Wednesday 12 October 2011

Weird Tales under new ownership

Vintage issue of Lesbian Times
The famous US horror magazine Weird Tales, founded in 1923 and one of the most sought-after pulps of the Golden Age, has a new owner. He's Marvin Kaye who has bought the title from John Betancourt of Wildside Press.

Kaye 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. For Wildside, he has edited the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.

He is also an actor and in 1975 co-founded The Open Book, a reader's theatre in New York City, where he lives. The Open Book performed the 13th annual production of The Last Christmas Of Ebenezer Scrooge last December. Kaye adapted his own book for the play

SFScope (http://sfscope.com) says: "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, John 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."

One of the authors who will be writing for Marvin Kaye's Weird Tales is Archive friend and supporter Keith Chapman (aka Chap O'Keefe). He tells us, "I heard back today from Mr Kaye. He writes, 'I just read Dark Art in Vyones and think it is an excellent story. I definitely want to use it for Weird Tales, though I'm not sure yet which issue it would appear in. Do send us new material when possible.''

Keith is up to his eyes in preparing the next online Black Horse Extra and waiting for details from Robert Hale Ltd of the ten Black Horse Western ebooks they've said they'll be releasing in December. But he has every intention of accepting Marvin Kaye's invitation.

Archive readers who have enjoyed the horror/fantasy stories from Keith we've run in our Sunday Comics section know that more of the like in text form has to be good news!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Love your choice of illustration, Gary! And that issue of the magazine (July 1936) would have been a real classic. When the eyes have stopped boggling, look at the lineup of authors: Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Edmond Hamilton, C.L. Moore. A fantasy fan couldn't ask for better.

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