The Fantasy Fan, November 1933<br />The Fans' Own Magazine by Various (good novels to read TXT) 📗

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FANTASY FAN NOVEMBER 1933 *** Produced by Greg Weeks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE FANTASY FAN

THE FANS' OWN MAGAZINE

Editor: Charles D. Hornig

(Managing Editor: Wonder Stories)

Published 10 cents a copy Monthly $1.00 per year

137 West Grand Street, Elizabeth, New Jersey

Volume 1 November, 1933 Number 3

OUR READERS SAY

"The second number looks to me even more interesting than the first. Smith's tale was splendid. The remunerative editors were certainly fools to turn it down. Glad to see that a number of readers are showing up Ackerman. People like Ackerman are peculiarly ridiculous—one can plainly see that this type of thing is merely egotistic and a gesture to call attention to themselves. However, most people out-grow this stage. Glad you were able to get something from young Barlow—he's distinctly worth encouraging." H. P. Lovecraft

Clark Ashton Smith informs us that Astounding Stories has just accepted one of his tales, "The Demon of the Flowers," and Weird Tales has just taken "The Tomb Spawn." He tells us that we will find a surprise in connection with his story, "The Weaver in the Vault" in the January, 1934, Weird Tales.

"Your editorial was a corker, the various departments okay, and Smith's yarn was worthy of Weird Tales." Allen Glasser. Mr. Glasser is attempting to make a living at writing—and isn't doing so bad at it. The editor prefers to call him "the Arthur J. Burks of the younger generation." He has sold stories to dozens of magazines, including science fiction.

"The second issue was swell. I'd like to see more stories by Clark Ashton Smith in future issues of the mag. Yep, 20 pages of excellent articles and stories."—Ted Lutwin. Clark Ashton Smith is a regular contributor to THE FANTASY FAN.

Kenneth B. Pritchard, although he liked the second number immensely, reminds us that we omitted several things that we promised in the September issue. Here's the reason: many articles were crowded out of this number, and others were postponed to make room for a number of much better articles which came in the last minute. Everything promised will be published in good time, though.

Lloyd Fowler wants us to keep using the grade of paper that we are, instead of cutting down the number of pages in order to afford a better grade.

"THE FANTASY FAN is starting out well."—Ralph Milne Farley

From A. Merritt, whom everybody knows, we hear that he had started a sequel to "Thru The Dragon Glass," but abandoned it because he didn't like to write sequels. Our belief is that great authors don't need to write sequels.

SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE

by H. P. Lovecraft

(Copyright 1927 by W. Paul Cook)

Part Two

Because we remember pain and the menace of death more vividly than pleasure, and because our feelings toward the beneficent aspects of the unknown have from the first been captured and formalised by conventional religious rituals, it has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore. The tendency, too, is naturally enhanced by the fact that uncertainty and danger are closely allied; thus making any kind of an unknown world, a world of peril and evil possibilities. When to this sense of fear and evil the inevitable fascination of wonder and curiosity is superadded, there is born a composite body of keen emotion and imaginative provocation whose vitality must of necessity endure as long as the human race itself. Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds or strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.

With this foundation, no one need wonder at the existence of a literature of cosmic fear. It has always existed, and always will exist; and no better evidence of its tenacious vigour can be cited than the impulse which now and then drives writers of totally opposite leanings to try their hands at it in isolated tales, as if to discharge from their minds certain phantasmal shapes which would otherwise haunt them. Thus did Dickens write several eerie narratives; Browning the hideous poem, "Childe Roland"; Henry James, "The Turn of the Screw"; Dr. Holmes, the subtle novel "Elsie Venner"; F. Marion Crawford, "The Upper Berth" and a number of other examples; Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, social worker, "The Yellow Wall Paper"; whilst the humorist, W. W. Jacobs, produced that able melodramatic bit called "The Monkey's Paw."

(Continued next month)

SEQUELS—BY POPULAR DEMAND

by Walt Z. Russjuchi

Part Three—Conclusion

Science Wonder Stories (now Wonder Stories) published a 2-part serial by Edwards in 1930, "A Rescue from Jupiter," and its sequel, "The Return from Jupiter," appeared the following year.

Many characters have been so liked that their author creators have written a number of sequel-stories around them in which they are plunged into a series of exciting adventures. The most popular are Keller's Taine of San Francisco, Meek's Dr. Bird, Quinn's Jules de Grandin, Gilmore's Hawk Carse, Burroughs' Tarzan & John Carter, Wright's Commander Hanson, and Fezandie's Dr. Hackensaw.

Of course, it is realized that only the surface of this subject has been skimmed, but if the reader is further interested in sequels, he may idle away many an interesting hour considering why stories have sequels, and what stories should have them.

The Other Gods

by H. P. Lovecraft

Atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer no man to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once inhabited; but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of rock and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only the last remains. When they left their older peaks they took with them all signs of themselves, save once, it is said, when they left a carven image on the face of the mountain which they called Ngranek.

But now they have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath in the cold waste where no man treads, and are grown stern, having no higher peak whereto to flee at the coming of men. They are grown stern, and where once they suffered men to displace them, they now forbid men to come; or coming, to depart. It is well for men that they know not of Kadath in the cold waste, else they would seek injudiciously to scale it.

Sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still night the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play in the olden way on remembered slopes. Men have felt the tears of the gods on white-capped Thurai, though they have thought it rain; and have heard the sighs of the gods in the plaintive dawn-winds of Lerion. In cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel, and wise cotters have legends that keep them from certain high peaks at night when it is cloudy, for the gods are not lenient as of old.

In Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, once dwelt an old man avid to behold the gods of earth; a man deeply learned in the seven cryptical books of earth; and familiar with the Pnakotic Manuscripts of distant and frozen Lomar. His name was Barzai the Wise, and the villagers tell of how he went up a mountain on the night of the strange eclipse.

Barzai knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comings and goings, and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemed half a god himself. It was he who wisely advised the burgesses of Ulthar when they passed their remarkable law against the slaying of cats, and who first told the young priest Atal where it is that black cats go at midnight on St. John's Eve. Barzai was learned in the lore of earth's gods, and had gained a desire to look upon their faces. He believed that his great secret knowledge of gods could shield him from their wrath, so resolved to go up to the summit of high and rocky Hatheg-Kla on a night when he knew the gods would be there.

Hatheg-Kla is far in the stony desert beyond Hatheg, for which it is named, and rises like a rock statue in a silent temple. Around its peak the mists play always mournfully, for mists are the memories of the gods, and the gods loved Hatheg-Kla when they dwelt upon it in the old days. Often the gods of earth visit Hatheg-Kla in their ships of cloud, casting pale vapours over the slopes as they dance reminiscently on the summit under a clear moon. The villagers of Hatheg say it is ill to climb Hatheg-Kla at any time, and deadly to climb it by night when pale vapours hide the summit and the moon; but Barzai heeded them not when he came from neighboring Ulthar with the young priest Atal, who was his disciple. Atal was only the son of an innkeeper, and was sometimes afraid; but Barzai's father had been a landgrave who dwelt in an ancient castle, so he had no common superstition in his blood, and only laughed at the fearful cotters.

Barzai and Atal went out of Hatheg into the stony desert despite the prayers of peasants, and talked of earth's gods by their campfires at night. Many days they travelled, and from afar saw lofty Hatheg-Kla with his aureole of mournful mist. On the thirteenth day they reached the mountain's lonely base, and Atal spoke of his fears. But Barzai was old and learned and had no fears, so led the way boldly up the slope that no man had scaled since the time of Sansu, who is written of with fright in the mouldy Pnakotic Manuscripts.

The way was rocky, and made perilous by chasms, cliffs, and falling stones. Later it grew cold and snowy; and Barzai and Atal often slipped and fell as they hewed and plodded upward with staves and axes. Finally the air grew thin, and the sky changed colour, and the climbers found it hard to breathe; but still they toiled up and up, marvelling at the strangeness of the scene and thrilling at the thought of what would happen on the summit when the moon was out and the pale vapours spread around. For three days they climbed higher, and higher toward the roof of the world; then they camped to wait for the clouding of the moon.

For four nights no clouds came, and the moon shone down cold through the thin mournful mists around the silent pinnacle. Then on the fifth night, which was the night of the full moon, Barzai saw some dense clouds far to the north, and stayed up with Atal to watch them draw near. Thick and majestic they sailed, slowly and deliberately onward; ranging themselves round the peak high above the watchers, and hiding the moon and the summit from view. For a long hour the watchers gazed, whilst the vapours swirled and the screen of clouds grew thicker and more restless. Barzai was wise in the lore of earth's gods, and listened hard for certain sounds, but Atal felt the chill of the vapours and the awe of the night, and feared much. And when Barzai began to climb higher and beckon eagerly, it was long before Atal would follow.

So thick were the vapours that the way was hard, and though Atal followed on at last, he could scarce see the grey shape of Barzai on the dim slope above in the clouded moonlight. Barzai forged very far ahead, and seemed despite his age to climb more easily than Atal; fearing not the steepness that began to grow too great for any save a strong and dauntless man, nor pausing at wide black chasms that Atal could scarce leap. And so they went up wildly over rocks and gulfs, slipping and stumbling, and sometimes awed at the vastness and horrible silence of bleak ice pinnacles and mute granite steeps.

Very suddenly Barzai went out of Atal's sight, scaling a hideous cliff that seemed to bulge outward and block the path for any climber not inspired of earth's gods. Atal was far below, and planning what he should do when he reached the place, when curiously he noticed that the light had grown strong, as if the cloudless peak and moonlit meeting-place of the gods were very near. And as he scrambled on toward the bulging cliff and litten sky he felt fears more shocking than any he had known before. Then through the high mists he heard the voice of unseen Barzai shouting wildly in delight:

"I have heard the gods! I have heard earth's gods singing in revelry on Hatheg-Kla! The voices of earth's