In a pre-Halloween event, the Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading Series on Wednesday 15 October 2008 featured a celebration of Weird Tales on the 85th anniversary of its founding. (Coincidentally, as with the month’s other New York City horror reading—last week’s New York Review of Science Fiction-sponsored evening of readings from The Living Dead—it was the night of a Presidential Election debate… and probably less scary.)
Weird Tales, the first-ever fantasy magazine, began publishing in March 1923. In its first decade, it offered (and, surprisingly, rejected) stories by H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Seabury Quinn. A subsequent roster of notable writers includes Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Edmond Hamilton, and August Derleth (whose Lovecraft pastiches, or “posthumous collaborations”, were occasionally featured). (And, believe it or not, Tennessee Williams’ first published story appeared in Weird Tales.) Among its cover artists and illustrators were the legendary Virgil Finlay, Hannes Bok, and Margaret Brundage. The magazine struggled after World War II, and finally ceased publication in 1954. After several unsuccessful attempts at re-animation (none by Herbert West), Weird Tales was revived in 1988. It is currently published bimonthly by Wildside Press.
The free reading series, hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel, is held on the third Wednesday of each month at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street in Manhattan’s East Village. As predicted, the bar’s darkness, relieved only dimly by table candles, eerily suited the evening’s, er, weird tales from authors Jeffrey Ford, Karen Heuler, and Micaela Morrissette. After a brief welcome to the SRO audience, Datlow turned things over to Ann VanderMeer, fiction editor, and Stephen H. Segal, editorial and creative director of Weird Tales.
VanderMeer, herself a World Fantasy Award-winning writer (in collaboration with her husband, Jeff) introduced Micaela Morrissette, a Pushcart Prize recipient, who read excerpts from her upcoming Weird Tales story “Wendigo”. Though it was not exactly a love story, she imbued cannibalism with a haunting, romantic flavor. Karen Heuler, the next reader, a winner of the O. Henry Award, offered the recently published “Landscape, With Fish”, an amusing and surreal tale about flying, land-flopping fish. The evening’s final reader, Jeffrey Ford, has received the World Fantasy, Nebula, and Edgar Allan Poe awards. His presentation, “Wereroot”, was a surprisingly captivating and amusing monologue about the adoption of a demonic star baby.
Between readers, Segal read the second-place winning story, “Boy Eats Fried Rat, Pictures” by Eric Grissom, a humorous gross-out taking YouTube to the next level, from the Weird Tales Spam Fiction Contest (very short fiction based on Internet “spam” tabloid-style headings), and two that received honorable mention.
In addition, four paintings by Steven Archer were on display (and for sale) from his series “365 Days of Blasphemous Horrors”, original Lovecraft-inspired artwork, one a day for a year. (I guess he forgot that 2008 was a leap year.)
At the rear of the room, Mobile Libris sold books, and copies of the current (September/October) issue of Weird Tales were available. (Aptly, the issue banners itself as “The Magazine of Eternal Halloween”.)