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                            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 1 March, 1934 Number 7

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                            OUR READERS SAY


“Clark Ashton Smith’s story ‘The Ghoul’ is fascinating all the way
through and the plot one that fits in with the treatment. I am
anxiously waiting for more poems by him.

“‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ grows even more absorbing with the
dawn of the Horror Tale. It is certainly something to tuck away and
think over. Especially interesting is how the germ started and gained
force in our own country from the European elements and the fact that
superstition is more prevalent in northern blood than in southern,
speaking racially—Latin and the like.

“The ‘Annals of the Jinns’ continues well and R. H. Barlow can get
quite a story in so few words.”

                                                         —Duane W. Rimel


You will notice an excellent long poem by Clark Ashton Smith in this
issue. We intend to lengthen the installments of Lovecraft’s article in
future issues—the next part will take over two full pages. Barlow’s
sixth “Annals” will probably appear next month.

“Very glad to see the new issue. Smith’s article is extremely apt and
timely. I find that James tends to be popularly under-appreciated.
Barlow’s tale is the best yet—he seems to improve constantly. The
verses of Messrs. Lumley and Searight are haunting and excellent. It’s
a good idea to substitute a department of general discussion for ‘The
Boiling Point’.”

                                                                  —H. P.


“I enjoyed the January issue of THE FANTASY FAN. Barlow’s little tales
are certainly clever, and I hope you will print many of them. I second
the wish that you express in your note at the end of the current
‘Boiling Point’ column.”

                                                     —Clark Ashton Smith


“I just got the February issue of THE FANTASY FAN and I find that it’s
o.k., as usual. Marianne Ferguson’s article was great!”

                                                         —Ted. H. Lutwin


“Just finished the February issue of THE FANTASY FAN, and in common
words, it’s a honey! Marianne Ferguson’s article about her visit to
Jules de Grandin was superb! I want to cast my vote right now for
another article by Miss Ferguson real soon!

“THE FANTASY FAN is now six months old and should celebrate! ‘The
Dweller’ by William Lumley was a masterpiece, and Richard F. Searight’s
poem takes high honors in this issue.

“All in all; I think this semi-birthday issue is fine. But there are a
few things I would like to make comments about. ‘The Boiling Point’
should be eliminated, but the readers’ column should not be shortened!
I agree with Mrs. Wooley—you should not insert a contents page, and
thus cut out some interesting feature that could occupy the space. THE
FANTASY FAN is going places!”

                                                             —Bob Tucker


As this is only our seventh issue, we don’t believe it’s quite time to
celebrate our success(?)—however, we will be one year old in September
and might be better off by then and feel justified in whooping it up.

We take great pleasure in presenting the following letter from H.
Koenig. His letters are always thoroughly interesting and instructive
and we value them as much as some of our articles:

“The February issue of THE FANTASY FAN was splendid and a marked
improvement over the previous issue. It is rather difficult to pick out
any high spot; but the articles and stories by Lovecraft, Barlow,
Smith, and Petaja were all fine, to say nothing of the column, ‘Howl
from the Ether.’

“I particularly enjoyed Clark Ashton Smith’s article on M. R. James. It
was an admirable essay on an author who is far too little known and
appreciated on this side of the water, and I dare say, on the other
side also. Dr. James, who apparently has a tremendous amount of
antiquarian and archeological information at his fingertips, is also,
in my humble opinion, the greatest modern exponent of the ghost story.
I heartily second Smith’s recommendation that all lovers of the weird
and supernatural procure a copy of the Longman’s Green and Company
volume. They will not be disappointed. Incidentally, for the
information of readers who are perhaps interested in the separate
volumes of James’ work rather than in the complete collection, the
individual titles of his books (not mentioned in Smith’s article) are
as follows:

                 1. Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
                 2. More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
                 3. A Thin Ghost and Others
                 4. A Warning to the Curious

“By the way, M. R. James should not be confused with G. P. R. James who
wrote that interesting romance, ‘The Castle of Ehrenstein, Its Lords
Spiritual and Temporal; Its Inhabitants Earthly and Unearthly.’ This is
a book, which, while probably somewhat tiresome to the general reader,
should prove of considerable interest to the student of the ghost story
(I am fortunate to have a first edition of this book in three volumes
published in 1847).

“Emil Petaja’s article on ‘Famous Fantasy Fiction’ was also fine but to
me far too short. I could add dozens of other interesting anthologies
to his list but a few of the more important ones will suffice. Mr.
Petaja called attention to Dorothy Sayers’ ‘Omnibus of Crime.’ It
should be noted that Miss Sayers edited a second series of stories
entitled, ‘Detection, Mystery, and Horror.’ Another worth-while group
of stories has been collected and edited by Montague Summers under the
title, ‘The Supernatural Omnibus.’ This volume has a splendid
introduction by the Rev. Summers and contains, among other stories,
‘The Upper Berth’ by Crawford, and ‘The Damned Thing’ by Bierce.
Another well-rounded collection was gotten together by Colin de la Mare
under the title, ‘They Walk Again.’ This book contains ‘The Voice of
the Night’ by Hodgson and ‘The Beckoning Fair One’ by Oliver Onions.

“Perhaps at times I have been somewhat harsh in my criticisms, but I am
glad that you have taken them in the right spirit.”

We know that you will be pleased to note that we are lengthening the
installments of Lovecraft’s article hereafter.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                           Gods of the North

                          by Robert E. Howard


The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter
was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The pale bleak sun
that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered
plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade,
where the dead lay in heaps. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken
hilt; helmeted heads, back-drawn in the death throes, tilted red beards
and golden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir the
frost-giant.

Across the red drifts and mail-clad forms, two figures approached one
another. In that utter desolation only they moved. The frosty sky was
over them, the white illimitable plain around them, the dead men at
their feet. Slowly through the corpses they came, as ghosts might come
to a tryst through the shambles of a world.

Their shields were gone, their corselets dinted. Blood smeared their
mail; their swords were red. Their horned helmets showed the marks of
fierce strokes.

One spoke, he whose locks and beard were red as the blood on the sunlit
snow.

“Man of the raven locks,” said he, “tell me your name, so that my
brothers in Vanaheim may know who was the last of Wulfhere’s band to
fall before the sword of Heimdul.”

“This is my answer,” replied the black-haired warrior: “Not in
Vanaheim, but in Vallhalla will you tell your brothers the name of Amra
of Akbitana.”

Heimdul roared and sprang, and his sword swung in a mighty arc. Amra
staggered and his vision was filled with red sparks as the blade
shivered into bits of blue fire on his helmet. But as he reeled he
thrust with all the power of his great shoulders. The sharp point drove
through brass scales and bones and heart, and the red-haired warrior
died at Amra’s feet.

Amra stood swaying, trailing his sword, a sudden sick weariness
assailing him. The glare of the sun on the snow cut his eyes like a
knife and the sky seemed shrunken and strangely far. He turned away
from the trampled expanse where yellow-bearded warriors lay locked with
red-haired slayers in the embrace of death. A few steps he took, and
the glare of the snow fields was suddenly dimmed. A rushing wave of
blindness engulfed him, and he sank down into the snow, supporting
himself on one mailed arm, seeking to shake the blindness out of his
eyes as a lion might shake his mane.

A silvery laugh cut through his dizziness, and his sight cleared
slowly. There was a strangeness about all the landscape that he could
not place or define—an unfamiliar tinge to earth and sky. But he did
not think long of this. Before him, swaying like a sapling in the wind,
stood a woman. Her body was like ivory, and save for a veil of
gossamer, she was naked as the day. Her slender bare feet were whiter
than the snow they spurned. She laughed, and her laughter was sweeter
than the rippling of silvery fountains, and poisonous with cruel
mockery.

“Who are you?” demanded the warrior.

“What matter?” Her voice was more musical than a silver-stringed harp,
but it was edged with cruelty.

“Call up your men,” he growled, grasping his sword. “Though my strength
fail me, yet they shall not take me alive. I see that you are of the
Vanir.”

“Have I said so?”

He looked again at her unruly locks, which he had thought to be red.
Now he saw that they were neither red nor yellow, but a glorious
compound of both colors. He gazed spell-bound. Her hair was like
elfin-gold, striking which, the sun dazzled him. Her eyes were neither
wholly blue nor wholly grey, but of shifting colors and dancing lights
and clouds of colors he could not recognize. Her full red lips smiled,
and from her slim feet to the blinding crown of her billowy hair, her
ivory body was as perfect as the dream of a god. Amra’s pulse hammered
in his temples.

“I can not tell,” said he, “whether you are of Vanaheim and mine enemy,
or of Asgard and my friend. Far have I wandered, from Zingara to the
Sea of Vilayet, in Stygia and Kush, and the country of the Hyrkanians;
but a woman like you I have never seen. Your locks blind me with their
brightness. Not even among the fairest daughters of the Aesir have I
seen such hair, by Ymir!”

“Who are you to swear by Ymir?” she mocked. “What know you of the gods
of ice and snow, you who have come up from the south to adventure among
strangers?”

“By the dark gods of my own race!” he cried in anger. “Have I been
backward in the sword-play, stranger or no? This day I have seen four
score warriors fall, and I alone survive the field where Wulfhere’s
reavers met the men of Bragi. Tell me, woman, have you caught the flash
of mail across the snow-plains, or seen armed men moving upon the ice?”

“I have seen the hoar-frost glittering in the sun,” she answered. “I
have heard the wind whispering across the everlasting snows.”

He shook his head.

“Niord should have come up with us before the battle joined. I fear he
and his warriors have been ambushed. Wulfhere lies dead with all his
weapon-men.

“I had thought there was no village within many leagues of this spot,
for the war carried us far, but you can have come no great distance
over these snows, naked as you are. Lead me to your tribe, if you are
of Asgard, for I am faint with the weariness of strife.”

“My dwelling place is further than you can walk, Amra of Akbitana!” she
laughed. Spreading wide her arms she swayed before him, her golden head
lolling wantonly, her scintillant eyes shadowed beneath long silken
lashes. “Am I not beautiful, man?”

“Like Dawn running naked on the snows,” he muttered, his eyes burning
like those of a wolf.

“Then why do you not rise and follow me? Who is the strong warrior who
falls down before me?” she chanted in maddening mockery. “Lie down and
die in the snow with the other fools, Amra of the black hair. You can
not follow where I would lead.”

With an oath the man heaved himself upon his feet, his blue eyes
blazing, his dark scarred face convulsed. Rage shook his soul, but
desire for the taunting figure before him hammered at his temples and
drove his wild blood riotiously through his veins. Passion fierce as
physical agony flooded his whole being so that earth and sky swam red
to his dizzy gaze, and weariness and faintness were swept from him in
madness.

He spoke no word as he drove at her, fingers hooked like talons. With a
shriek of laughter she leaped back and ran, laughing at him over her
white shoulder. With a low growl Amra followed. He had forgotten the
fight, forgotten the mailed warriors who lay in their blood, forgotten
Niord’s belated reavers. He had thought only for the slender white
shape which seemed to float rather than run before him.

Out across the white blinding plain she led him. The trampled red field
fell out of sight behind him, but still Amra kept on with the silent
tenacity of his race. His mailed feet broke through the frozen crust;
he sank deep in the drifts and forged through them by sheer strength.
But the girl danced across the snow as light as a feather floating
across a pool; her naked feet scarcely left their imprint on the
hoar-frost. In spite of the fire in his veins, the cold bit through the
warrior’s mail and furs; but the girl in her gossamer veil ran as
lightly and as gaily as if she danced through the palms and rose
gardens of Poitain.

Black curses drooled through the warrior’s parched lips. The great
veins swelled and throbbed in his temples, and his teeth gnashed
spasmodically.

“You can not escape me!” he roared. “Lead me into a trap and I’ll pile
the heads of your kinsmen at your feet. Hide from me and I’ll tear
apart the mountains to find you! I’ll follow you to hell and beyond
hell!”

Her maddening laughter floated back to him, and foam flew from the
warrior’s lips. Further and further into the wastes she led him, till
he saw the wide plains give way to low hills, marching upward in broken
ranges. Far to the north he caught a glimpse of towering mountains,
blue with the distance, or white with the eternal snows. Above these
mountains shone the flaring rays of the borealis. They spread fan-wise
into the sky, frosty blades of cold flaming light, changing in color,
growing and brightening.

Above him the skies glowed and crackled with strange lights and gleams.
The snow shone weirdly, now frosty blue, now icy crimson, now cold
silver. Through a shimmering icy realm of enchantment Amra plunged
doggedly onward, in a crystalline maze where the only reality was the
white body dancing across the glittering snow beyond his reach—ever
beyond his reach.

Yet he did not wonder at the necromantic strangeness of it all, not
even when two gigantic figures rose up to bar his way. The scales of
their mail were white with hoar-frost; their helmets and their axes
were sheathed in ice. Snow sprinkled their locks; in their beards were
spikes of icicles; their eyes were cold as the lights that streamed
above them.

“Brothers!” cried the girl, dancing between them. “Look who follows! I
have brought you a man for the feasting! Take his heart that we may lay
it smoking on our father’s board!”

The giants answered with roars like the grinding of ice-bergs on a
frozen shore, and heaved up their shining axes as the maddened
Akbitanan hurled himself upon them. A frosty blade flashed before his
eyes, blinding him with its brightness, and he gave back a terrible
stroke that sheared through his foe’s thigh. With a groan the victim
fell, and at the instant Amra was dashed into the snow, his left
shoulder numb from the blow of the survivor, from which the warrior’s
mail had barely saved his life. Amra saw the remaining giant looming
above him like a colossus carved of ice, etched against the glowing
sky. The axe fell, to sink through the snow and deep into the frozen
earth as Amra hurled himself aside and leaped to his feet. The giant
roared and wrenched the axe-head free, but even as he did so, Amra’s
sword sank down. The giant’s knees bent and he sank slowly into the
snow which turned crimson with the blood that gushed from his
half-severed neck.

Amra wheeled, to see the girl standing a short distance away, staring
in wide-eyed horror, all mockery gone from her face. He cried out
fiercely and the blood-drops flew from his sword as his hand shook in
the intensity of his passion.

“Call the rest of your brothers!” he roared. “Call the dogs! I’ll give
their hearts to the wolves!”

With a cry of fright she turned and fled. She did not laugh now, nor
mock him over her shoulder. She ran as for her life, and though he
strained every nerve and thew, until his temples were like to burst and
the snow swam red to his gaze, she drew away from him, dwindling in the
witch-fire of the skies, until she was a figure no bigger than a child,
then a dancing white flame on the snow, then a dim blur in the
distance. But grinding his teeth until the blood started from his gums,
he reeled on, and he saw the blur grow to a dancing white flame, and
the flame to a figure big as a child; and then she was running less
than a hundred paces ahead of him, and slowly the space narrowed, foot
by foot.

She was running with effort now, her golden locks blowing free; he
heard the quick panting of her breath, and saw a flash of fear in the
look she cast over her alabaster shoulder. The grim endurance of the
warrior had served him well. The speed ebbed from her flashing white
legs; she reeled in her gait. In his untamed soul flamed up the fires
of hell she had fanned so well. With an inhuman roar he closed in on
her, just as she wheeled with a haunting cry and flung out her arms to
fend him off.

His sword fell into the snow as he crushed her to him. Her supple body
bent backward as she fought with desperate frenzy in his iron arms. Her
golden hair blew about his face, blinding him with its sheen; the feel
of her slender figure twisting in his mailed arms drove him to blinder
madness. His strong fingers sank deep into her smooth flesh, and that
flesh was cold as ice. It was as if he embraced not a woman of human
flesh and blood, but a woman of flaming ice. She writhed her golden
head aside, striving to avoid the savage kisses that bruised her red
lips.

“You are cold as the snows,” he mumbled dazedly. “I will warm you with
the fire in my own blood—”

With a desperate wrench she twisted from his arms, leaving her single
gossamer garment in his grasp. She sprang back and faced him, her
golden locks in wild disarray, her white bosom heaving, her beautiful
eyes blazing with terror. For an instant he stood frozen, awed by her
terrible beauty as she posed naked against the snows.

And in that instant she flung her arms toward the lights that glowed in
the skies above her and cried out in a voice that rang in Amra’s ears
for ever after:

“_Ymir! Oh, my father, save me!_”

Amra was leaping forward, arms spread to seize her, when with a crack
like the breaking of an ice mountain, the whole skies leaped into icy
fire. The girl’s ivory body was suddenly enveloped in a cold blue flame
so blinding that the warrior threw up his hands to shield his eyes. A
fleeting instant, skies and snowy hills were bathed in crackling white
flames, blue darts of icy light, and frozen crimson fires. Then Amra
staggered and cried out. The girl was gone. The glowing snow lay empty
and bare; high above him the witch-lights flashed and played in a
frosty sky gone mad, and among the distant blue mountains there sounded
a rolling thunder as of a gigantic war-chariot rushing behind steeds
whose frantic hoofs struck lightning from the snows and echoes from the
skies.

Then suddenly the borealis, the snowy hills and the blazing heavens
reeled drunkenly to Amra’s sight; thousands of fireballs burst with
showers of sparks, and the sky itself became a titanic wheel which
rained stars as it spun. Under his feet the snowy hills heaved up like
a wave, and the Akbitanan crumpled into the snows to lie motionless.

In a cold dark universe, whose sun was extinguished eons ago, Amra felt
the movement of life, alien and unguessed. An earthquake had him in its
grip and was shaking him to and fro, at the same time chafing his hands
and feet until he yelled in pain and fury and groped for his sword.

“He’s coming to, Horsa,” grunted a voice. “Haste—we must rub the frost
out of his limbs, if he’s ever to wield sword again.”

“He won’t open his left hand,” growled another, his voice indicating
muscular strain. “He’s clutching something—”

Amra opened his eyes and stared into the bearded faces that bent over
him. He was surrounded by tall golden-haired warriors in mail and furs.

“Amra! You live!”

“By Crom, Niord,” gasped he, “am I alive, or are we all dead and in
Valhalla?”

“We live,” grunted the Aesir, busy over Amra’s half-frozen feet. “We
had to fight our way through an ambush, else we had come up with you
before the battle was joined. The corpses were scarce cold when we came
upon the field. We did not find you among the dead, so we followed your
spoor. In Ymir’s name, Amra, why did you wander off into the wastes of
the north? We have followed your tracks in the snow for hours. Had a
blizzard come up and hidden them, we had never found you, by Ymir!”

“Swear not so often by Ymir,” muttered a warrior, glancing at the
distant mountains. “This is his land and the god bides among yonder
mountains, the legends say.”

“I followed a woman,” Amra answered hazily. “We met Bragi’s men in the
plains. I know not how long we fought. I alone lived. I was dizzy and
faint. The land lay like a dream before me. Only now do all things seem
natural and familiar. The woman came and taunted me. She was beautiful
as a frozen flame from hell. When I looked at her I was as one mad, and
forgot all else in the world. I followed her. Did you not find her
tracks. Or the giants in icy mail I slew?”

Niord shook his head.

“We found only your tracks in the snow, Amra.”

“Then it may be I was mad,” said Amra dazedly. “Yet you yourself are no
more real to me than was the golden haired witch who fled naked across
the snows before me. Yet from my very hands she vanished in icy flame.”

“He is delirious,” whispered a warrior.

“Not so!” cried an older man, whose eyes were wild and weird. “It was
Atali, the daughter of Ymir, the frost-giant! To fields of the dead she
comes, and shows herself to the dying! Myself when a boy I saw her,
when I lay half-slain on the bloody field of Wolraven. I saw her walk
among the dead in the snows, her naked body gleaming like ivory and her
golden hair like a blinding flame in the moonlight. I lay and howled
like a dying dog because I could not crawl after her. She lures men
from stricken fields into the wastelands to be slain by her brothers,
the ice-giants, who lay men’s red hearts smoking on Ymir’s board. Amra
has seen Atali, the frost-giant’s daughter!”

“Bah!” grunted Horsa. “Old Gorm’s mind was turned in his youth by a
sword cut on the head. Amra was delirious with the fury of battle. Look
how his helmet is dinted. Any of those blows might have addled his
brain. It was an hallucination he followed into the wastes. He is from
the south; what does he know of Atali?”

“You speak truth, perhaps,” muttered Amra. “It was all strange and
weird—by Crom!”

He broke off, glaring at the object that still dangled from his
clenched left fist; the others gaped silently at the veil he held up—a
wisp of gossamer that was never spun by human distaff.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              FANTASY BOOK

                           by Lester Anderson


“Gandle Follows His Nose” by Heywood Broun (Boni & Liveright 1926). Our
Scripps-Howard correspondent turns out a short allegorical fantasy
which concerns itself with the adventures of one Bunny Gandle who, when
18 years of age, was taken, by his uncle, to the sorcerer Boaz,
wherefrom he managed to escape with the cape of invisibility. We travel
with him to strange lands. We hear of his finding and the subsequent
loss of the magic lamp, his victory over the God Kla, the repulsion of
the armies of King Helgas, and his sojourn in the Land of the Flying
Sword. We meet our old friend, Yom, the genie who is much perturbed
when Gandle orders him to bring a poached egg, of all things. Yom,
incidentally, tenders young Gandle some sage advice concerning Life
which the youth cannot grasp. Who can blame him, as the genie had 5694
years of experience? The underlying current in this piece is that of
“wishfulfilment,” which I think, was what Broun primarily had in mind.
It makes novel reading from all angles.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                   SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE

                                Part Six

                           by H. P. Lovecraft

                     (Copyright 1927, W. Paul Cook)


Through the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, we behold a
growing mass of fugitive legendry and balladry of darksome cast; still,
however, held down beneath the surface of polite and accepted
literature. Chap-books of horror and weirdness multiplied, and we
glimpse the eager interest of the people through fragments like DeFoe’s
_Apparition of Mrs. Veal_, a homely tale of a dead woman’s spectral
visit to a distant friend, written to advertise covertly a badly
selling theological disquisition on death. The upper orders of society
were now losing faith in the supernatural, and indulging in a period of
classic rationalism. Then, beginning with the translations of Eastern
tales in Queen Anne’s reign and taking definite form toward the middle
of the century, comes the revival of romantic feeling—the era of new
joy in Nature, and in the radiance of past times, strange scenes, bold
deeds, and incredible marvels. We feel it first in the poets, whose
utterances take on new qualities of wonder, strangeness, and
shuddering. And finally, after the timid appearance of a few weird
scenes in the novels of the day—such as Smollett’s _Adventures of
Ferdinand, Count Fathom_—the released instinct precipitates itself in
the birth of a new school of writing; the “Gothic” school of horrible
and fantastic prose fiction, long and short, whose literary posterity
is destined to become so numerous, and in many cases so resplendent in
artistic merit. It is, when one reflects upon it, genuinely remarkable
that weird narration as a fixed and academically recognized literary
form should have been so late of final birth. The impulse and
atmosphere are as old as man, but the typical weird tale of standard
literature is a child of the eighteenth century.

(Next month we will give you a much longer installment of this article,
in which Mr. Lovecraft takes up the third section, “The Early Gothic
Novel.”)

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                               YOUR VIEWS


You will remember that, in the closing statement in the last department
of “The Boiling Point” last month, we asked you, the readers, to tell
us what you think of horror stories. Is there any virtue to them? Why
do people delight in being horrified?—etc. suggested by Forrest J.
Ackerman. H. P. Lovecraft honors us with the first opinion, which we
present to you as follows:

“It can be said that anything which vividly embodies a basic human
emotion or captures a definite and typical human mood is genuine art.
The subject matter is immaterial. It requires an especial morbidity to
enjoy any authentic word-depiction, whether it is conventionally
‘pleasant’ or not. Indeed, it argues a somewhat immature and narrow
prospection when our judgment is by the mere conventional appeal of its
subject-matter or its supposed social effects. The question to ask is
not whether it is ‘healthy’ or ‘pleasant,’ but whether it is _genuine_
and _powerful_.”

Have you another idea concerning the horror story? If so, let us know
what it is. However, if your opinion differs, don’t tell Mr. Lovecraft
that he is crazy or has a diseased mind for thinking as he does, or
this department will just become another ‘Boiling Point.’ Or bring up
something new, if you will. This is your department, and anything you
wish to say concerning weird fiction in general or any of its branches
in particular will be printed here. Here’s hoping to hear from you.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                               REVENANT

                          by Clark Ashton Smith


            I am the specter who returns
            Unto some desolate world in ruin borne afar
            On the black flowing of Lethean skies:
            Ever I search, in cryptic galleries,
            The void sarcophagi, the broken urns
            Of many a vanished avatar:
            Or haunt the gloom of grumbling pylons vast
            In temples that enshrine the shadowy past.
            Viewless, impalpable and fleet,
            I roam stupendous avenues, and greet
            Familiar sphinxes carved from everlasting stone,
            Or the fair, brittle gods of long ago,
            Decayed and fallen low.
            And there I mark the tall clepsammiae
            That time has overthrown,
            And empty clepsydrae,
            And dials drowned in umbrage never-lifting;
            And there, on rusty parapegms,
            I read the ephemerides
            Of antique stars and elder planets drifting
            Oblivionward in night.
            And there, with purples of the tomb bedight,
            And crowned with funeral gems,
            I hold awhile the throne
            Whereon mine immemorial selves have sate,
            Canopied by the triple-tinted glory
            Of the three suns forever paled and flown.

            I am the specter who returns
            And dwells content with his forlorn estate
            In mansions lost and hoary
            Where no lamp burns;
            Who feasts within the sepulcher,
            And finds the ancient shadows lovelier
            Than gardens all emblazed with sevenfold noon,
            Or topaz-builded towers
            That throng below some iris-pouring moon.
            Exiled and homeless in the younger stars,
            Henceforth I shall inhabit that grey clime
            Whose days belong to primal calendars;
            Nor would I come again
            Back to the garish terrene hours;
            For I am free of vaults unfathomable
            And treasures lost from time:
            With bat and vampire there
            I flit through somber skies immeasurable
            Or fly adown the unending subterranes;
            Mummied and ceremented,
            I sit in councils of the kingly dead;
            And oftentimes for vestiture I wear
            The granite of great idols looming darkly
            In atlantean fanes;
            Or closely now and starkly
            I cling as clings the attenuating air
            About the ruins bare.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                         THE WORDS IN THE SKY

                          (A True Experience)

                         by Kenneth B. Pritchard


On one evening in 1916, before the United States had entered the World
War, I happened to be out with my mother. The place was Bridgeport,
Connecticut, near the corner of Main and State Streets. The stars were
shining, as usual, though I gave them no particular notice.

We had turned the corner and traversed several feet, when I chanced to
look up into the sky. Lo and behold, the stars had formed themselves
into one great patch in the heavens, in the form of letters, and those
letters spelled words!

I could read some, at the time, but I tugged at my mother’s arm and
asked her what it said. I am hazy as to her answer. Perhaps she told me
that there was nothing there, or ignored the childish gesture entirely.
At any rate, I looked up again and the words were still there. I don’t
believe that my mother even glanced at them.

You are anxious to learn what it said? Well, it took years for that
memory to come back to me, but I now have it, in what I am fairly sure
are the correct words. The exact ones do not make any difference, for I
am sure of their meaning. The message in the sky read, “The United
States of America will run red with blood!”

A short time after peering at the stars, some invisible forces took
hold of them. The brilliant orbs were shifted as by a mighty hand. They
moved like checkers on a vast board. And then, the stars ceased their
journeyings; they were once more on their accustomed courses. I lowered
my head; the gigantic show was over!

Delusion, you say? I’m afraid I don’t agree with you.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                       HOW TO WRITE A WEIRD TALE

                            by Hoy Ping Pong


Unlike its sister, the science fiction story, the weird tale needs a
plot. To go about this, select the plot which has been used most since
1926 and write your tale around it. I said _around_. Don’t touch the
plot itself; editors won’t stand for that! Above all, _don’t_ invent an
original one. Readers won’t know what you’re talking about if you don’t
use one that has been plotted 6,438,900 and a fraction times, more or
less. At this point, you can discard the plot altogether, because the
editor would send your brain-child back if you didn’t, on the grounds
that there are too many stories with plots in them as it is. They would
rather have action.

Action—that is the keynote! The hero must dash hither and thither over
the landscape, saving the beautiful blue eyed heroine, who lisps in
baby-talk, from the snakey clutches of the villain who, incidentally,
is about to let loose on the city a horde of terrible monsters. Where
he got them from is none of your business, so you’d do much better to
worry yourself about something else—where your next meal is coming
from, for instance. I would suggest that pre-historic monsters be used,
for they are easier to account for than ones from other dimensions.
Editors have an annoying habit of asking authors where their monsters
came from. You had better have the monsters destroy New York City. The
inhabitants of this city are so used to being destroyed that they now
take it with a chuckle of droll humor. The tax payers might protest a
bit though, but don’t mind them.

Here to add a bit of flavor to the tale, bring in a new plot. Discard
it and bring in a third. Throw that one away too. Plots are cheap—$1.75
an acre in Missouri. Small plots will do. Then, while the stunned
readers are still gasping over the plots, throw in a barrage of big
words that none of them will understand, including Webster and Clark
Ashton Smith. This will stupefy them.

About this time, put in something really weird and spine-chilling. Ice
might do, but it melts too rapidly in warm climes, and a southern
reader wouldn’t get his spine thoroughly chilled, so you had better
devise something else.

As a final bit of advice, it would be best to have some sort of
recommendation to the editor in order to have your story more readily
acceptable. So have your Uncle Silas, who has a friend that knows a
friend who is an acquaintance with someone that knows the printer who
publishes the said editor’s magazine, put in a good word for you.

If this fails (as it undoubtedly will) take your brain-child to him in
person. This will save postage both ways, because editors never fail to
reject manuscripts from beginners (I object—Editor). Don’t worry over
this tho. Let it lay around home a few weeks mellowing with age, and
then send it in again, untouched. This time it will be accepted. Maybe.

If you go in person, buy a plot in a local cemetery.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                       A SAD STORY OF THE FUTURE

                         by Forrest J. Ackerman


(Following is a brief summary of a recent radio broadcast taken from
the story “We Buy Us a Robot—and What Happened” in the American Weekly.)

A married couple had an eight year old robot, and decided that it was
about time to get a new one as ‘Willy’ was becoming worn and creaky and
inefficient; so, they went to look over the newest models. They
selected Julius, a most capable iron-man who could not tell a lie. This
proved a disadvantage, however, as, upon entering their home he
declared in his deep, hollow, mechanical voice: “Dust—much dust!”

As the wife would grow lonely when her husband was away, she had a
phonograph record made of him assuring her how much he loved her. This
she inserted into Julius, and listened to him. But this made Julius
become very pensive and sad. One day he was found reading love poems
and crying. Julius was in love! He realized the hopelessness of the
situation.

One day he was found missing. “Oh! He’s committed suicide!” the wife
cried, “I know it!”

“But that’s impossible!” her husband assured her, “if he tries to drown
himself, he will only be short-circuited and rusted, and could be
revitalized and polished up just like new. If he shoots himself, but a
few parts need be replaced. Jumping from a window would merely dent him
a little. He cannot hang himself; he cannot poison himself; he cannot
die by fire. Anyhow, our contract guarantees us against loss by
suicide.”

Just then the televisor flashed on. It was an upstairs neighbor.

“My son’s all dirty and greasy,” he bellowed, “and it’s your fault!”

“Our fault? How so?” they asked.

He gave a serial number. “That’s your robot, isn’t it? Well, he went
out into the park and called a lot of kids around him; told them he
wasn’t feeling well; gave them screw-drivers and asked to find out what
was the matter with him. In a few minutes he was scattered all over six
blocks.”

Julius, the mechanical man, had taken the only method an automaton knew
of committing suicide.——

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                           THE TIME MACHINE

                        (A Bibliographical Note)

                             by R. H. Barlow


The first publication of the tale that later became Wells’ most famous
short novel, was in a paper issued at his school. The magazine, The
Science Schools Quarterly, serialized a story of the same underlying
plot, dealing with a Welsh professor. This was, broadly speaking, the
debut of the story. It was later re-written, and some decade
afterwards, after being published in both the National Observer and The
New Review, appeared in a modest little volume published by Wm.
Heinomann. Preceding it were two text-books and Conversations With An
Uncle came out the day immediately before.

The book in its first English edition, was a modest duodecimo volume
measuring approximately 7 X 5 X 1 ins. It was bound in a coarse
linen-like grey cloth, and bore in purple lettering as well as the
title a peculiar device of a rather emaciated sphinx. It contained
pages 152 and XVI. The text, besides the title page was virtually the
same as that recently issued in Short Stories of H. G. Wells, but
differed in several respects from that Amazing Stories used in their
May, 1927 issue.

It appeared simultaneously both in the bound edition and wrappers, the
former at the price of 3s, and the latter at 2s 6d.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration:

    Fantasy Magazine
    the DIGEST of
    IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE
]

------------------------------------------------------------------------




In the April issue of _Fantasy_:


                             THE DEAD WOMAN

                      _by David H. Keller, M. D._

The beloved Dr. Keller has produced, in this story, one of the greatest
weird-psychological stories he has ever written. The unusual,
horrifying, tale of the terrible thing conceived in the mind of a
husband, written as _only Dr. Keller can write_.

                     “The Last Poet and the Robots”
       A. Merritt’s beautiful chapter of the Super-Novel, COSMOS

                      An Interview with Leo Morey

             “Science Friction” a poem by J. Harvey Haggard

       Another installment of the interesting “Scientific Hoaxes”

          Alicia, the sweet sophisticated young lady whose
          misadventures in Blunderland have been amusing FM
          readers, says farewell.

                         The four news columns:

                        The Science Fiction Eye
                        The Ether Vibrates
                        Spilling the Atoms
                        Scientifilm Snapshots

keep you well informed on coming events in the fantasy field and other
features

                            In future issues

                    Poetry, stories, and articles by

                         H. P. Lovecraft
                         Clark Ashton Smith
                         Donald Wandrei
                         Edmond Hamilton
                         David H. Keller, M. D.
                         P. Schuyler Miller
                         L. A. Eshbach
                         Fletcher Pratt
                         and many others

                           Subscription rates

                    25 Cents for a Three Month Trial
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                     SCIENCE FICTION DIGEST COMPANY
                           87-36—162nd Street
                           Jamaica, New York

           Cover Design: “Future City” by Clay Ferguson, Jr.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                             ADVERTISEMENTS

                         ---------------------

                        Rates: one cent per word

                         ---------------------

CLARK ASHTON SMITH presents THE DOUBLE SHADOW AND OTHER FANTASIES—a
booklet containing a half-dozen imaginative and atmospheric
tales—stories of exotic beauty, glamor, terror, strangeness, irony and
satire. Price: 25 cents each (coin or stamps). Also a small remainder
of EBONY AND CRYSTAL—a book of prose-poems published at $2.00, reduced
to $1.00 per copy. Everything sent postpaid. Clark Ashton Smith,
Auburn, California.

                         ---------------------

Back Numbers of _The Fantasy Fan_: September, 20 cents (only a few
left); October, November, December, January, February, 10 cents each.

                         ---------------------

WEIRD TALES, dated 1923, 1924, 1925, and some later issues are wanted.
If you have any old numbers that you are willing to part with, please
communicate with the Editor.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                           TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE


Punctuation has been normalized.

Variations in hyphenation were maintained.

Portions of articles that were separated from the main in the layout of
the periodical have been rejoined.

The following typographical or printers’ errors have been corrected:

                  _As printed_:     _Changed to_:

                  accout            account
                  ane               and
                  Annes             Anne’s
                  arttcle           article
                  bo                by
                  cemetary          cemetery
                  collecton         collection
                  contaics          contains
                  crme              came
                  crystaline        crystalline
                  dan               day
                  deceased          diseased
                  extiuguished      extinguished
                  floatee           floated
                  geip              grip
                  ha                he
                  I                 It
                  immersurable      immeasurable
                  incidently        incidentally
                  interestiug       interesting
                  Literaature       Literature
                  mens              men
                  National Observor National Observer
                  racilly           racially
                  ratonalism        rationalism
                  re-wrttten        re-written
                  sang              sank
                  Sayer             Sayers
                  searate           separate
                  she               she had
                  sneathed          sheathed
                  stupify           stupefy
                  that              than
                  Vallahalla        Vallhalla
                  villian           villain
                  weild             wield
                  Welesh            Welsh
                  whidh             which
                  wouldd’t          wouldn’t

Italicized words and phrases are presented by surrounding the text with
_underscores_.