Spectral Literature of the Continent")

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SUPERSTITION--A. D. 1934

by Lester Anderson

Why the dearth of readers for that class of literature known as the weird or fantastic? Why the cynicism in most circles regarding this branch of writing? Many answers have been given to these queries, the most common one being that of "lack of imagination." May I offer a startling contradiction to this, namely--TOO MUCH IMAGINATION? Precisely that.

A study of superstitions in America is being made by Dr. Otis Caldwell of Columbia University, who announces that 98 people out of 100 are superstitious. Let that sink in--98 out of 100. He further states that women are more superstitious than men, and superstition is more prevalent in the country than in the city.

Now, the person who goes around whistling in the dark, avidly studies Dream Books (also known variously as "Success in 5 Lessons" and "Would You DARE Join a Nudist Camp?"), avoids ladders, and keeps his weather eye peeled for stray black cats--albeit he laughs it off outwardly--isn't likely to pick up a copy of "The Slithering Shadow" no matter in what state of dishabille the shapely lady might be in. (At this point, let me briefly interrupt by stating that I have absolutely no objections to the so-called "naked" covers gracing most issues of Weird Tales--if the circulation is increased thereby). I venture to say that the average reader of weird fantasy is remarkably free from the superstitions which beset the run-of-the-mill literate, and if encountered by an ultra-mundane manifestation would be the first to be skeptical--and investigate.

By superstition I don't mean speculation on unknown forces or cosmic powers, but those things which effect the material world; those that are detrimental to your way of living; and those superstitions which stand in the path of progress--progress in all spheres of human activity, and which are crammed down the throats of our plastic younglings.

A few reasons why most people are averse to reading fantasy, and cover their dislike with a thinly-veiled sneer or a condescending smile, are: someone might think them superstitious; there might be a grain of truth in it at that; such childish stuff; and of course, their fear of that great mental force, ridicule. Naturally, there are those who aren't impressed one way or another, but in this article we are not concerned with personal tastes.

Perhaps Mr. Wright has the wrong idea of what constitutes weirdness. Would Weird Tales reach a tremendous circulation if Lovecraft, Machen, C. A. Smith, Blackwood, Merritt, and other blood-brothers collaborated on a novel with the following plot which I will sketchily outline? Have the hero born on Friday the 13th under the sign of--say Capricornus. Then show his misadventures down life's highway starting with the theft of his mammy's rabbit's foot and culminating in a cacophonic tumult of soul-shattering events following his breaking up of the merchandise in a mirror warehouse. There you have something everybody can understand and appreciate. Oh yes! and have the novel endorsed by Einstein, Stalin, the A.A.A.S., Lindbergh, and Mae West. Publicly, you know. Seriously, though, I do not believe fantasy will be a strong force until we root out superstitious hoodoos. Paradoxical?

98 out of 100 have it. What Price Something-or-other!

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WITHIN THE CIRCLE

by F. Lee Baldwin

Forrest Ackerman says he really had that "surprise of one's life" when Linus Hogenmiller of Missouri, his first correspondent, unexpectedly dropped in on him in Los Angeles.

A well-known editor who has been recently collecting old Weird Tales had the good fortune of purchasing quite a few for two and a half cents a copy. Just imagine!