I’ve mentioned this here before — my work-in-progress Table of Contents for a hypothetical WEIRD TALES anthology that I have neither the time, the energy or the funding to ever actually assemble and publish. But if I DID….
The idea came about over decades of buying and reading various anthologies of material from The Unique Magazine, from Leo Margulies’ 60s-era paperbacks to Peter Haining’s excellent collection in facsimile format published by Neville Spearman and Carroll and Graf, to the multitude of great ‘Instant Remainder’ hardbacks published in the 80s like Robert Weinberg’s WT: 32 UNEARTHED TERRORS and Marvin Kaye’s WT: THE MAGAZINE THAT NEVER DIES.
Now, I love all of those, but what I’ve always longed for is a collection that took a ‘Greatest Hits’ of ‘Best Of’ approach. Rather than selecting rare or unusual examples of stories from WT’s heavy hitters, choose the stories that best represent each author, and/or best represent WEIRD TALES itself, and put them all under one cover.
If that means choosing stories that have already been reprinted dozens of times, THAT’S TOTALLY FINE WITH ME. If I were buying a ‘Led Zeppelin’s Greatest Hits’ compilation, I’d EXPECT it to include ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and would be disappointed if it didn’t.
So, I want those time-tested classics. I want Lovecraft’s equivalent of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, Robert E. Howard’s ‘Hotel California’, Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘Nights In White Satin’, etc. And I need ‘One Hit Wonders’ too, authors that are ONLY remembered for one famous (or infamous) story, like C.M. Eddy and ‘The Loved Dead’. And authors who may be well-known in other fields but had one WT story in particular that’s fondly remembered , like Arthur J. Burks and ‘Bells of Oceana’.
After years of mulling this over, I have a short preliminary list of ‘Must Haves’ but also, a lot of blanks. I haven’t been able to select a Ray Bradbury story yet, for instance — and I figure Seabury Quinn needs to be included but I haven’t read enough of his work to choose one story that represents him best. ‘Roads’ may be his most well-regarded and oft-reprinted story, but personally I think it’s kind of over-rated and anyway, i think we want a Jules De Grandin story instead. And Fritz Leiber is a challenge. His ‘best’ or ‘most famous’ or ‘most important’ Weird Fiction didn’t even appear in WEIRD TALES — no ‘Smoke Ghost’ or ‘Girl With the Hungry Eyes’ or Fafhrd and Gray Mouser. Do we pick ‘The Hound’ or ‘The Dead Man’ or…?
So, I hereby open the floor to any and all opinions and suggestions. Imagine a big fat issue of WEIRD TALES, an ‘Ultimate WEIRD TALES’ if you will — what stories would you choose to fill those pages?
Meantime, here is a bit of my Starter List (feel free to disagree or suggest alternatives):
H.P. Lovecraft — ‘The Call of Cthulhu’
C.L. Moore — ‘Shambleau’
Henry Kuttner — ‘The Graveyard Rats’
Robert Bloch — ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper’ (I’m not really that keen on it myself, but…)
Frank Belknap Long — ‘The Hounds of Tindalos’ (I like ‘The Space Eaters’ better but I think ‘Hounds’ is more well-known)
Ralph Milne Farley — ‘The House of Ecstasy’
H. Warner Munn — ‘The Werewolf of Ponkert’
Carl Jacobi — ‘Revelations in Black’
Robert Barbour Johnson — ‘Far Below’
Greye La Spina — ‘The Devil’s Pool’
Everil Worrell — ‘The Canal’
And some ‘placeholders’:
Clark Ashton Smith — I know I want a Zothique story but I’m torn between ‘The Dark Eidolon’ and ‘Necromancy in Naat’.
Robert E. Howard — I want a Conan story but don’t know which one. ‘Tower of the Elephant’, maybe.
Margaret St. Clair — I adore her ‘Brenda’ but don’t know if it’s really a ‘Greatest Hit’.
The idea came about over decades of buying and reading various anthologies of material from The Unique Magazine, from Leo Margulies’ 60s-era paperbacks to Peter Haining’s excellent collection in facsimile format published by Neville Spearman and Carroll and Graf, to the multitude of great ‘Instant Remainder’ hardbacks published in the 80s like Robert Weinberg’s WT: 32 UNEARTHED TERRORS and Marvin Kaye’s WT: THE MAGAZINE THAT NEVER DIES.
Now, I love all of those, but what I’ve always longed for is a collection that took a ‘Greatest Hits’ of ‘Best Of’ approach. Rather than selecting rare or unusual examples of stories from WT’s heavy hitters, choose the stories that best represent each author, and/or best represent WEIRD TALES itself, and put them all under one cover.
If that means choosing stories that have already been reprinted dozens of times, THAT’S TOTALLY FINE WITH ME. If I were buying a ‘Led Zeppelin’s Greatest Hits’ compilation, I’d EXPECT it to include ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and would be disappointed if it didn’t.
So, I want those time-tested classics. I want Lovecraft’s equivalent of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, Robert E. Howard’s ‘Hotel California’, Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘Nights In White Satin’, etc. And I need ‘One Hit Wonders’ too, authors that are ONLY remembered for one famous (or infamous) story, like C.M. Eddy and ‘The Loved Dead’. And authors who may be well-known in other fields but had one WT story in particular that’s fondly remembered , like Arthur J. Burks and ‘Bells of Oceana’.
After years of mulling this over, I have a short preliminary list of ‘Must Haves’ but also, a lot of blanks. I haven’t been able to select a Ray Bradbury story yet, for instance — and I figure Seabury Quinn needs to be included but I haven’t read enough of his work to choose one story that represents him best. ‘Roads’ may be his most well-regarded and oft-reprinted story, but personally I think it’s kind of over-rated and anyway, i think we want a Jules De Grandin story instead. And Fritz Leiber is a challenge. His ‘best’ or ‘most famous’ or ‘most important’ Weird Fiction didn’t even appear in WEIRD TALES — no ‘Smoke Ghost’ or ‘Girl With the Hungry Eyes’ or Fafhrd and Gray Mouser. Do we pick ‘The Hound’ or ‘The Dead Man’ or…?
So, I hereby open the floor to any and all opinions and suggestions. Imagine a big fat issue of WEIRD TALES, an ‘Ultimate WEIRD TALES’ if you will — what stories would you choose to fill those pages?
Meantime, here is a bit of my Starter List (feel free to disagree or suggest alternatives):
H.P. Lovecraft — ‘The Call of Cthulhu’
C.L. Moore — ‘Shambleau’
Henry Kuttner — ‘The Graveyard Rats’
Robert Bloch — ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper’ (I’m not really that keen on it myself, but…)
Frank Belknap Long — ‘The Hounds of Tindalos’ (I like ‘The Space Eaters’ better but I think ‘Hounds’ is more well-known)
Ralph Milne Farley — ‘The House of Ecstasy’
H. Warner Munn — ‘The Werewolf of Ponkert’
Carl Jacobi — ‘Revelations in Black’
Robert Barbour Johnson — ‘Far Below’
Greye La Spina — ‘The Devil’s Pool’
Everil Worrell — ‘The Canal’
And some ‘placeholders’:
Clark Ashton Smith — I know I want a Zothique story but I’m torn between ‘The Dark Eidolon’ and ‘Necromancy in Naat’.
Robert E. Howard — I want a Conan story but don’t know which one. ‘Tower of the Elephant’, maybe.
Margaret St. Clair — I adore her ‘Brenda’ but don’t know if it’s really a ‘Greatest Hit’.
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