Weird Tales - Summer 1990 Read online

  THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE ISSN 0898-5073

  Summer 1990 Art by Frank Kelly Freas

  SNICKERDOODLES ................................................................................ Nancy Springer 14

  Sometimes cookies are good for you . . . and sometimes not.

  THE DEER LAKE SIGHTINGS ............................................................ Patricia Anthony 32

  The visitor seemed miraculous, but he brought terror and pain.

  #20 ................................................................................................................ Nancy Springer 38

  No evil spreads faster than malicious rumor.

  THE PRONOUNCED EFFECT .................................................................... John Brunner 46

  How do you say 'Cthulhu'?

  ROCK MY SOUL ....................................................................................... Nancy Springer 63

  He could drive any woman wild with his devil-music.

  SWAN'S LAKE ........................................................................................... Susan Shwartz 73

  The Prince had drowned, but the swan-maiden still lingered.

  THE LOST ART OF TWILIGHT ............................................................. Thomas Ligotti 84

  Or, portrait of the vampire as a young man.

  THE LITTLE FINGER OF THE LEFT HAND ........................................ Ardath Mayhar 96

  Something still nibbled on it. . .

  KINDRED OF THE CRESCENT MOON ................................................... Gerald Pearce 100

  Arabian magic long before the Arabian Nights.

  VERSE STALLION by Nancy Springer: 24; IMPROBABLE BESTIARY: THE POOKAH by F. Gwynplaine Maclntyre: 31; AULD LENG SIGNS by Ann K. Schwader: 45; HAPPILY EVER by Nancy Springer: 62; MEMORIES by Robert E. Howard: 99

  FEATURES

  THE EYRIE ................................................................................................................................... 4

  THE DEN .................................................................................................. John Betancourt 11

  WEIRD TALES® TALKS WITH NANCY SPRINGER .... Darrell Schweitzer 25

  Weird Tales® is published quarterly by the Terminus Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 13418, Philadelphia PA 19101-3418. (4426 Larchwood Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19104-3916). Second class postage paid at Philadelphia PA and additional mailing offices. Single copies, $4.95 (plus $1.00 postage if ordered by mail). Subscription rates: One year (4 issues) for $16.00 in the United States and its possessions, for $20.00 in Canada, and for $22.00 elsewhere. The publishers are not responsible for the loss of manuscripts, although reasonable care will be taken of such material while in their possession. Copyright© 1990 by the Terminus Publishing Company, Inc.; all rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without prior permission. Weird Tales is a registered trade mark owned by Weird Tales, Limited. Typeset, printed, and bound in the United States of America.

  Vol. 51 No. 4

  Whole No. 297

  3

  There are more magazines of news and re­views and analysis of horror fiction than we can hope to keep track of. A few that come to mind are Afraid and Scream Factory and Midnight Graffiti.

  And the fantasy fiction market seems more bloated than healthy: there are pre­cious few outlets for a seriously intended, adult-level fantasy short story; and most of the novels seem to be formula trilogies. We cannot think of any particular line of fan­tasy books to which we can reliably turn for quality, the way you can turn to, say, Ban­tam Spectra Special Editions for quality sci­ence fiction. The Ace Fantasy Specials seem to have been an attempt in that direction, but there haven't been many of them of late. We hope the line hasn't been canceled.

  But all too many people — readers, edi­tors, critics, and even writers — assume that fantasy novels (usually trilogies) are just cookie-cutter junk, akin to nurse nov­els. They assume this without having read much in the field, and then dump on every­thing. Such charges are grossly unfair, not only when dealing with works by estab­lished masters, such as Gene Wolfe's Soldier of the Mist, but those of ambitious newcom­ers, such as Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint.

  Admittedly there are a lot of books out there — and even more covers, if you judge books that way — which give such an impression; but the horror fans should re­member that the science-fiction fans are saying the same things about horror, and the mainstream critics and academic estab­lishment are saying the same thing about all of us. (And in retaliation, some of us are saying that all "literary mainstream" con­sists of second-rate Updike imitations about fornication in suburbia.)

  Possibly this isn't a good idea. The uniqueness of Weird Tales,dubbed The Unique Magazine by its original publishers back in the 1920s, is that it isn't hopelessly bound by categories. The present editors are much more interested in a story being good rather than it being in a specific category.

  We see no virtue in narrowness. It seems more likely that a reader who only wants to read one kind of story all the time has immature tastes. For the rest of us, isn't it likely that one Hideous Horror followed by another Searingly Hideous Horror, followed by another Hideously Searing Horror, every story in every issue, is going to make a magazine a trifle monotonous? Strictly all-horror magazines have a very poor record of survival in this country, and we think the reason may be sheer lack of variety in the scary-cum-gory fare. In such a context, even a very good story can lose its effect: if the reader knows that every story in the mag­azine is a horror story, how can an author surprise anyone?

  We've got nothing against horror, surely. You will continue to see the best short hor­ror fiction we can acquire, by both famous names and talented newcomers. As this is being written, we have just acquired a splendid, very intense horror novelet from Chet Williamson, which will be the center­piece of our special Chet Williamson issue. And we're particularly proud of some of the horror stories we've published in the past, such as Brian Lumley's award-winning "Fruiting Bodies" and Alan Rodgers's "Emma's Daughter." (Alan's story has re­cently been anthologized, in Marvin Kaye's Witches and Warlocks.)

  If a new Poe or Lovecraft came along — or, optimistically, when one comes along — we'd like to think that Weird Tales would be just the magazine to showcase his (or her) work.

  But we'd also like to be able to accom­modate a new Clark Ashton Smith. Smith, a Weird Tales9 regular of the '20s and '30s, wrote some of the most intensely morbid, grotesque horror fiction ever, but he tended to set the action in the far future, on the Earth's last continent of Zothique, or in primordial Hyperborea, or in the (imaginary) medieval French province of Averoigne. But according to present-day categoriza­tions, Smith would be a Fantasy writer, not a Horror writer, since horror seems to pre­clude historical settings prior to about 1800, or imaginary settings altogether. Most of the horror anthologies and small-press hor­ror magazines today would probably not know what to do with such Smith tales as "The Dark Eidolon," much less "The Vaults of Yoth-Vombis," which is a classically creepy horror story set on Mars.

  But Weird Tales9 would. We think our greater flexibility is one of our strongest assets, as it always has been throughout the history of this magazine. Consider Seabury Quinn's famous "Roads" (January 1938), which manages to combine an immortal adventurer with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the legend of Santa Claus. It was definitely "unique" when it appeared, but it was hardly a conventional horror/fantasy story, or a conventional Christmas story. Only Weird Tales9 could possibly have pub­lished it.

  A more recent, less extreme example is Gerald Pearce's "Kindred of the Crescent Moon" in the present issue. We doubt any other
magazine in the field would have been able to use this story, despite its obvious excellence. Is it a Fantasy, in the commer­cial, generic sense? Only marginally, and no one is publishing Fantasy novellas any­way. A historical story? There are even fewer markets for that? Horror? Well, there is a supernatural element, but this is hardly what we expect to be issued in a limited edition from Scream Press.

  So the only way this story can reach an audience is through Weird Tales, which alone has the editorial flexibility to cross over every generic boundary there is — or ignore them altogether — in the pursuit of excellence.

  We'd like to keep it that way.

  The Eyrie needs letters! There used to be an old fannish joke: how to get published in Weird Tales? Simple: write a letter to the Eyrie.

  It happens to be true. We do want to hear from you. We'd like to publish and discuss your opinions. We want you to let us know what you think of Weird Tales, its appearance, its fiction, its policies.

  Should we, for instance, run serials? This idea has been discussed. The two sides of the argument are that it's a buyer's market for serials (since there are far more novels out there than anyone can serialize), so a serial insures a large chunk of great writing by a top name. Then again, some people prefer to just wait and read the book, and have those pages filled up with short fiction. What do you think?

  John Bracy of Tempe, Arizona, would seem to agree with us, sort of:

  First, I'd like to stress that I want Weird Tales® to survive and to remain "different." I also have a theory that says the philosophy of printing a name instead of a story was instrumental in the demise of both Night Cry and Twilight Zone. I, for one (and I'm not alone), don't give a fig about who's on the cover as long as what's inside will take me for a float down-stream. I mean, its the ac­tual words on the page that I'm purchasing, right? Moreover, some of the "innovation" running in Asimov's and The Horror Show could make a blue nun barf green Jello. It is really too bad. And its only a matter of time before Weird Tales® is left to stand alone — but with a subscription rate of two hundred thousand.

  Anyway, you've stated in the Eyrie that you welcome readers' comments/opinions, and while my brief familiarity with the mag can't grant me critical notoriety, here goes:

  — But wait. I should first admit that I've never been a big fan of the "sword" story, and laughable as it may sound, I didn't know who Robert E. Howard was until about four months ago when I met someone who worships every line he ever wrote. I myself grew up on Tom Swift, golden age SF, and Edgar Rice Burroughs (who did, come to think of it, employ vast sword-play in his Venus/Mars series), but I just never got around to Howard. In short, what follows may be retrogressive insight.

  It is my impression that Weird Tales® stu­diously uses a lot of swords; this might be by virtue of the school's popularity (and you quite rightly want to please the vogue read­ership), and/or because — as you've already mentioned — Weird Tales® has used swords from the beginning. It's tradition. But I have no complaint on this point; even nonfans like me can be entertained by stories like "Three Heads for the High King." Actually, I don't have any complaints. Concern would be a better word. You see, when someone who doesn't go out of his way to read swords em­barks upon reading a mag like Weird Tales® and find it's the very swords that he doesn't go out of his way to read which consistently end up near the top of his list, he begins to wonder if he's acquired a modified dispo­sition, or if the contemporary stories in­cluded might be just a tad impoverished.

  Are solid, contemporary, horrific/weird tales hard to come by? Or is everything, in reality, excellent, and it's simply a format thing? Or, then again, am I vacationing on Planet X?

  Well, John, we have nothing against va­cationing on Planet X, as long as Weird Tales® is distributed there. But seriously, your letter states both the problem and the solution.

  If the trends in both anthologies and small-press publications are any indication, the "vogue audience" does not like sword-and-sorcery at all, but modern-scene horror of the King/Koontz/McCammon type. Much of the best imaginary-scene fantasy, such as "Three Heads for the High King" or "King Yvorian's Wager" (which we note you voted for in first place) is getting lost under what is at least packaged to look like a del­uge of imitation Tolkien or imitation Piers Anthony trilogies. We're glad you actually do like the examples of such fiction we've published, even if you don't normally read that kind of thing. Possibly we are slowly altering your disposition. Meanwhile we hope that fans of such stories learn to come to Weird Tales® for the best.

  But a magazine of nothing other than swordly stories would be just as monotonous as one of 100% horror. That is why we would like to preserve our diversity.

  The best of anything is always hard to come by. But there are lots of modern-scene horror stories being written today. Possibly we have to compete a little harder to get them (against the high-class, invitational anthology market, books like Prime Evil and The Book of the Dead) than we do for imaginary-scene fantasy (for which in nov­elet and novella lengths at least, there is no competition, no other professional market), but we remain confident that we can get good material. We're paying competitive rates, and there are only so many anthol­ogies a year. A top name writer might sell four or five that way, but anybody who writes short fiction regularly will inevita­bly, we hope, turn to Weird Tales®.

  We can't really agree with your estima­tions of the other magazines. Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine must be doing something right because it keeps selling, and stories from its pages dominate the Hugo-award voting. Night Cry sold well on the stands, but per­ished because its publisher regarded it as merely an experiment and refused to back it. Twilight Zone hung in there for eight years, and so most have managed to acquire something of a following. It was always an uneasy mix of movie material and fiction, which may have been a factor. But we have our own (unconfirmed) theory: Subscription copies of Twilight Zone were sent through the mails unwrapped, with just a label at­tached. Such arriving copies as we ever saw looked like they'd been through a shredder. Our guess is that TZ readers got sick of this and let their subscriptions lapse. Nothing will kill a magazine faster than subscribers who do not renew.

  Which raises a point, Dear Readers. Have you renewed your subscription yet? Remem­ber that Weird Tales® comes safely wrapped in plastic, and so, as best as the Postal Serv­ice can manage, tends to arrive in one (un-tattered) piece.

  Debra Weaver of Shallotte, North Car­olina, suggests that maybe writing isn't a disease after all:

  Reading Roster's letter (#295) which com­pares writing to struggling against cancer, and your analogy which equates writers with Olympic contenders, I offer another compar­ison. We (writers) are like parents who strive to prepare our children/stories for acceptance in a cold world. They are tidied up, hair combed, shoes polished to the best of our ability, only to return rejected (often with no explanation), being merely told that they are "not right." We wonder what we've done wrong, where we've failed, and worst of all, like children after our own heart, we feel that they are right.

  And for those that stay away and fret great lengths of time, we worry and fret. Are they all right? Have they gotten lost or perhaps merely shoved to the side? And if that child/story is accepted, oh, do we cheer! Not because we receive money, but because the time, effort, and worry actually proved emo­tionally rewarding.

  These are just metaphors, but we think that the hair-combing and shoe-shining are analogous to the correct format. Beyond that, combed-hair/neat-typing or not, the child/story has to have the right number of limbs and organs and be alive. So possibly writers are more like mad scientists sewing little bodies together and sending them on their way. . . Where did we go wrong, Igor? Maybe if the eyes had been in the front . . .

  Peni R. Griffin has a first-place vote: Best story, Winter '89: "The Lady of Be-lac." I am continually, if mildly, irritated by characters in historical fiction who are gifted by their authors with inappropriately mod­ern attitudes —presumably becau
se modern audiences cannot be expected to sympathize with people who hold "wrong" opinions. The life of an ordinary medieval gentlewoman looks so unbearable to a twentieth-century woman, that we refuse to believe they did bear it — forgotten the automatic mecha­nisms with which we all bear the unbearable in our lives. I wonder which of our unthink­ing assumptions are going to be unthinkable to our descendants. Will they regard as in­tolerable the situation of parents forced by economic necessity to spend the bulk of their time working outside the home rather than raising their families? Anyway, "The Lady of Belac" is wonderful; a tour de force of character (in a genre supposedly devoid of that quality), striving valiantly to reproduce the viewpoint of a long-ago and voiceless generation.

  Don Edwards of Montebello, California, offers these thoughts on the nature of hor­ror:

  Horror is a genre of fiction or film em­bracing the very space and darkness we see our names upon. However briefly, however real, clearly, we see our own deaths, or own wonder at life itself, when the tight mask of horror breathes in our face.

  Horror is the unknown undefined. It is most frightening when the symbolic mask is formally brisk and in place, when that which is beneath is unseen and not under­stood. Blood and guts and salty ketchup membranes all over the quivering theater screen or snow-white printed page are pat­ently unnecessary and bordering on the mood-breaking obscene. (As a struggling writer, I put blood, splatter, violence in my stories sometimes because many editors want it. I want to sell, and I want to eat.) Mood-breaking because the most effective, beauti­ful, memorable horror excursions rely al­most totally on a tightly constructed atmosphere and well-drawn, well-defined characters. Only as a last-resort 'climax' to a story plot should such dubious violent ele­ments be utilized, and rarely and briefly as a sort of 'orgasm' to the earlier occurrences in a story. I despise censorship, emphati­cally. But mood and atmosphere in a horror tale are everything. Break this fragile envi­ronment with premature ejaculation of blood and guts, and the story is virtually lost in a tangle of torn mood fabric; and it's time to start over, if you can find your way.