This post is brought to you by Strange Adventures by G. W. Thomas. Enjoy a fast-paced adventure filled with action and horror? Then this is the book for you with four Weird Westerns featuring Deputy Sheriff Brett Hope. “Heller” has Hope running from an ancient terror but falling amongst bad men. In “Laacoon” Hope pursues some dark secret that is slowly killing an entire family. “Silence” features a town full of vampires, where the undead make no noise. And “Weep the Dust” sees the deputy find a job as sheriff, at last, only to have Bargainville invaded by strange zombie-like dead men. The rest of the book will take you to far places like the Alps, Labrador and the interior desert and rain forests of British Columbia. Check out the companion volume Strange Detectives too.
Serials were a way for magazines to include novels in their contents. The first magazines were often owned by publishers such as Blackwood’s, Lippincott’s, Scribner’s, etc. to promote their lists of products. This tradition found its way to the Pulps, which did not have other items to sell, but wanted to include longer works so that consumers would return to their magazine month after month.
Weird Tales was no different. If you really enjoyed the opening chapters of, say, the only Jules de Grandin novel by Seabury Quinn, The Devil’s Bride, you would make sure to come back for part 2, 3, and 4, etc. In this way, some classic Horror-Fantasy-Science Fiction novels appeared in “The Unique Magazine” including Greye La Spina’s dark werewolfy Invaders of the Dark, Francis Stevens’ final piece Sunfire, and Robert E. Howard’s masterpiece, The Hour of the Dragon, the only original Conan novel. There were a lot of others nobody really remembers, too.
From the first issues to those in 1924, Edwin Baird, and later, Farnsworth Wright, tended to use two-parters that overlapped. By 1925, these usually were three-parters. By 1930, five-parters were not unheard of. The Trail of the Cloven Hoof in 1934-1935 by Arlton Eadie reached the apex at seven parts for original fiction. The ill-conceived serial of Alexandre Dumas’ The Wolf-Leader then Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein both reached eight parts. (Fans felt these too familiar and a bit of a rip-off. Wright was trying to save money. He wisely decided not to follow it with Bram Stoker’s Dracula.) After that, things calmed down and two or three became the norm again. The serials disappeared altogether under Dorothy McIlwraith, Weird Tales‘ third and final editor, with The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1941) and Herbert West—Reanimator in 1942-1943 being the last. This wasn’t because Dot hated serials but because under the New York management, Weird Tales went bi-monthly. The span between issues made serials a hard-sell. Only a name like H. P. Lovecraft could make her break that rule.Oddly, she skipped two issues before the final two pieces! Only for Lovecraft!
It was customary, long before Weird Tales, at Soft Weeklies like Argosy to give the first installment the cover. Weird Tales did this usually but didn’t follow the rule every time. When Otis Adelbert Kline’s Edgar Rice Burroughs clones appeared in the early 1930s, at least four issues bore serial covers. Jack Williamson’s Golden Blood (1933) got two. Greye la Spina’s Invaders of the Dark, Eli Colter’s The Vengeance of the Dead, Edmond Hamilton’s Lake of Life and others received none at all. It just depended on how good a Seabury Quinn story appeared in the same issue, hogging the cover with torture and nudity.
1923
“The Thing of a Thousand Shapes” (Weird Tales March April 1923) by Otis Adelbert Kline
“The Whispering Thing” (Weird Tales, April May 1923) by Culpepper Chun and Laurie McClintock
“The Moon Terror” (Weird Tales, May June 1923) by A. G. Birch
“The Evening Wolves” (Weird Tales, June July-August) by Paul Ellsworth Triem
“Sunfire” (Weird Tales, July-August September 1923) by Francis Stevens
“People of the Comet” (Weird Tales, September October 1923) by Austin Hall
“The Amazing Adventure of Joe Scranton” (Weird Tales, October November 1923) by Effie W. Fifield
“Draconda” (Weird Tales, November 1923 January February March April May-June-July 1924) by John Martin Leahy
1924
“The Abysmal Horror” (Weird Tales, January February 1924) by B. Wallis
“The Transparent Ghost” (Weird Tales, February March April 1924) by Isa-Belle Manzer
“The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt” (Weird Tales, March April 1924) by Harry Houdini
“Ebenezer’s Casket” (Weird Tales, April May-June-July 1924) by J. U. Giesy and Junius B. Smith
“The House of Dust” (Weird Tales, November December 1924) by L. A. Borah
“The Valley of the Teeheeman” (Weird Tales, December 1924 January 1925) by Arthur Thatcher
1925
“Wings of Power” (Weird Tales, January February March 1925) by Lady Anne Bonny
“The Last of the Teehee Men” (Weird Tales, March April 1925) by Arthur Thatcher
“Invaders of the Dark” (Weird Tales, April May June 1925) by Greye La Spina
“The White Queen of Corolans” (Weird Tales, July August 1925) by Arthur Thatcher
“The Gargoyle” (Weird Tales, August September October 1925) by Greye La Spina
“The Waning of the World” (Weird Tales, November December 1925 January February 1926) by W. Elwyn Backus
1926
“On a Dead Man’s Chest” (Weird Tales, January February March April 1926) by Eli Colter
“Red Ether” (Weird Tales, February March 1926) by Pettersen Marzoni
“The Derelict Mine” (Weird Tales, April May June 1926) by Frank A. Mochnant
“The Devil-Ray” (Weird Tales, May June July 1926) by Joel Martin Nichols Jr.
“Fettered” (Weird Tales, July August September October) by Greye La Spina
“Across Space” (Weird Tales, September October November 1926) by Edmond Hamilton
“The Star Shell” (Weird Tales, November December 1926 January February 1927) by B. Wallis and George C. Wallis
1927
“Drome” (Weird Tales, January February March April May 1927) by John Martin Leahy
“Explorers Into the Infinite” (Weird Tales, April May June 1927) by Ray Cummings
“The Dark Chrysalis” (Weird Tales, June July August 1927) by Eli Colter
“The Bride of Osiris” (Weird Tales, August September October 1927) by Otis Adelbert Kline
“The Time Raider” (Weird Tales, October November December 1927 January 1928) by Edmond Hamilton
1928
“The Giant World” (Weird Tales, January February March 1928) by Ray Cummings
“The Strange People” (Weird Tales, March April May 1928) by Murray Leinster
“The Bat-Men of Thorium” (Weird Tales, May June July 1928) by Bertram Russell
“The Witches’ Sabbath” (Weird Tales, July August 1928) by Stephen Bagby
“Crashing Suns” (Weird Tales, August September 1928) by Edmond Hamilton
“Invisible Threads” (Weird Tales, September October 1928) by Arthur J. Burks
“The Werewolf’s Daughter” (Weird Tales, October November December 1928) by H. Warner Munn
“The Isle of Lost Souls” (Weird Tales, December 1928 January February 1929) by Joel Martin Nichols Jr.
1929
“The Vengeance of the Dead” (Weird Tales, February March 1929) by Eli Colter
“The City of Iron Cubes” (Weird Tales, March April 1929) by H. F. Arnold
“The World-Wrecker” (Weird Tales, April May June 1929) by Arlton Eadie
“The Last of the Mayans” (Weird Tales, June July 1929) by Arthur Thatcher
“Outside the Universe” (Weird Tales, July August September October 1929) by Edmond Hamilton
“Skull-Face” (Weird Tales, October November December 1929) by Robert E. Howard
“Behind the Moon” (Weird Tales, December 1929 January February 1930) by W. Elwyn Backus
1930
“The Black Monarch” (Weird Tales, February March April May June 1930) by Paul Ernst
“The Moon of Skulls” (Weird Tales, June July 1930) by Robert E. Howard
“Earthworms of Karma” (Weird Tales, July August 1930) by Lon Dexter
“Another Dracula?” (Weird Tales, September October 1930) by Ralph Milne Farley
“The Portal to Power” (Weird Tales, October November December 1930 January 1931) by Greye La Spina
1931
“The Horror From the Hills” (Weird Tales, January February-March 1931) by Frank Belknap Long
“Tam, Son of the Tiger” (Weird Tales, June-July August September October November 1931) by Otis Adelbert Kline
“The Wolf-Leader” (Weird Tales, August September October November December 1931 January February March 1932) by Alexandre Dumas
“The Haunted Chair” (Weird Tales, December 1931 January February 1932) by Gaston Leroux
1932
“The Devil’s Bride” (Weird Tales, February March April May June July 1932) by Seabury Quinn
“Frankenstein” (Weird Tales, May June July August September October November December 1932)by Mary Shelley
“The Phantom Hand” (Weird Tales, July August September October November 1932) by Victor Rousseau
“Buccaneers of Venus” (Weird Tales, November December 1932 January February March April 1933) by Otis Adelbert Kline
1933
“Golden Blood” (Weird Tales, April May June July August September 1933) by Jack Williamson
“The Vampire Master” (Weird Tales, October November December 1933 January 1934) by Hugh Davidson (Edmond Hamilton)
1934
“The Solitary Hunters” (Weird Tales, January February March 1934) by David H. Keller
“Satan’s Garden” (Weird Tales, April May 1934) by E. Hoffman Price
“Vampires of the Moon” (Weird Tales, May June July 1934) by A. W. Bernal
“The Trail of the Cloven Hoof” (Weird Tales, July August September October November December 1934 January 1935) by Arlton Eadie
“People of the Black Circle” (Weird Tales, September October November 1934) by Robert E. Howard
1935
“Rulers of the Future” (Weird Tales, January February March 1935) by Paul Ernst
“Lord of the Lamia” (Weird Tales, March April May 1935) by Otis Adelbert Kline
“Beyond the Black River” (Weird Tales, May June 1935) by Robert E. Howard
“Satan in Exile” (Weird Tales, June July August September 1935) by A. W. Bernal
“The Carnival of Death” (Weird Tales, September October November December 1935) by Arlton Eadie
“The Hour of the Dragon” (Weird Tales, December 1935 January February March April 1936) by Robert E. Howard
1936
“The Ruler of Fate” (Weird Tales, April May June 1936) by Jack Williamson
“Loot of the Vampire” (Weird Tales, June July 1936) by Thorp McClusky
“Red Nails” (Weird Tales, June July August-September 1936) by Robert E. Howard
1937
“The Last Pharaoh” (Weird Tales, May June July August 1937) by Thomas P. Kelley
“The Abyss Under the World” (Weird Tales, August September 1937) by J. Paul Suter
“The Lake of Life” (Weird Tales, September October November 1937) by Edmond Hamilton
“The Voyage to Neutralia” (Weird Tales, November December 1937 January 1938) by B. Wallis
1938
“The Hairy Ones Shall Dance” (Weird Tales, January February March 1938) by Gans T. Field (Manly Wade Wellman)
“Dreadful Sleep” (Weird Tales, March April May 1938) by Jack Williamson
“Thunder in the Dawn” (Weird Tales, May June 1938) by Henry Kuttner
“The Black Drama” (Weird Tales, June July August 1938) by Gans T. Field (Many Wade Wellman)
“The Fire Princess” (Weird Tales, August September October 1938) by Edmond Hamilton
“I Found Cleopatra” (Weird Tales, November December 1938 January February 1939) by Thomas P. Kelley
1939
“Fearful Rock” (Weird Tales, February March April 1939) by Manly Wade Wellman
“Almuric” (Weird Tales, May June-July August 1939) by Robert E. Howard
“King of the World’s Edge” (Weird Tales, September October November December 1939) by H. Warner Munn
1940
“A Million Years In the Future” (Weird Tales, January March May July 1940) by Thomas P. Kelley
1941
“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (Weird Tales, May July 1941) by H. P. Lovecraft
1942
“Herbert West—Reanimator” (Weird Tales, March July September November 1942 September November 1943)
Conclusion
There are so many fascinating serials here it is hard to pick only a very few to comment on. Some random pints include some of the illustrations for “Herbert West—Reanimator” were done by future SF star Damon Knight, H. Warner Munn and Robert E. Howard wrote some of the first Sword & Sorcery novels here, while Edmond Hamilton and jack Williamson tried his hand at longer Science Fiction pieces, some inspired by A. Merritt. “Drome”by John Martin Leahy is an early use of the Bigfoot legend (though only the first two sections got illustrations.) Perhaps the most unusual was “The Moon Terror” by A. G. Birch, which Farnsworth Wright reprinted in hardcover to his own dismay. The book did not sell and was even given away free with a subscription to WT. Wright had hoped to cash in like the old publishers with a sideline in reprints. In the end he sold most of his best stories off cheap to anthologies like Not at Night. So many fun novellas and novel here to enjoy.
Check out the Wild Inc. Super-saga…
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