Weird Tales #313 (Summer 1998). Darrell Schweitzer
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content high. Use covers which suggest, not psychopathology, but fantasy. Design a magazine which would sell on the same shelf with The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, or even Realms of Fantasy, rather than one that looks like a small-press horror magazine of the kind that distributors won’t touch. With a little camouflage, Horror can survive.
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We Get Letters and not enough of them. However, we were pleased to hear from Timothy Tucker, who comments that the cover on #4 was “sort of a ‘90s update on Margaret Brundage,” to which we suppose we’d agree, save that Douglas Beekman knows human anatomy far better than did the 1930s Weird Tales artist. Mr. Tucker continues:
S.T. Joshi’s essay on child prodigies was very interesting, especially his harsh criticism of Poppy Z. Brite. It would be interesting to hear a response. This is my first exposure to Joshi’s non-Lovecraftian criticism, but he shows himself to be just as astute here as he is in his massive Lovecraft biography.
It is hard to pick out one outstanding story this issue, because all of them were very fine indeed. Right now it appears to be a three-way tie for first among Tanith Lee’s “The Sequence of Swords and Hearts,” Thomas Ligotti’s “Teatro Grottesco,” and your own “The Sorcerer’s Gift.” Both your and Lee’s stories successfully evoke a certain air of ancient myth and folklore. This air is one of the reasons I read fantastic fiction, because it is one of the few places left where such archetypes can be used. In addition, “The Sorcerer’s Gift” is reminiscent of the works of one of my favorite authors, Clark Ashton Smith. I would gladly read more tales of Sekenre the Sorcerer, if you care to write them.
On the other hand, Ligotti’s story is a fine example of updating the first-person-paranoid fiction style used by Poe and Lovecraft. The strange world of the Teatro definitely produces its share of mystery and chills. This issue seems to be a good one for tales in the style of Poe, because “The Chair” by R. Chetwynd-Hayes (is this a pseudonym?) is in the same vein, with a touch of the British ghost story thrown in. A fine effort.
To which we reply variously: No, the author’s real name is R. Chetwynd-Hayes. The initial stands for Ronald. Mr. Chetwynd-Hayes is British, author of many published books, and recipient of a Bram Stoker Award for lifetime achievement.
You’re quite right about the direct use of archetype in fantasy. That is one of its chief appeals, something which any successful writer in this field must understand, and be able to accomplish. As for Sekenre the Sorcerer, he began his career in Weird Tales #303 with “To Become a Sorcerer,” which was expanded into a novel, The Mask of the Sorcerer, published by New English Library in 1995. (Alas, there is no American publisher yet.) The Sekenre story in the present issue is a “reprint” from the British magazine, Interzone, although it has never before been published in North America. Two more stories appeared in Interzone, which might be run in Weird Tales—if there is reader interest. One appears in the final (and 30th) issue of W. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook, another in the second issue of the new British magazine Odyssey, and yet another is forthcoming in Adventures in Sword & Sorcery. Yes, we would like to write more of them.
Jeffrey Goddin quotes the Irish writer Padraic Collum about Lord Dunsany: “His fantasy is of the highest order. There’s not a social idea in it.” Which could be the basis for a whole new editorial sometime. Ursula Le Guin remarked once that one reads Dunsany for his prose, “since he was a dreadful reactionary,” so maybe it’s just as well.
We might get another editorial out of a clipping from the Philadelphia Inquirer, which reads “Fla. Girl and 4 Other Teens Accused of Killing Her Parents,” with a subtitle, “Police point to a ‘Vampire Clan’ A detective said: ‘They apparently like to suck blood.’” It all sounds much too much lot like the scenario of Christopher Lee Walters’s “The Renfields” in this issue. However, as we’ve had the story in inventory for quite a while, it must be a case art anticipating life.
Lelia Loban Lee writes:
In issue #4, your artist, Douglas Beekman, has outdone himself, with his fine painting of a winning moment in the annual Underworld Eyeball Rolling Competition, a sport too little appreciated on the surface, despite its large and loyal following of fans down below. It’s unfortunate that the competitor’s name does not appear in the credit, but I believe that Beekman depicts the 1988 champion from Eastern Stygia in the Middle-Distance Giant Eyeball Division. For those unfamiliar with Eyeball Rolling, this sport originated as an ancient feast-day ritual to tenderize the fruit of a week-long hunt. While the much smaller goat, human, and monkey eyeballs used in the Pixie Division do not require such treatment for culinary purposes (indeed, the modern style of competition frequently renders eyeballs unfit for consumption), a Cyclopean Giant Eyeball, such as the one shown in the Beekman painting, becomes quite a delicacy when rolled for six to ten miles, pressed, sliced thin, and served raw, with a generous slathering of bat-brain butter. The modern competitor must roll the eyeball (in a manner similar to log-rolling) with feet or equivalent appendages, depending on the athlete’s species, up a steep, rocky incline to a precipice. The athlete must not only balance on the swiftly rolling, wet, slick surface of the orb, but must conserve sufficient energy to break into the interior at the finish, to demonstrate that the eyeball is now palatable. You can see from Beekman’s painting what a rare degree of physical fitness Eyeball Rolling requires. I commend him for introducing this sport to the ignorant and frequently indolent dwellers on the surface.
Just how Ms. Lee came by her first-hand knowledge of this subject, she did not explain.
Franklyn Searight praises a new writer, Jonathan Shipley:
My selection for first place in the Winter 1996–7 issue goes to Jonathan Shipley’s “From the Shores of Tripoli.” I particularly enjoyed his effort because he comes across as an accomplished storyteller, and in my view the story is of the utmost importance. Shipley has not relied upon flowery prose to mask the absence of a decent yarn.
The Most Popular Story in issue #4 was Thomas Ligotti’s ominous and magical “Teatro Grottesco,” with Darrell Schweitzer’s “The Sorcerer’s Gift” a close second, and Jonathan Shipley’s debut story, “From the Shores of Tripoli” a strong third. And the late Margo Skinner’s poem “Prime” also attracted favorable notice.
SHADOWINGS, by Douglas E. Winter
sacrament \’sak-re-ment\ n {ME sacrement, sacrament, fr. OF & LL; OF, fr. LL sacramentum, fr. L, oath of allegiance, obligation, fr. sacrare, to consecrate} 1: a formal religious act that is sacred as a sign or symbol of a spiritual reality; esp : one believed to have been instituted or recognized by Jesus Christ. 2 cap: the eucharistic elements; specif: blessed sacrament.
Sacrament, by Clive Barker.
New York: HarperCollins, hardcover, $25.00.
Harper, paperback, 605 pp., $6.99.
Will Rabjohns, the protagonist of Clive Barker’s latest and best novel, is a controversial photographer of endangered and dying species. “For most of his adult life he’d made photographs of the untamed world, reporting to the human tribe the tragedies that occurred in contested territories. They were seldom human tragedies. It was the populace of the other world that withered and perished daily. And as he witnessed the steady erosion of the wilderness, the hunger in him grew to leap the fences and be part of it, before it was gone.”
That hunger is born of a hollow ambition that has driven Will since his youth: “He was not…designed for happiness. It was too much like contentment, and contentment was too much like sleep.” In the novel’s opening act, it brings him to Hudson Bay, where images of polar bears wallowing in garbage will provide a mournful conclusion to what may be his final book of photographs. In his forty-first year of life, he is lost to melancholy, the onset of middle age and a dire sense of things winding down. In a world that seems defined by death, his success seems meaningless, and the purpose of his photographs, and of his life, is unclear. “The less alive you were, the better chance you had at living. There was probably a lesson in that somewhere, though it was a bitter one.”
When a bear is wounded, a misguided sense of responsibility leads Will into its violent embrace. This is death, he thinks: