make an entry into our bedroom—Quick Henry, the Flit! Oy! oy! oy! What a story to read when one is all alone on a sharp autumn night when the wind rattles the shutters, the bare boughs beat on the side of the house and the wildly weeping autumn raindrops tap insistently at the pane!
All success to Strange Tales, its enterprising editor, and its gifted authors.—Bernard Austin Dwyer, West Shokan, N. Y.
We Improve
Dear Editor:
Congratulations on the best issue of S. T. to date. "Wolves of Darkness" was great, with the suspense well handled and the explanations to the point and not anti-climactical. For second place I couldn't decide between "Dead Legs," "The Moon Dial," and "The Door of Doom." For third, I select "The Shadow on the Sky," for fourth, "The Black Laugh," and for fifth and sixth, "The Door to Saturn" and "The Smell."
Was again somewhat disappointed in Clark Ashton Smith's offering—that writer can do much better than his last two S. T. tales.
Keep up the good work, but I do wish you'd get hold of a lot of stock cuts for head and tail-pieces, etc. The cover this time was exceptionally well done, though the last issue was positively lousy. I would also like to see some weird or exotic verse occasionally. Really, this number is so far ahead of the last that I would not be much surprised to learn the magazine is going to be issued monthly instead of bi-monthly.—Bruce Bryan, 635 N. Gramercy PL, Los Angeles, Calif.
I Am Overcome
Dear Editor:
The first story I read in the January issue was "Dead Legs." The yarn was a wow! and goes to show, as I have long suspected, that Edmond Hamilton is a master of Weird Fiction.
Seems to me that Wesso was a little careless with the cover on this issue. Jack Williamson, in "Wolves of Dark¬ness," describes the girl as follows: "Her skin was white, with a cold, leprous, bloodless whiteness. Almost as white as the snow." Wesso shows her epidermis as fair as one could desire. The other features are correct. When I saw those eyes I nearly dropped. The cold, green glint in them would quail a statue.
As for the other tales in the mag, I am sure that they uphold the tradition set up by Mr. Bates in the other mag he edits. I haven't got to them yet.
Now I want to extend my heartfelt congratulations to the guiding genius at the helm of Astounding Stories and Strange Tales—Mr. Harry Bates. Each of these mags has contained stories by the best fiction writers of the day. And to top that, their stories are not hackwork. They reserve the best products of their pens for the above named magazines. In a recent issue of Astounding Stories, a writer gave three literary cheers for Mr. Bates. I but echo his sentiments when I give him three cheers and a double tiger and wish him a very, very happy New Year. [A little late, but we'll change it to Fourth of July. And thankee, thankee.—Ed.] I hope, that for many years to come, he will guide the destinies of two of my favorite mags. [Mr. Clayton, please notice.—Ed.]—Fred C. Miles, 3000 Springfield Ave., New Providence, N. J.
Congrats
Dear Editor:
Congrats on the best issue, by far, of the first three. How could it help being with Hamilton, Williamson, Smith and Flagg in the same number!
I think Flagg's and Hamilton's yarns were the two best. Both were entirely different. Flagg's idea was quite novel, I thought, inasmuch as it was the first tale I remember that used the sense of smell for the theme. And Hamilton's "Dead Legs" was excellent, too, because of its strange plot. Williamson's story was fine, and it had me guessing for a long while—perhaps too long. I like short stories. Long ones usually bore me a bit. I thought "Wolves of Darkness" was just a bit too drawn out. Smith managed to contrive an interplanetary strange tale, and a mighty fine one at that.
Let's have more plots that don't deal just with reincarnations, elementals, ghosts, etc. Of the rest of the stories liked "The Door of Doom" and "The Black Laugh." The other two I did not care for, and I thought "The Moon Dial" particularly uninteresting.—Forrest J. Ackerman, 530 Staples Ave., San Francisco, Cal.
Says It with Verse
Dear Editor:
Being a regular reader of your Astounding Stories, I thought I would write and tell you how much I enjoy it. I have been reading it for about a year now and I never seem to tire of it the way I do the other weekly or monthly magazines. Now I see you have published a new book called Strange Tales, which I think is even better than Astounding Stories, though it is hard to tell which is the most interesting.
Being a British reader, it is about a month later that I can obtain my copies, but, nevertheless, they are worth waiting for.
