Weird Tales and Other Pulps

Back in the 20th century, primarily the first half, there were various magazines known as pulp magazines.  They were predominately short fiction-based (although there were also some longer stories that would be serialized over multiple issues) and got the pulp name from the cheap, pulpy (and highly acidic) paper they were printed on and more or less replaced the penny dreadful of the 19th century.  These magazines featured fiction in genres that are often snubbed by many: crime, science fiction, fantasy, and, of course, horror.

One of the most important and well-known of the pulp magazines is Weird Tales.  This magazine featured the first publications of numerous now-classic stories by the likes of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, and H. P. Lovecraft in addition to some quality material from now-lesser-known writers such as Seabury Quinn, Nictzin Dyalhis, and many others.

Weird Tales originally ran from 1923 until 1954, but has since been revived multiple times to varying levels of success.  So, it is a magazine that has been in print off-and-on for around 90 years, but it is that original run from 1923-1954 that people think of when they hear the name, Weird Tales, which instantly brings to mind Lovecraft's bizarre, monstrous beings from other realms and Howard's sword-wielding barbarians and eerie horror tales.  Each time the magazine was brought back, it could never be quite the same magazine as it was originally, since some of its most legendary writers were dead and, as such, had nothing new to contribute-- not to mention, the newer writers these revived versions would publish were also typically publishing novels, not just focusing on shorter fiction as these earlier writers had.  Whereas Howard, Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, and their contemporaries were published pretty much exclusively in pulps such as Weird Tales, Astounding Stories, and Avon Fantasy Reader, among others , by the time you get to the second half of the 20th century and the various newer versions of Weird Tales, the world had long since moved on and the newer writers were not pulp writers, rather novelists who would also write some short stories, which would often just be collected together to be published in book form as well, largely negating the purpose of this kind of magazine.  Nowadays, there are numerous collections of Lovecraft's stories and Howard's, as well as some of these other writers, but during their own lives, this was generally not the case.

Issues from various incarnations of Weird Tales, including two modern reproductions of the original run

As for the other writers from the various pulp magazines, some have seen occasional republication in various anthologies, often focusing on republishing tales originally published in one specific magazine, such as Weird Tales or Avon Fantasy Reader.  Unfortunately, even some of these anthologies are from decades ago and no longer in print, not to mention the fact that they only reprint a fraction of the stories that appeared in the original pulps, leaving many wonderful stories in cavernous shadow of the past, unknown to the majority of the world's current population.  To make matters worse, pulp magazines were cheap, much like early comic books, and printed on very cheap materials, which leads to them being rather scarce these days.  The paper tends to discolor and become brittle, making them difficult if not outright impossible to read in many cases.  If you find copies of these old pulps today, they are often taped together or missing pages and/or their covers.  Even copies that were well-cared for are going to have suffered from the passage of time and the low-quality materials of which they were made. The aforementioned anthologies, generally printed as mass-market paperbacks, tend to fare a bit better, partly because they aren't quite as old and the paper, while still cheap, is of a slightly more durable nature, making them easier and less expensive to acquire, while the original pulp magazines tend to be much more expensive, particularly earlier issues of Weird Tales or issues of pretty much any title featuring more well-known writers, such as Lovecraft.

1960s-era paperback collection of stories reprinted from The Avon Fantasy Reader

 

Today, one can track down many of these stories, if not all, fairly easily in a used bookstore or online, with options ranging from the original magazines (mainly for the collector with deep pockets) to reproduction copies (such as those done by Girasol) to the various collections that have been published over the years, some of which are high-quality hardcover editions.  It just takes some time, patience, and effort.  Some of the longer stories, ones that were originally serialized over a few issues, such as the Seabury Quinn novel, The Devil's Bride, or Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, have been published in standalone editions.  There is also a recent reprint of A.G. Birch's novella, The Moon Terror, which was originally published in two parts in early issues of Weird Tales, then soon after collected into book form with three other early Weird Tales stories.  This newer edition is basically a reprint of that book version (even retaining the original cover art), although it only includes two of the stories from that earlier edition: the title story and "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud, which first appeared in the very first issue of Weird Tales.

Collected versions of longer stories originally serialized in Weird Tales

Regardless of what format these stories take today, I believe that there is so much great horror, science fiction, and fantasy to be found among these pulps.  Every time I happen across an old paperback anthology or a collected edition of a serialized story from these magazines, there is a sense of excitement, for me at least, that can never be duplicated by modern horror, fantasy, and science fiction.  These stories are of a breed that is long-since gone and will never be again, but continually wait, overlooked and forgotten by so many, to be discovered by new generations of readers who can appreciate them much as those readers from several decades ago, who were there as each issue of the pulps hit the newsstand.