Magazine / Weird Tales

The first issue of the original run.

Weird Tales is a legendary Pulp Magazine. Its original run lasted between 1923 and 1954; since then there have been various revivals, one of which is currently ongoing and has a website. It publishes short stories in the horror and fantasy genres; as seen below, its long history includes contributions by many of the best known writers in those fields.

Scans of old Weird Tales issues can be found in the Internet Archive.

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Contributing authors include:

• Robert Bloch: The future Psycho author broke in with Cthulhu Mythos fiction while he was a teenage correspondent of Lovecraft.
• Ray Bradbury
• Joseph Payne Brennan
• August Derleth
• Robert E. Howard: The magazine was the birthplace of Conan the Barbarian, Solomon Kane and Kull.
• Henry Kuttner
• Fritz Leiber
• Frank Belknap Long
• H. P. Lovecraft: Contributed several stories, most notably "The Call of Cthulhu".
• C. L. Moore, who published her Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith stories in the magazine.
• Seabury Quinn: Not much remembered today, but actually the most popular contributor during the magazine's original run.
• Clark Ashton Smith
• Manly Wade Wellman
• Tennessee Williams: Believe it or not, he submitted a story to the magazine, the Very Loosely Based on a True Story "The Vengeance of Nitocris".
  • It got a Comic-Book Adaptation in Savage Sword of Conan #216, which was filled with Shout-Out after Shout-Out to Williams' other works.
    Conan: ... you will have to depend upon the kindness of strangers!

Works first published in the magazine that have their own pages on this wiki include:

• "The Call of Cthulhu"
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
• "The Dreams in the Witch House"
• "The Hound (1924)"
• "The Hounds of Tindalos"
• Jirel of Joiry series
• Kull series
• "The Night Wire"
• Northwest Smith series
• "Pickman's Model"
• "The Rats in the Walls"
• "The Shunned House"
• "Slime"
• Solomon Kane series
• "The Temple"
• "The Thought-Monster"
• "The Whisperer in Darkness"

Tropes associated with the magazine:

• Cosmic Horror Story: This is where the Cthulhu Mythos started and had what some call its most glorious run.
• Have a Gay Old Time: This magazine is not eccentric; weird used to mean scary.
• Heroic Fantasy: Weird Tales pretty much started that entire genre.
• Magician Detective: For a time the magazine had stories featuring Harry Houdini.
• Moral Guardians: They occasionally complained about the magazine, but rarely so much as when Weird Tales published 'The Loved Dead', a first-person story about a necrophiliac serial killer.
• Occult Detective: They had their share, most notably Jules de Grandin and John Thunstone.

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