Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 3 (1926-09).djvu/139

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Weird Tales

two weird-scientific tales of strange rays. There are four tales of strange monsters in the list—a snake-tale, an ape-tale, a tale of giant leeches, and a tale of a strange sea-monster. Then there are several unusual tales that do not fall under any of these headings, such as Lukundoo, Edward Lucas White's story of little chattering heads that grew out of a man's side; and Frank Owen's bizarre Chinese story of sweetness and light, The Wind That Tramps the World. But regardless of their position in the magazine, the truly distinctive stories, those that are stamped with personality and genius, have brought an instant response from you, the readers, whether they were cover-design tales like Whispering Tunnels and The Werewolf of Ponkert, or whether they were buried in the magazine without even an art heading, as were The Stranger From Kurdistan and Dr. Jerbot's Last Experiment, both of which were well up in the list of the readers' thirty favorite stories in Weird Tales.

Writes Mrs. Joseph C. Murphy, of Washington, D. C.: "I like the latest number of Weird Tales especially well. That serial story of the artist and his sister and the doctor and his wife in the deep forest (Fettered) is one of the best I have ever seen. There is a fineness of atmosphere about it that makes my hair stand on end."

Wesley W. Dillion, of Minneapolis, writes: "It is a long time since I have come across a magazine which so thoroughly combined pleasure with profit as Weird Tales. It is small praise to say that there is not a dull story in it—it is a perfect model of what such a magazine ought to be."

Writes Lieutenant-Commander P. J. Searles, from the Boston Navy Yard: "May I compliment you on your magazine? I read very few fiction magazines, as my reading time is occupied largely with technical matters relating to astronomy and engineering, but Weird Tales is always on my list. In particular I enjoy your stories of abnormal psychology, madness, and perversion (not, of course, in the moral sense, as Weird Tales does not use such stories), rather than those which are pseudo-scientific. As one single reader, I hope you will concentrate more on stories of the mind, in which I also mean those of ghost and super- or extra-natural events."

G. Gordon Dewey, of Cedar Rapids, Nebraska, writes: "I have read the Weird Tales magazine ever since its advent in the magazine world, and have yet to see one to approach it for sheer good fiction. It holds one's interest from cover to cover. May you always have as high a standard of good stories in it. My only regret is that it does not appear oftener."

Writes Mrs. W. F. Hawkins, of Augusta, Maine: "I have selected Fettered, the beginning of the new serial for this month, as my favorite story for the current (July) issue. It is not only weird and scary, but it doesn't leave a bad impression on one's mind after reading. Greye La Spina can write a weird, uncanny story without making it positively horrible as Seabury Quinn does in his House of Horror. I like weird stories but I don't like anything ugly or sordid."

Lester Wallace Reed, of Pasadena, California, writes to the Eyrie: "I have been an enthusiastic reader of Weird Tales for over two years, and providing that Seabury Quinn keeps Jules de Grandin on the job, well, that means two years more. The House of Horror was a corker!"

The House of Horror finds many enthusiastic backers, but here is a letter of vigorous opposition, from Frederick John Greve of Brooklyn: "I have prided myself on being proof against any degree of terror, but The House of Horror was too much for me. It holds your attention spellbound while