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Into the Weird: An Introduction

Into the Weird: An Introduction

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A bit more than 103 years ago, the first issue of Weird Tales reached newsstands across North America. The magazine would be published consistently for over three decades, with the title revived sporadically ever since. The original Weird Tales would become a significant influence on the development of the fantasy and horror genres, and would lend its name to a subgenre of fantasy and a certain tone in fiction: the weird tale.

That entire first run of Weird Tales, ‘the unique magazine,’ is available at the Internet Archive. I thought it’d be an interesting project to look at it issue by issue, reading the magazine as it was published and discussing each issue as a whole. It was the venue for much of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, as well as a home for work by Robert Bloch, C.L. Moore, and Ray Bradbury, among many others. I wondered what it would be like to read those stories in the context of the other tales in the magazine by lesser-known writers; and to consider each issue as a package, a collection, with its cover and editorials and letters. And its ads; to look at the magazine holistically is to consider the many irruptions of its era into the experience of the fiction.

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The Necessity of Memory: Fahrenheit 451

The Necessity of Memory: Fahrenheit 451

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Ballantine 1953, Joseph Mugnaini

 

As 2025 ended, I thought about the reading I would do in the new year ahead and decided that in 2026, I would place an emphasis on rereading. In fact, I vowed that I wouldn’t read a new book without first rereading an old one. A week before New Year’s I jotted down likely titles for this project, and one of the first I thought of is a book I last read a lifetime ago, in 1974 or 75, when I was in high school — Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Back then, I didn’t much like it.

This time, I set aside my half-century old initial reaction and approached the book with an open mind. So, how was it a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century? I still wouldn’t call it an entirely successful book, but at least now I’m better equipped to understand what Bradbury was doing and can more justly assess the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

You’re probably familiar with the novel’s premise, which is one of the most famous in science fiction. Sometime in the near future (the book was published in 1953, so we’re probably well past whatever date Bradbury had in mind), in an unnamed city, Guy Montag lives in his comfortable, suburban, technologically up-to-date house with his wife Millie. Millie spends most of her time… watching isn’t quite the right word… submitting, maybe, to the immersive, individually tailored programs that flash from three of their four living room walls, which can morph into gigantic television screens. Guy mostly just watches Millie; for some reason, the shows don’t entertain him. They just make him uneasy.

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Forgotten Authors: Bert Shurtleff

Forgotten Authors: Bert Shurtleff

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Bert Shurtleff

Bert Shurtleff was born on August 3, 1897 to Eugene Kassuth Shurtleff and Hattie Elma (née Cook) in Adamsville, Rhode Island. He was the seventh of ten children. When he was fourteen, he left home to try to support himself, returning to school when he was 18 and attending East Greenwich Academy for High School.

During World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve Force while attending college, eventually taking a job at a powder factory.  He eventually was activated, but not sent overseas, instead serving in New London, Connecticut and being sent for training at Brown University in Providence. When the war ended, he enrolled at Brown, where he earned the New England Intercollegiate Lightweight Wrestling Title in 1920 and played for the Brown football team, his first two years as a tackle, shifting to center his senior year. While at Brown, he also published a book of poetry.

He married Hope C. Seal on his birthday in 1922. They had three children, Jeane, Faith, and David. Hope and Shurtleff divorced at some point and in 1946, again on his birthday, he married Margaret D. Dorgan.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Front Porch Pulp & Frank Kane

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Front Porch Pulp & Frank Kane

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

So, as I type this, I am 99% moved from my apartment of the past six years, into the small house I bought a couple weeks ago (well, along with the bank…), which I happily call my writer’s bungalow. It has a small loft. I put in my desk (a cafeteria table) and as many bookshelves as I could fit in it. This is truly my happy place.

I started packing up my books in May. I’ve been crazy stressed between house hunting, house closing, and work. And packing. And I have felt oddly bereft, with my books in boxes. Unanchored. For someone who went through a divorce and moved out of his house in 2020 (like that wasn’t a hard enough year by itself!), this was unsettling. I couldn’t look over and see shelves of books. I couldn’t grab one for a Black Gate post.

I have over 2,000 physical books, and I moved all of them with my car, in about 55-60 boxes – yeah, that took a LOT of trips! I’m filling up my  bookcases, gradually. Things like installing a washer and dryer, finding my socket set (I swear, that thing vanished), and an inconveniently timed out-of-town work trip, have taken precedence.

But my new house is slowly filling with my fiction and non-fiction collections. And THAT is helping me feel settled again. But in addition to the loft, there’s another terrific writing aspect to my bungalow. A (Black) Gat in the Hand fans (and long-time FB followers) may remember my former house had a terrific back deck, which led to Back Deck Pulp.

My apartment had a nice little concrete slab, facing a lot of trees, and thus was born the infrequent Back Porch Pulp.

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The Real Superheroes of the Comics

The Real Superheroes of the Comics

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USS Stevens March 1943

If I say “comic book superhero” who do you think of? Superman? Iron Man? Batman? Wonder Woman? Spider-Man? Captain Marvel? (The real one please, and don’t give me any of this “Shazam” crap.) Those and many others are all perfectly legitimate choices, of course, only they’re not really heroes — super or otherwise — are they? They’re adolescent daydreams, and no matter how dark or gritty they have gotten in the years since their shiny Golden or Silver Age peaks, they’re still characters with “secret identities” running around in silly costumes doing things that no actual person could ever do — or probably would even want to. (In the words of the immortal Will Eisner, “I never understood why the hell anyone would run around fighting crime.”)

That’s not a knock on the members of the Justice League or the Avengers, and when I was a kid, I loved superhero comics; in fact, I still do, but then I love all kinds of comic books — science fiction, humor, horror, romance (Patsy Walker, anyone?) — back in the day, I read them all.

One of my favorite genres was war. Now, with all due apologies to Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandoes, I was a DC guy, which meant that during my Silver and Bronze Age heyday, I was reading stories that were somewhat more realistic than what Marvel was offering at that time, even taking the Haunted Tank and Dinosaur Island into account. (“Comic book realism” is a tricky term, as we all know.)

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Forgotten Authors: George Griffith

Forgotten Authors: George Griffith

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George Griffith

George Griffith was born George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones on August 20, 1857 in Plymouth, England to George Alfred Jones and Jeanette Henry Capinster Jones. The family did not have roots to any specific place as his father’s role as a clergyman kept him moving from parish to parish. By the time George was seven, his father had served in at least six different parishes.

He was home-schooled by his parents and allowed to teach himself from books in his father’s library.  Following his father’s death in 1872, Griffith began attending private school , where the limitations of his home schooling became apparent, particularly with regard to mathematics. He left school in 1873 and ran away to sea, deserting in Melbourne, Australia after less than three months. By the age of 19, he had worked in various jobs in Australia and managed to travel, eventually returning to England where he began teaching English, first at Worthing College in Sussex and later at Bolton Grammar School in Manchester. He viewed his time teaching as “penal servitude.”

It was while he was teaching at Bolton that he published his first two books, Poems and The Dying Faith, both were collections of poetry and both published under the pseudonym Lara. Other pseudonyms he used over the course of his career included Levin Carnac and Stanton Morich. He also met Elizabeth Brierly, whom he married in February of 1887.  They had a daughter and two sons, including Alan Arnold Griffith, who was a mechanical engineer who helped develop the jet engine.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: A Terrific Little Noir – After Dark My Sweet

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: A Terrific Little Noir – After Dark My Sweet

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

— Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

1990 was quite the year for hardboiled and Noir on the big screen. Pacific Heights (Michael Keaton) came in as the 41st highest grossing movie of the year, with Revenge (based on the novella from the uber-talented James Harrison) was 83rd. Those are both solid Noirs.

At 107th was The Two Jakes – the long-delayed sequel to Chinatown. At 109th was Miami Blues, with Fred Ward as Charles Willeford’s Hoke Mosely. I’ve read the books several times, but not seen the movie.

The 135th highest grossing movie is probably second only to The Maltese Falcon in the harboiled genre for me. It’s the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing. Starring the tastefully-last named Gabriel Byrne! At 155th is a remake of a Bogart flick, Desperate Hours. Mickey Rourke delivered a pretty good Noir.

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Forgotten Authors: R.F. Starzl

Forgotten Authors: R.F. Starzl

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R.F. Starzl

Roman Frederick Starzl, who wrote as R.F. Starzl was born in Le Mars, Iowa on December 10, 1899 to John V.N. Starzl and Margaret (née Theisen). His grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Austria in 1895, along with their five children, including Starzl’s father.  While the family settled in Le Mars, Iowa, John moved to Chicago, where he owned a pharmacy. Around the time he married Margaret, John moved back to Le Mars and bought a German language newspaper, Der Herold, which he renamed Le Mars Globe-Post newspaper. Starzl began working as reporter for his father and claims he began writing for the pulp magazines in order to raise enough capital to acquire the newspaper and the printing press, a goal he achieved in 1934 when he became a partner in the Globe-Post, becoming the sole owner and publisher in 1940.

Starzl served in the army during World War I, serving for about eight and half months. Upon his return to the U.S., he spent a year at Northwestern University before finding a job in the advertising department of the Chicago Tribune. He worked there from 1920 until 1923, when he returned to Le Mars, began working for his father, and married Anna Laura Fitzgerald on November 14. Anna was a nurse from  They had one son, Thomas, who was born in 1926. Anna died in 1947 and on July 27, 1948, Starzl married Rita Gertrude Kenaley.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ten Things I Think I Think (Gat Edition)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ten Things I Think I Think (Gat Edition)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

— Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

I don’t think I’ve done a Ten Things I Think I Think, for A (Black) Gat in the Hand. Huh. I guess we can rectify that today.

As I write this, all 2,000+ books which I own are boxed up. They will be moving to the house I close on later this week. They made up 55 boxes of books. There’s a loft that will be my writing room/home office, with bookcases spread out across a few other rooms.

It’s weird not being able to grab a book to read, or look something up. I feel like I’m in a book version of homelessness. Definitely strange. So, I think:

1 – PHILIP MARLOWE HAS STAR POWER

Philip Marlowe was born in 1939, when Raymond Chandler cobbled together parts from short stories featuring other detectives (I’m not exaggerating, I believe he used he word ‘cannibalized’), and wrote The Big Sleep. Marlowe novels were used for movies starring The Falcon, and Mike Shayne. But the character of Marlowe has compelled some big Hollywood names to play him. Such as Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, James Garner, Elliot Gould, Robert Mitchum, Powers Boothe, James Caan, and Liam Neeson.

These are heavyweight male stars playing a character often from decades before.  For the most part they’re good, though I definitely like them to varying degrees. Sam Spade, Race Williams, The Continental Op: similar big names in hardboiled fiction don’t have nearly the ongoing screen impact of Philip Marlowe. I ruminated on various Marlowe incarnations here.

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My Favorite Martian

My Favorite Martian

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J Allen St. John 1919

Has any writer of science fiction or fantasy ever had a more fertile imagination than Edgar Rice Burroughs? Anyone acquainted with his work will have no trouble reeling off the names of exotic and outlandish planets, continents, oceans, cities, animals, plants, races, gods, kings, princesses, heroes, and villains, ad infinitum.  Perhaps his most fecund setting was the first one he created — Barsoom (or Mars, as it’s even now called by the unenlightened), the site of eleven books written between 1912 and 1943. Filled with startling and memorable creations, Burroughs’ Barsoom is one of the most captivating places in the Atlas of the Imagination, and none of ERB’s “children” have taken a firmer hold on readers than John Carter’s enemies and allies, the great Green Martians that roam the deserts and dry sea-bottoms of that dying world.

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