{"id":9744,"date":"2019-02-11T13:19:50","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T13:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=9744"},"modified":"2019-02-11T13:19:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T13:19:50","slug":"weird-tales-v36n12-july-1943","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=9744","title":{"rendered":"Weird Tales v36n12, July 1943"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ISFDB link<\/a>
\nArchive.org link<\/a><\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nRobert Weinberg, The Weird Tales Story<\/em>1<\/sup><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Dorothy McIlwraith; Associate Editor, Lamont Buchanan<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nHis Last Appearance<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by H. Bedford-Jones \u2217\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Street of Faces<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Frank Owen \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Unfriendly World<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Allison V. Harding –
\nLost <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Alice-Mary Schnirring \u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Scythe<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ray Bradbury \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nReturn of the Undead<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Otis Adelbert Kline & Frank Belknap Long \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nLegacy in Crystal<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by James Causey \u2217<\/strong>
\nYours Truly \u2014 Jack the Ripper<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Robert Bloch \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nTamara, the Georgian Queen<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Harold Lawlor –<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by E. Franklin Wittmack
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Boris Dolgov (x3), A. R. Tilburne (x2), Fred Humiston (x2), Hannes Bok, Irwin J. Weill, John Giunta, uncredited
\nThe Shape of Thrills to Come
\nStrange Music<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by Dorothy Quick
\nDesert Dweller<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by Clark Ashton Smith
\nSuperstitions and Taboos<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Irwin J. Weill
\nThe Eyrie <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 essay by The Editor
\nWeird Tales Club<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 letters<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

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His Last Appearance<\/em><\/strong> by H. Bedford-Jones is labelled as a \u201cSpecial Feature\u201d and leads off the fiction in this issue. The story takes place in the near future, after the end of WWII, and opens with a man called Gordon, a tourist\/passenger on a clipper that is refuelling at a coral island in the Pacific, talking to one of the ship\u2019s officers. The latter mentions that the two gravestones Gordon is looking at belong to the pilots of a B-29 Flying Fortress that crash-landed during the war. He also mentions that their ghosts have been seen, information that Gordon receives with some incredulity. Later though, after the ship\u2019s officer has departed, a man in flying uniform arrives and starts talking: it soon becomes obvious that the man is the ghost of one of the dead pilots. Gordon finds himself merging with the man, Magruder, and he goes back in time to relive the dead man\u2019s final days on the island.
\nThe tale then becomes essentially a war story covering the crew\u2019s crash-landing and the subsequent fight with the Japanese on the island: after the crew have fought and killed the occupiers, and only Magruder and the other pilot Cox are left, they settle in and prepare the island\u2019s meagre defences in case\u00a0more Japanese attack\u00a0before they are rescued. There then follows a middle section where the two pilots get on each other\u2019s nerves, in between Cox musing about the island becoming US territory, and whether the ghosts of their comarades will haunt it.
\nThe final section (spoiler) has them shoot down a Japanese spotter plane before sighting a distant battleship and freighter. When the battleship comes closer they open fire and manage to sink it. They die during a\u00a0beach landing mounted by the troops on the freighter.
\nThe coda has Gordon arranging to have a ton of Oregon soil taken to the island to cover their graves.
\nOverall, the story is fairly routine and has a perfunctory fantasy set-up, but it is a readable piece, and the last part (related to the part of the story about the island being part of the USA) gives it a bit of a lift.<\/p>\n

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This wartime vibe continues in The Street of Faces<\/em><\/strong> by Frank Owen, which is about a cruel Japanese general who goes to a Chinese doctor for an operation to improve facial disfigurements caused by shrapnel wounds. The doctor, unknown to the general, has been killing \u201cJaps\u201d on the side, and sees an opportunity to do the same to the general when he operates. However, that night the ghosts of his healer ancestors appear and forbid him to do so.
\nThe next day the doctor operates and, days later, after the General has recovered and the bandages have been removed, he looks into a mirror and sees he has been given a Chinese face. When asked to name the price for the operation, the doctor says he wants all the paper in the General\u2019s pockets. The General initially refuses as some of it is classified material, so they compromise and agree to burn it.
\nWhen the general then returns to his camp (spoiler) he is not recognised because of his Chinese features (even though he is wearing his uniform), and the guards and their officer bayonet him to death as he cannot prove his identity.
\nThis has a rather slow beginning but a clever and ironic ending in tune with the times.<\/p>\n

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The Unfriendly World<\/em><\/strong> by Allison V. Harding has a psychologist called Dr Manning become involved in a hospital case that involves George Torey, a man who refuses to sleep without drugs. After a couple of pages of padding we finally get to the heart of the matter:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, Doctor, I am not troubled with claustrophobia. It\u2019s something else. Something that seems, seems quite incredible. [. . . ] I\u2019m afraid to go to sleep because, because of something that happens to me when I go to sleep. I\u2014I can\u2019t make anybody believe me\u2014but if there is a Hell, I\u2019ve been there\u2014I\u2019ve seen people there with harpoons\u2014\u201d He stopped abruptly. I said nothing.\u00a0 p. 30<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After being told this by the patient, Dr Manning and the hospital\u2019s Dr Cobb then demonstrate their appalling bedside manner while later events unfold (the patient is variously ridiculed, told to \u201cpull himself together,\u201d and called a \u201cdrug fiend,\u201d etc.).
\nOne night, while Manning is sleeping beside Torey\u2019s bed, he awakes to see him thrashing about on his bed, and goes for help:<\/p>\n

I looked back once over my shoulder at Torey as I started to leave. I didn\u2019t want my patient to strangle himself in the bedclothes. In the dimness of the room Torey was waving both arms now. Then he jerked several times, screwed himself up into a tight ball, his head and arms disappearing underneath the bedding.
\nAnd at this moment Torey screamed. At the same time I thought I caught the shadow of a black something over the bed, over Torey. I recalled this later, in the light of what happened, although at the time I dismissed it as preposterous and a figment of my imagination. But I caught a glimpse of a black shaft, a greater blackness against the semi-blackness of the room, shaped almost like . . . a spear!\u00a0 p. 36<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Manning then notices a ragged cut on Torey\u2019s arm and summons help. That night Torey receives a sedative\u2014but after that it\u2019s back to the old regime, with the inevitable consequences (spoiler: the next time Torey sleeps he doesn\u2019t wake up again due to a huge jagged hole through the bed and him).
\nThere is some back story about Torey\u2019s uncle, who is a psychical researcher, but most of the story is about\u00a0the doctors acting like idiots while the supernatural events unfold. Oh yes: the medical and psychological terminology used in the story has all the verisimilitude available to a writer who has never had a day\u2019s illness.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lost <\/em><\/strong>by Alice-Mary Schnirring is a two page squib about a woman who finds a lost girl called Moira in the marshes and takes her home. The child asks for her friends, and specifically a boy called Tommy. The next day the child has vanished and the woman goes to town for help, only to find a mass of people on the pier (spoiler) looking at a lifeboat with the corpses of four children including Moira.
\nThis is an idea, not a story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first of two notable stories in this issue is The Scythe<\/em><\/strong> by Ray Bradbury.2<\/sup> This tells of a destitute family that arrive at an apparently deserted farmhouse. When the father goes to ask for food he finds the owner dead:<\/p>\n

He was an old man, lying out on a clean white bed. He hadn\u2019t been dead long; not long enough to lose the last quiet look of peace. He must have known he was going to die, because he wore his grave clothes\u2014an old black suit, brushed and neat, and a clean white shirt and a black tie.
\nA scythe leaned against the wall beside the bed. Between the old man\u2019s hands there was a blade of wheat, still fresh. A ripe blade, golden and heavy in the tassel.
\nJoerg went into the bedroom, walking soft. There was a coldness on him. He took off his broken, dusty hat and stood by the bed, looking down.
\nThe paper lay open on the pillow beside the old man\u2019s head. It was meant to be read. Maybe a request for burial, or to call a relative. Joerg scowled over the words, moving his pale, dry lips.
\n\u201cTo him who stands beside me at my death bed: Being of sound mind, and alone in the world as it has been decreed, I, John Buhr, do give and bequeath this farm, with all pertaining to it, to the man who is to come. Whatever his name or origin shall be, it will not matter. The farm is his, and the wheat; the scythe, and the task ordained thereto. Let him take them, freely, and without question\u2014and remember that I, John Buhr, am only the giver, not the ordainer. To which I set my hand and seal this third day of April, 1939.
\n(Signed)
\nJohn Buhr. Kyrie eleison\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 p. 47-48<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The family settle into the house and Tom Joerg starts cutting the wheat in the field\u2014he feels compelled to cut it\u2014but finds it is no ordinary crop:<\/p>\n

Joerg roused himself at first gray smell of dawn and was out reaping grain each morn, forgetting to point out to Molly how unusual the field was. How it was too big for one man to tend, and yet one man had tended it. How it ripened only in separate clusters, each set off far from others. And, most important how when he cut the wheat it rotted within a few hours, and the next day dug in and come up with roots with green sprouts, born again.
\nJoerg rubbed his stubbled chin, worried a little, wondered what and why and how it acted that way. A couple of times he walked up to the grave on the far hill just to be sure the old man was there, maybe with some notion he might get an idea there about the field. But the grave was in the sun and wind and silence. The old man said nothing; there were a lot of stones and dirt in his face, now. So that didn\u2019t solve anything. So Joerg went back to reaping, enjoying it because it seemed important. Very important. He didn\u2019t know why, but it was. Very, very important.\u00a0 p. 48<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At one point he tries to give up but is compelled to continue:<\/p>\n

He found the cow, milked it, but thought about other things. The wheat. The scythe.
\nThe sun got in his head, wouldn\u2019t leave.
\nIt burned there, with a hot, blinding pain.
\nHis appetite vanished. He sweated. Under his arms, down his back, splotches of perspiration soaked through his denim shirt.
\nHis fingers itched. He couldn\u2019t sit still. His head ached. His eyes stung. His stomach was sick. He couldn\u2019t sit still. . . .
\nAt one o\u2019clock he was a caged animal, pacing in and out of the house, concentrating momentarily on digging an irrigation ditch but all the time thinking about\u2014the scythe\u2014the wheat.
\n\u201cDamn!\u201d He strode in to the bedroom, took the scythe down from its wall-pegs. His stomach steadied itself. His headache ran away. He felt cool, calm, his fingers didn\u2019t itch.
\nIt was instinct. Pure, illogical instinct. Each day the grain must be cut. It HAD to be cut. It had to be. Why? Well, it just DID, that\u2019s all. Madness. Insanity. Heck, it was just an ordinary wheat-field.
\nLike hell!\u00a0 p. 49<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later on in the story he cuts one particular patch and (spoiler) realises his mother has just died, and it then becomes apparent to him that the wheat represents the people of the world. When he cuts it he is reaping their lives.
\nThe rest of the story tells of his unsuccessful efforts to leave the farm and job behind. Then one day he comes upon the ripened stalks of wheat that are his wife and two children. . . .
\nThis story has a good idea that is well-developed, although you get a niggling feeling that Bradbury would have made a more polished piece of it in his prime.<\/p>\n

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Return of the Undead<\/em><\/strong> by Otis Adelbert Kline and Frank Belknap Long gets off to a pretty good, if ghoulish, start with four medical students digging up a body to prank a freshman called Freddy. They think that Freddy needs his spine stiffened, and coming home after a date to find a corpse in his bed will do the trick. After the foursome finish exhuming the body, they go back to the college and set it up in Freddy\u2019s bed, and wait. In due course they hear a scream and a tearing sound, which summons one of the masters. The four follow the master on his investigation until they reach Freddy\u2019s room. The corpse has vanished\u2014and Freddy is lying on the bed with bites on his throat.
\nThe rest of the story doesn\u2019t really live up to its beginning but you get the sense that the writers are trying to have some fun with this old trope, and we get an early sense of that when they go back to the grave after finding Freddy injured in his room. There they find the vampire back in his coffin and decide to rebury the body. This starts a bit of a running gag in the story, as they shortly return to dig him up again after a second attack at the college, this time so they can stake the body, but are caught by an uncompromising sexton halfway through their second disinterral. The uncompromising churchman waves his sawn-off shotgun at them and makes the group fill in the grave again,\u00a0to much grumbling.
\nAlso involved in the story are two girlfriends, Nancy and Sally, the latter (spoiler) dispatching the monster when she arrives at Nancy\u2019s room while the vampire is attacking. Fortunately Sally was in the process of returning a bow and arrow!
\nIf you can put up with the semi-tongue-in-cheek plot and the unlikely ending, there is some amusement here.<\/p>\n

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Legacy in Crystal<\/em><\/strong> by James Causey starts with a man lying on his deathbed; he gives an old ring to a cousin, a greedy woman who can\u2019t wait to inherit his estate. Shortly after his death the woman tours the house, insensitively telling her hen-pecked husband about the remodelling she will do. He, meanwhile, finds a book in the study about demonology, before a strange man (Satan) turns up at the door, saying the ring, the house, and everything else needs to be returned.
\nA short while later the house burns down, and the inherited money vanishes from the bank, etc.
\nDespite her husband\u2019s warnings about what the woman has now found is a\u00a0wish-granting ring, she eventually gets her comeuppance.
\nThe stereotypical characters and hoary plot make this a weak and woefully unoriginal piece.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yours Truly \u2014 Jack the Ripper<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Bloch is, apart from the Bradbury, the other highlight of the issue. This is an entertaining story of an Englishman, Sir Guy Hollis, who goes to America in search of Jack the Ripper, who the Englishman believes is immortal. Hollis\u2019s theory is that the London murders, as well as others he suspects the killer has committed abroad, are sacrifices to a dark power in exchange for extended life (all the murders occur on significant astrological dates). Sir Guy tells all this to a local psychiatrist called John Carmody, and he asks for an introduction to his Bohemian friends\u2014Hollis has deduced that is the kind of company among which Jack would hide.
\nHollis later meets Carmody\u2019s friends, but this yields nothing, and the pair later search one of the seedier parts of Chicago.
\nThe ending is (spoiler) probably both predictable and<\/em> unlikely (how convenient that the psychiatrist he approaches turns out to be the Ripper!) but it is an entertaining and atmospheric journey to get to that point:<\/p>\n

I met Sir Guy the following evening as we agreed, on the corner of 29th and South Halsted.
\nAfter what had happened the night before, I was prepared for almost anything. But Sir Guy seemed matter-of-fact enough as he stood huddled against a grimy doorway and waited for me to appear.
\n\u201cBoo!\u201d I said, jumping out suddenly.
\nHe smiled. Only the betraying gesture of his left hand indicated that he\u2019d instinctively reached for his gun when I startled him.
\n\u201cAll ready for our wild goose chase?\u201d I asked.
\n\u201cYes.\u201d He nodded. \u201cI\u2019m glad that you agreed to meet me without asking questions,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt shows you trust my judgment.\u201d He took my arm and edged me along the street slowly.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s foggy tonight, John,\u201d said Sir Guy Hollis. \u201cLike London.\u201d
\nI nodded.
\n\u201cCold, too, for November.\u201d
\nI nodded again and half-shivered my agreement.
\n\u201cCurious,\u201d mused Sir Guy. \u201cLondon fog and November. The place and the time of the Ripper murders.\u201d
\nI grinned through darkness. \u201cLet me remind you, Sir Guy, that this isn\u2019t London, but Chicago. And it isn\u2019t November, 1888. It\u2019s over fifty years later.\u201d
\nSir Guy returned my grin, but without mirth. \u201cI\u2019m not so sure, at that,\u201d he murmured. \u201cLook about you. These tangled alleys and twisted streets. They\u2019re like the East End. Mitre Square. And surely they are as ancient as fifty years, at least.\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019re in the colored neighborhood off South Clark Street,\u201d I said, shortly. \u201cAnd why you dragged me down here I still don\u2019t know.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a hunch,\u201d Sir Guy admitted. \u201cJust a hunch on my part, John. I want to wander around down here. There\u2019s the same geographical conformation in these streets as in those courts where the Ripper roamed and slew. That\u2019s where we\u2019ll find him, John. Not in the bright lights of the Bohemian neighborhood, but down here in the darkness. The darkness where he waits and crouches.\u201d\u00a0 p. 92<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Tamara, the Georgian Queen<\/em><\/strong> by Harold Lawlor3<\/sup> has a successful writer\u2019s wife attend a s\u00e9ance with Madame Salhov, where she discovers she is the reincarnation of Tamara, a Georgian queen who had a different lover every night and who, in the morning, threw them off the castle parapet to their death. Cue a couple of later jumping suicides from the couple\u2019s tower block. After the second suicide, the writer finds a missing button from the second man\u2019s coat in the couple\u2019s apartment, and later disposes of it beside the body after the police ask him downstairs to help\u00a0identify the corpse. The writer also notes a change in his wife:<\/p>\n

Presently Eve was at my side. \u201cThorne?\u201d
\nI turned. Her face was washed in the moon\u2019s radiance. Her red lips were parted, smiling, alluring. I caught her to me, and bent to press my mouth to hers. This wasn\u2019t the comfortable love of eight years. This was something new and strange and exciting. We pressed close.
\nAnd then the shuttered eyes before mine opened narrowly. Their greenness was a lambent flame. I was looking deep into the eyes of someone\u2014not Eve!
\nI pushed her away, and at my startled instinctive action her eyes grew strange and smoky, and a half-smile\u2014inexpressibly evil!\u2014played about her lips.
\nI turned away and covered my face with my shaking hands, as if to press from my vision the fantasies that my sickened thoughts were conjuring.\u00a0 p. 102<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The writer later tries to find Salhov, but fails. When he almost takes a header off the building himself during a scuffle with his wife, he consults a psychiatrist, and when this proves fruitless does some library research.
\nThis is pretty poor stuff, but it is amusing\u00a0how the psychologist breezily dismisses the wife\u2019s two probable and one attempted murders:<\/p>\n

Dr. Hadley shook his head. \u201cIt\u2019s perfectly obvious what has happened. Madame Salkov planted a thought-suggestion in your wife\u2019s subconscious mind. Your wife is evidently a woman of a highly impressionable type. The Tamara fixation built itself up until\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cBut why should Madame Salhov tell her such a thing!\u201d I cried.
\nAgain the doctor smiled. \u201cIt\u2019s a fortune teller\u2019s stock in trade to give her clients a thrill, you know. The woman, I think, never realized what mischief she was stirring up.\u201d
\nI wasn\u2019t quite satisfied. \u201cThose two young men\u2014\u201d
\nThe doctor spread his hands. \u201cCoincidence. Purely coincidence, Mr. Wallace. If the truth could be known, you\u2019d find the deaths of those young men had absolutely no connection with your wife.\u201d
\n\u201cBut the button! The button from Perry Waite\u2019s coat.\u201d
\nDr. Hadley looked a little annoyed. \u201cYou told me you threw it away without looking at it. Could you swear the button came from that particular coat? Of course not. You\u2019ve had friends visiting you on your terrace who wear coats of that type, no doubt. You probably own a couple yourself. The button may have been there for days, weeks.\u201d\u00a0 p. 104<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This one is pretty awful.<\/p>\n

The rather lacklustre Cover<\/em><\/strong> for this issue is by E. Franklin Wittmack (his one for the March issue is better). This was his second and last cover for the magazine.
\nThe best of the Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> is, again, by Boris Dolgov, in particular his piece for Robert Bloch\u2019s story. There is also a Hannes Bok illustration, and passable work by John Giunta. Some of the rest is rather amateurish looking (A. R. Tilburne and Fred Humiston\u2019s) or comic book-ish (the uncredited piece for Tamara<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Shape of Thrills to Come<\/em><\/strong> is a page of art which advertises next month\u2019s stories.
\nStrange Music<\/em><\/strong> is another slight, rhyming poem by Dorothy Quick; Desert Dweller<\/em><\/strong> by Clark Ashton Smith is a more substantial piece:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Superstitions and Taboos<\/em><\/strong> by Irwin J. Weill dishes up more superstitious (although well illustrated) nonsense:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Eyrie <\/em><\/strong>has some autobiographical information from Mr Lawlor:<\/p>\n

It was during the depression that I once again felt the desire to write. Escape, probably\u2014increasing deafness made jobs hard for me to get. And then, too, writing seemed such an easy way to make some money. (Ah, Youth and its lost illusions!) I didn\u2019t learn any better until I\u2019d written many love stories and confessions, igniting no rivers the while. When I\u2019d been thoroughly humbled I went to work as secretary to Don Wilcox, one of the well-known writers of science and fantasy fiction.
\nHe had faith, when I had little myself, in my future as a writer. It was at his suggestion that I tried a fantasy, and I sold the first one I wrote. Proof perhaps that those midnight hours spent with Weird Tales and Poe and Sax Rohmer, instead of homework, weren\u2019t wasted after all. There have been other sales since then, and I hope some not too distant day to be as good as the top-notchers in the field.\u00a0 p. 107-108<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the Editor mentions that Robert Bloch\u2019s story in the next issue is a sequel to his Nursemaid to Nightmares<\/em> in the November issue, they publish a letter from an early contributor to the magazine:<\/p>\n

From Phoenix, Arizona, Mr. Richard Tooker, who had a story of his own in one of the first issues of Weird Tales, writes:
\nI have been a reader of Weird Tales over a period of many years. . . . Personally, I am not a weird story writer, which may be the reason why I like weird stories so well. Anyone who can make the supernatural sound real to me is worth reading.
\nBut I must put in a complaint against the numbers of \u201chumorous\u201d weird stories appearing in Weird Tales. Humor does not belong in a weird story, nor extravaganza, nor the usual brand of satire. . . .
\nWe want the real, unadulterated article in Weird Tales. Let the boys do their playing around in the fantasy magazines; make them give us plenty of blood and mystery and inexplicability in our weird stories on the principle that the supernatural can never be fully explained by mortals.\u00a0 p. 109<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can\u2019t say I agree: the more of a mix of material there is in the magazine the better.
\nThe Weird Tales Club<\/em><\/strong> is somewhat truncated this issue, and there is an apology about not including all new members\u2014pity they didn\u2019t leave out the letter from the writer, V. Edward, which flogs his new book on Egyptology.<\/p>\n

An issue worth checking out for the Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch stories.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. In Weinberg\u2019s comments for 1943 (The Weird Tales Story<\/a><\/em>, p. 45) he mentions Ray Bradbury\u2019s The Wind<\/em> from the January issue (\u201ca stirring piece of fantasy fiction\u201d) and The Crowd<\/em> in the May (which is apparently similar to Poe\u2019s The Man in the Crowd<\/em>), but says nothing of The Scythe<\/em>.
\nBloch\u2019s story is\u00a0\u201ca classic of horror fiction and one of [his] all-time best stories,\u201d and Weinberg notes it was soon adapted to radio when the writer started scripting such shows.
\nThere is mention elsewhere about Allison V. Harding contributing \u201ca long list of stories to Weird Tales<\/em> in the 1940s, most of them undistinguished works that filled up space and were soon forgotten.\u201d
\nWeinberg also states that \u201cone of Dolgov’s most successful drawings was his splendid evocation of Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper<\/em>.\u201d Elsewhere he says that Dolgov was one of the best artists to work for Weird Tales<\/em>, and points to his late 1940\u2019s work in particular.<\/p>\n

2. Bradbury\u2019s story presumably inspired this lovely painting by Josh Kirby:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

3. According to Tellers of Weird Tales<\/a> this was the second of over two dozen stories that Lawlor wrote for the magazine. I hope they improve.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Archive.org link Other reviews: Robert Weinberg, The Weird Tales Story1 _____________________ Editor, Dorothy McIlwraith; Associate Editor, Lamont Buchanan Fiction: His Last Appearance \u2022 novelette by H. Bedford-Jones \u2217\u2217+ The Street of Faces \u2022 short story by Frank Owen \u2217\u2217 The Unfriendly World \u2022 novelette by Allison V. Harding – Lost \u2022 short story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weird-tales"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-2xa","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9744"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9785,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744\/revisions\/9785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}