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Fan, whole no. 4, September 1945
Page 10
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WEIRD AND FANTASY FICTION IN BOOKS By Samuel D. Russell "Weird fiction" is generally understood by fantasy fans to mean stories of supernatural horror -- tales of psychic creepiness, of preternatural phenomena and distortions of the accepted normalities of our sane universe, obeying higher laws we cannot begin to comprehend. The accompanying terror of the unknown that such concepts inspire is man's oldest reaction to nature, and weird fiction thus has an ancient and honorable history extending as far back as primitive man's earliest animism and fear of the psychic survival of the dead. As might be expected, the literature of this type in book form is enormous. Everyone has read a few of Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories in school, and those interested in such darkly fascinating blood-chillers soon go on to book collections devoted exclusively to the genre. Among the best of the standard, conventional anthologies of ghost stories which are usually sought out first by the dabbler in the field are: Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser's recent and almost definitive Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural; Philip van Doren Stern's The Midnight Reader, containing only stories of the highest literary quality; the scholarly Montague Summers' The Supernatural Omnibus, containing many obscure but excellent English stories; and Dorothy L. Sayers' monumental trilogy, The Omnibus of Crime, The Second Omnibus of Crime, and The Third Omnibus of Crime, half of each of which is devoted to excellent stories of the macabre. Other anthologies covering the more-or-less familiar classics in the field are: Joseph L. French's The Ghost Story Omnibus (combining his well-known volumes, Great Ghost Stories, and Ghosts, Grim and Gentle); Dorothy Scarborough's Famous-Modern Ghost Stories and Humorous Ghost Stories; Lady Cynthia Asquith's British collections, The Ghost Book and Shudders; Boris Karloff's recent Tales of Terror and The Karloff Reader, from Tower Books; Bennett Cert's newly enlarged Modern Library volume, Famous Ghost Stories; Colin de la Mare's well-rounded They Walk Again; J. Walker McSpadden's Famous Psychic Stories and Famous Ghost Stories; and Maximilian Rudwin's Devil Stories, consisting of translations of foreign classics. Readers with more advanced tastes who want the latest and most harrowing variations on supernatural themes will want to look into the following compilations of stories from Weird Tales and other contemporary magazines: August Derleth's recent Sleep No More; Dashiell Hammett's popular Creeps by Night; T. Everett Harre's Beware After Dark!; and Phil Stong's uneven The Other Worlds (25 Modern Stories of Mystery and Imagination). After devouring a few of these representative anthologies, the seriously bitten weird fiction addict can seldom resist the temptation to look up the original collections of stories by favorite individual authors from which the tempting samples in the anthologies were selected. Perhaps he will begin with the leisurely but prolific English master, Algernon Blackwood, whose stories vary widely in quality and often tend toward a vague pagan mysticism but reach at their most horrific an artistic effectiveness unequal'd in the language; among the best of his collections are The Tales of Algernon Blackwood, Strange Stories, John Silence, Incredible Adventures, Shocks, Tongues of Fire, The Dance of Death, The Empty House, The Listener, and Day and Night Stories. Then there is the distinguished romanticist and superb stylist, Arthur Machen, who with a few masterpieces has raised modern weird fiction to a place of respect in English literature; his best work is to be found in The House of Souls and The Three Imposters.
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WEIRD AND FANTASY FICTION IN BOOKS By Samuel D. Russell "Weird fiction" is generally understood by fantasy fans to mean stories of supernatural horror -- tales of psychic creepiness, of preternatural phenomena and distortions of the accepted normalities of our sane universe, obeying higher laws we cannot begin to comprehend. The accompanying terror of the unknown that such concepts inspire is man's oldest reaction to nature, and weird fiction thus has an ancient and honorable history extending as far back as primitive man's earliest animism and fear of the psychic survival of the dead. As might be expected, the literature of this type in book form is enormous. Everyone has read a few of Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories in school, and those interested in such darkly fascinating blood-chillers soon go on to book collections devoted exclusively to the genre. Among the best of the standard, conventional anthologies of ghost stories which are usually sought out first by the dabbler in the field are: Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser's recent and almost definitive Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural; Philip van Doren Stern's The Midnight Reader, containing only stories of the highest literary quality; the scholarly Montague Summers' The Supernatural Omnibus, containing many obscure but excellent English stories; and Dorothy L. Sayers' monumental trilogy, The Omnibus of Crime, The Second Omnibus of Crime, and The Third Omnibus of Crime, half of each of which is devoted to excellent stories of the macabre. Other anthologies covering the more-or-less familiar classics in the field are: Joseph L. French's The Ghost Story Omnibus (combining his well-known volumes, Great Ghost Stories, and Ghosts, Grim and Gentle); Dorothy Scarborough's Famous-Modern Ghost Stories and Humorous Ghost Stories; Lady Cynthia Asquith's British collections, The Ghost Book and Shudders; Boris Karloff's recent Tales of Terror and The Karloff Reader, from Tower Books; Bennett Cert's newly enlarged Modern Library volume, Famous Ghost Stories; Colin de la Mare's well-rounded They Walk Again; J. Walker McSpadden's Famous Psychic Stories and Famous Ghost Stories; and Maximilian Rudwin's Devil Stories, consisting of translations of foreign classics. Readers with more advanced tastes who want the latest and most harrowing variations on supernatural themes will want to look into the following compilations of stories from Weird Tales and other contemporary magazines: August Derleth's recent Sleep No More; Dashiell Hammett's popular Creeps by Night; T. Everett Harre's Beware After Dark!; and Phil Stong's uneven The Other Worlds (25 Modern Stories of Mystery and Imagination). After devouring a few of these representative anthologies, the seriously bitten weird fiction addict can seldom resist the temptation to look up the original collections of stories by favorite individual authors from which the tempting samples in the anthologies were selected. Perhaps he will begin with the leisurely but prolific English master, Algernon Blackwood, whose stories vary widely in quality and often tend toward a vague pagan mysticism but reach at their most horrific an artistic effectiveness unequal'd in the language; among the best of his collections are The Tales of Algernon Blackwood, Strange Stories, John Silence, Incredible Adventures, Shocks, Tongues of Fire, The Dance of Death, The Empty House, The Listener, and Day and Night Stories. Then there is the distinguished romanticist and superb stylist, Arthur Machen, who with a few masterpieces has raised modern weird fiction to a place of respect in English literature; his best work is to be found in The House of Souls and The Three Imposters.
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