Weird Tales

Dark-fantasy lovers in the Windy City, this weekend is your last chance to see the hot new stage adaptation of Arthur Machen’s novel The Great God Pan, courtesy of Wildclaw Theatre. When it was first published a hundred years ago, critics despised this tale of a horrific experiment performed upon an innocent young woman, calling it “an incoherent nightmare of sex.” But Pan has proved to be one of the most influential horror stories of all time, inspiring H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Weird Tales founder Jacob Hennberger, among many others. Lovecraft went so far as to say: “Of creators of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few can hope to equal Arthur Machen.” There are four performances left — reserve seats now!

Welcome to March 2008 — 85 years to the month since WEIRD TALES magazine first entered this world. We’ve got plenty of celebratory excitement coming up this month, including our anniversary party at Norwescon and our extra-weird next issue, in which we’ll pay tribute to The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years. But first, we’re kicking it all off with a special anniversary subscription deal! From now through April, get a one-year subscription to the new and improved WEIRD TALES for only $20 — you’ll get six issues full of strange and stirring fiction and nonfiction from the likes of Michael Moorcock, Tanith Lee, Sarah Monette, Jeff VanderMeer, Cherie Priest, and my god, that’s just who’ll be in the FIRST issue! And for those who’ve missed what we’ve been up to recently, we’re also offering a trial package of the last four issues for just $13. So don’t wait — now’s the time to check out WEIRD TALES’s unique mix of Machiavellian toads, misplaced body parts, manic-depressive werewolves, dead Southern gentlemen, tarot-dealing oracles, hermaphroditic pirates, and fiercely emo warrior-kings…

2008B09_263,
originally uploaded by rattengift.

We were excited to spot WEIRD TALES contributing writer Natalia Lincoln at the Dances of Vice Festival in New York a few weekends ago, providing keyboard accompaniment for the phenomenal singer/musical-saw-player Nicki Jaine! All in all, Dances of Vice may have been the most entertainingly and artistically weird event we’ve ever seen in a nightclub, from the mermaid dancers to the live fencing demonstration to the steampunk costumes to the WEIRD TALES table. The festival was so cool, in fact, that WT will be sponsoring the regular ongoing Dances of Vice club night. Check out the DoV site, and stay tuned here for announcements as to when we’ll be attending!

You’ve seen haunted-house stories before — but you’ve never seen anything like Matthew Pridham’s remarkable novella “Renovations,” where nobody is more terrified than the house itself! That’s just the tip of the iceberg this issue: we’ve got interviews with novelists James Morrow (The Last Witchfinder) and Melissa Marr (Wicked Lovely); stories about autistic magic, seductive fox women, bone-generating innards, and suspiciously aggressive fish; an Arabian stop on the Lovecraft tour; and much more!

WEIRD TALES fiction editor Ann VanderMeer’s new anthology, The New Weird, featuring stories by Clive Barker, China Miéville, M. John Harrison, Sarah Monette, Michael Moorcock, Hal Duncan, and many more, is now on sale! Even better, Ann and her weird collaborator Jeff VanderMeer are running a contest this week over at Jeff’s Ecstatic Days blog: Post your own personal “new, weird” story, and be entered in the running to win editorially autographed copies of The New Weird itself, the next several issues of Weird Tales, and at least seven more VanderMeer anthologies over the next two years!

Girls in beauty pageants are sometimes maligned for not having enough brains. But this year, the Phoenix Comicon is holding its inaugural Miss Zombie Beauty pageant, where the contestants are the types who like brains so much, they want to eat yours! WEIRD TALES is proud to sponsor this luscious parade of decomposing pulchritude. The two runners-up, Miss Pathogenic and Miss Congeal-iality, will each receive a copy of Weird Tales: The 21st Century, Vol. 1 and a year’s free subscription to the magazine — but that’s just the beginning! The winning Miss Zombie Beauty herself will be awarded a truly unique prize: a one-of-a-kind, handmade, zombified WEIRD TALES edition called Zombie Love, designed and created by Patricia Lee of Bookwyrms Art with assistance from woodworker Art Drauglis, and collecting Lisa Mantchev’s “Zombi” and Trent Hergenrader’s “Working Out Our Salvation” from issue #344. Never before has there been such a WEIRD TALES artifact! Stay tuned for next week’s announcement of the newly crowned undead queen…

WEIRD TALES fans will be intrigued by two unique events taking place in the greater New York City area the weekend of Feb. 8-9. First — and we are absolutely not making this up — there’s the Wicked Winter Renaissance Pirate Ninja Lovecraftian Faire in Edison, N.J., which will turn the traditional Renaissance festival on its head, then inside-out, then dress it in a corset, wrap the whole thing up in extradimensional alien tentacles, and shoot some blackmail photos. Meanwhile, across the water in Manhattan proper, a magnificent assemblage of both Victorian and 1920s-era strangeness will coalesce at the Dances of Vice Festival: two nights of music, magazines and fancy period dress headlined by that most weirdly beautiful of all contemporary cello ensembles, Rasputina. WEIRD TALES will be on hand with magazines at both events — at the Wicked Faire on Friday night and Saturday, and at Dances of Vice on Saturday night. Come out and have a magnificent time!

Cloverfield finally hits theaters tonight. For weeks, and despite unofficial denials, rumor has swirled that the mysterious, top-secret monster(s) that devastate New York City in the new movie by Lost creator J.J. Abrams may come from H.P. Lovecraft’s WEIRD TALES pantheon of giant alien demon gods. Could we finally be on the verge of glimpsing Dagon? Or even great Cthulhu? Whether the Lovecraft connection is true or not, early word on the film suggests it’s one of the more spectacular weird tales to grace the screen in some years. WEIRD TALES readers, sound off on Cloverfield here! Is it great or over-hyped? And is Abrams shooting for a place on our upcoming list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years”?

We’re closing out 2007 with a bang! Unholy pirates cavort alongside fallen angels, plainspoken toads, and sorcerous healers as seven incredible new authors make their WEIRD TALES debuts! Meet the author of a Necronomicon-based Tarot; begin a tour of Lovecraft’s unearthly geography; and explore the twisted world of the Quiet Bird-Man in an excerpt from Jamie Tanner’s graphic novel, The Aviary. You can order it now!

While we’re all waiting for her first issue to arrive from the printer, WEIRD TALES fiction editor Ann VanderMeer drops in at the great website ReadersVoice.com to introduce herself, talk about her background in fantasy and literature, and muse upon the past, present and future of the magazine. Check it out!