John Betancourt and his Wildside Press is selling Weird Tales to Marvin Kaye. The sale is currently in process, but Betancourt expects no difficulties in consummating the deal.
Editor Ann VanderMeer writes “I am very sad to have to tell you that my editorship at Weird Tales… is about to come to an end. The publisher, John Betancourt of Wildside Press, is selling the magazine to Marvin Kaye. Kaye is buying the magazine because he wants to edit it himself. He will not be retaining the staff from my tenure. I wish him the best with the different direction he wants to pursue, including his first, Cthulhu-themed issue. The current issue of Weird Tales is #358, just published. My last issue will be #359, which Kaye plans to publish in February of next year. Other stories I bought will be published in various issues thereafter.”
The 73-year-old Kaye edited the anthology Weird Tales, The Magazine That Never Dies, which Doubleday published in 1988. He is the author of 16 novels and six nonfiction books, in addition to plays and play adaptations. He has edited at least 30 anthologies, and won the World Fantasy Award for best anthology in 2006 for The Fair Folk.
Betancourt says of the sale “We wish him well with his new magazine.”
Weird Tales launched in March 1923, and launched the careers of writers including H.P. Lovecraft, C.M. Eddy, Jr., Clark Ashton Smith, and Seabury Quinn. It lasted 279 issues, ceasing publication in September 1954. Sam Moskowitz and Leo Margulies revived the magazine briefly in the 1970s, and then Lin Carter took the name for a series of paperback anthologies in the 1980s. In 1988, George H. Scithers, Betancourt, and Darrell Schweitzer revived the magazine with issue #290. Warren Lapine’s DNA Publications bought the magazine in 2000, and then sold it to Betancourt’s Wildside in 2005. In 2007, Betancourt gave the magazine a major redesign, and hired Stephen H. Segal as editorial and creative director. Ann VanderMeer was then brought on board as fiction editor. In early 2010, Segal removed himself from day-to-day operations, becoming a contributing editor, and VanderMeer took over as editor-in-chief.
VanderMeer notes that, since the sale is happening rather abruptly, she’ll have no chance to write a farewell editorial in the magazine. Instead, she has posted her departure thanks in this post. She also says “My current plans include final work on The Weird: A Compendium of Dark and Strange Stories, out from Atlantic in October. This huge reprint anthology, perhaps the largest ever published for this kind of fiction, includes 116 stories from the last one hundred years and totals 750,000 words. I will also be shepherding the anthology Odd? to completion through my and my husband’s e-book imprint Cheeky Frawg, along with completing several other anthology projects. In addition, I will continue to talk about and promote weird fiction through a new blog associated with The Weird that will act as a repository of information and features, as well as providing a home for a new slate of ‘one-minute Weird Tales,’ although they will of course be called something else. Beyond that I am considering this a chance to explore new and exciting opportunities.”