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Weird Tales 361 Now on Sale

Weird Tales 361 Now on Sale

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Weird Tales 361-smallThe latest issue of the world’s oldest — and arguably greatest — fantasy magazine is now on sale.

Weird Tales #361 is the special demented Fairy Tale issue, with fiction by Peter S. Beagle, Tanith Lee, Jane Yolen, Morgan Llywelyn, and many others.

There’s also articles from Darrell Schweitzer (“Ninety Years of Weird Tales“), an interview with J. David Spurlock on the artwork of Margaret Brundage, and “An Inside Look at Weird Tales,” a step-by-step look at the evolving cover concept for this issue, by editor John Harlacher and artist Jeff Wong.

It’s always a delight to see a new issue of Weird Tales, especially one as jam-packed as this. This fat issue contains no less than 19 stories and four poems, alongside several feature interviews, book reviews, and copious interior art.

The PDF review copy we received is beautifully laid out and easy to navigate and read. This is the second issue produced by Nth Dimension Media, under new editor Marvin Kaye.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents:

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Weird Tales 360 Arrives This Week

Weird Tales 360 Arrives This Week

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weird-tales-360-smallWeird Tales 360,  the first issue helmed by new editor Marvin Kaye, is scheduled to ship this Friday, October 19.

It’s an auspicious and entirely appropriate number, I think. After changing direction several times over the last few years, Weird Tales has now turned 360-degrees and returned to where it started: publishing classic weird fiction.

The theme of the first Kaye issue is “The Elder Gods,” and the table of contents makes it clear that he is whole-heartedly embracing the Lovecraftian fiction that helped make Weird Tales one of the most sought-after magazines of the pulp era:

FICTION: THE ELDER GODS

  • “The Long Last Night” by Brian Lumley
  • “Momma Durtt” by Michael Shea
  • “The Darkness at Table Rock Road” by Michael Reyes
  • “The Runners Beyond the Wall” by Darrell Schweitzer
  • “Drain” by Matthew Jackson
  • “The Thing in the Cellar” by William Blake-Smith
  • “Found in a Bus Shelter at 3:00 am, Under a Mostly Empty Sky” by Stephen Gracia

FICTION: UNTHEMED

  • “To Be a Star” by Parke Godwin
  • “The Empty City” by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
  • “Abbey at the Edge of the Earth” by Collin B. Greenwood
  • “Alien Abduction” by M. A. Brines

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Weird Tales Pulls Novel Excerpt Following Fan Uproar

Weird Tales Pulls Novel Excerpt Following Fan Uproar

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weird-tales-359aIt’s been an interesting day for Weird Tales, the oldest genre magazine on the market.

It began with the abrupt resignation of Ann VanderMeer as a senior contributing editor, “due to major artistic and philosophical differences with the existing editors.” As reported here last year, VanderMeer was replaced as editor by Marvin Kaye as the magazine transitioned to new Publisher Nth Dimension Media, run by John Harlacher. While Ann commented that her resignation “has been in the works for several months, ever since I was removed as the editor-in-chief,” it was apparently hastened by Kaye’s decision to publish an excerpt from Victoria Foyt’s novel,  Saving the Pearls: Revealing Eden. The “Pearls” in the title refer to whites, who find themselves a persecuted minority after an ecological disaster. In praising the book, Kaye wrote:

Weird Tales seldom prints SF, but this story is a compelling view of a world that didn’t listen to the warnings of ecologists, and a world that has developed a reverse racism: blacks dominating and detesting not just whites, but latinos and albinos, the few that still survive of the latter are hunted down and slaughtered.

[Kaye’s post, and the comments it generated, have since been removed from the WT site; a Google webcache of the page is here.]

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Weird Tales Closes to Submissions

Weird Tales Closes to Submissions

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weird-tales-359aHoly cats! That was fast. The editors of Weird Tales magazine have announced it is closing to submissions on Tuesday, June 5th.

Now, Black Gate magazine is in no position to throw stones about being closed to submissions. We’ve been closed since roughly the Napoleonic era. But still… didn’t Weird Tales just announce it was open?

Let me check. Yup, it did.

[If you’re too lazy to click on that link, you can just scroll down the page to the announcement four days ago.]

All right, we’re done being snarky. And we will note that the magazine is only closing to fiction submissions — artists and disheveled arcane researchers, your contributions are still valued. [Okay. We’ve still got a little snark left.] Here’s the official announcement:

Heads up that at noon eastern time on Tuesday June 5th we will be closing for fiction submissions. We will still be looking at art and nonfiction proposals.

There’s still time to finish your submission and get it in the mail by Monday morning. Stock up on coffee, turn off the phone, and channel Clark Aston Smith. Fame and Fortune await you.

But act fast.

Weird Tales Reopens to Submissions

Weird Tales Reopens to Submissions

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weird-tales-359aAttention all aspiring fantasy writers! (Yeah, I know that’s most of you.) Weird Tales has re-opened to submissions.

Now, I know you never read Submission Guidelines. But before you run off to send editor Marvin Kaye your latest short fiction masterpiece, I urge you to check out the guidelines. There’s lots of news — for example, the pay rate has dropped from 5 cents/word to 3 cents/word — but perhaps most interesting is the announcement that the magazine has shifted to themed issues. Upcoming themes include Elder Gods & Cthulhu (#360), Fairy Tales (#361) and Undead (#362), and if you’ve got a story in the latter two categories, the editors are especially interested:

Please know that each issue of Weird Tales – beginning with issue 360 – will be featuring a theme. This means that HALF of each issue will be devoted to strange and innovative takes on that theme. This also means that HALF of each issue will be devoted to the unclassifiable and eclectic tales that have always been the soul of Weird Tales.

Our current needs are… Stories for our Undead issue (#362). This issue is quite far along, but we seek unusual and radical takes on Zombies, Ghouls, chiang-shih’s, the Lich and other creatures yet undefined. Even vampires, if you have found a new wrinkle. Theme-related poetry is welcome.

We also have a bit of space left in the Fairy Tales issue (#361), so if you have worked on something for us, send away.

Be sure you are submitting an unpublished story or poem.

Because we publish half of the magazine as unthemed content, you may submit any variety of fantasy including science fiction (though we will not use much of the latter). We are currently most interested in stories between 3,000-5,000 words, but longer stories are acceptable. However, it may take quite a while for a long or unthemed story to be published. Short shorts, i. e., flash fiction, are definitely of interest to us.

The complete guidelines are here.

Weird Tales 359 Arrives

Weird Tales 359 Arrives

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weird-tales-359aWell, sort of.

I’ve been waiting expectantly for this one. It’s something of a watershed issue — Ann VanderMeer’s final issue as editor, and the first from the new publishers, Nth Dimension media (as we reported back in August). It has fiction from Stephen Graham Jones, Tamsyn Muir, Evan J. Peterson, and many others, and articles from Paula Guran, Michael Skeet and Kenneth Hite.

At least, so they tell me. I haven’t been able to find a copy. I blame the death of Borders, where I used to be able to buy it. I’ve been checking the magazine section of my local Barnes & Noble (where I get F&SF, Asimov’s, Analog and Interzone), but no luck.

But Ann VanderMeer tells me it’s out. New publisher John Harlacher tells me it’s out. So it probably is. If you see a copy in the wild, let me know will you? Speaking of Harlacher, here’s what he says about this issue, and the spectacular cover:

The first Weird Tales issue by our company, Nth Dimension media, has gone to press, and will be in your mailboxes by the end of February. It’s edited by Ann VanderMeer, has art direction by Stephen H. Segal, and is quite beautiful… Stephen worked with our artist, Dave Buchwald (known in the graphic design world for creating the covers of 2600 magazine), to create this cover, and we think it represents a style we will use for the near future. It features the new/old logo, an intriguing symbol by Jeff Wong (www.JeffWong.com), and a stunning piece of art by Aurielien Police. The layout achieved what was most important to me – an emphasis on art, while keeping the writer in the forefront.

It really is a great cover. Click on the image at right for a bigger version. Love the dapper robot dude.

Cover price for the issue is $6.99 (I guess). It is probably 80 pages. The complete table of contents is here. We last covered Weird Tales with issue 358.

Weird Tales Summer 2011

Weird Tales Summer 2011

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wt358-170As usual, I’m behind the curve. I was delighted when I first heard that Ann VanderMeer was taking over Weird Tales but never got around to reading an issue under her direction because, well, I just never got around to it.  Alas, now she’s been relegated to the slush pile as a new owner wants to return the magazine back to its pulp Lovecraftan roots (although, the latest news is that the transition is being handled with a little more class than originally reported and it seems a final VanderMeer edited adieu issue is forthcoming).

I’m undoubtedly in the minority here amongst the crew of the good ship Black Gate in not being overly fond of Lovecraft, Howard and all the other pulp writers and am much more inclined to the “New Weird” sort of fiction that VanderMeer has championed.  Just take a look at the cover of the latest issue.  Nothing pulpish here. To my sensibilities, that’s a good thing.

Or, I guess I now have to say, was a good thing.

In any event, since nothing makes you more eager to catch up on your to-do-list than finding out some of the items are about to disappear, herewith my review of the fiction in the next-to-last VanderMeer edited Weird Tales.

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Marvin Kaye to Edit Weird Tales

Marvin Kaye to Edit Weird Tales

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weird-tales-358Marvin Kaye, author and editor of 28 genre anthologies, including Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies, Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown, and the World Fantasy award-winning The Fair Folk, has reportedly purchased Weird Tales from John Betancourt of Wildside Press, with the intention of editing it himself.

Current editor Ann VanderMeer reported the news on her blog:

I am very sad to have to tell you that my editorship at Weird Tales, which has included one Hugo Award win and three Hugo Award nominations, is about to come to an end. The publisher, John Betancourt of Wildside Press, is selling the magazine to Marvin Kaye. Kaye is buying the magazine because he wants to edit it himself. He will not be retaining the staff from my tenure. I wish him the best with the different direction he wants to pursue, including his first, Cthulhu-themed issue. The current issue of Weird Tales is #358, just published. My last issue will be #359, which Kaye plans to publish in February…

The past five years reading fiction for Weird Tales magazine has been an honor for me. I had a blast doing this but I have also contributed to the canon of “the weird tale”— a responsibility I take seriously, not only for the readers of today, but for the readers of tomorrow. This iconic magazine originally blazed a trail for new approaches to dark fantastical fiction, and I did my best to return to that legacy.

Technically the Weird Tales name is owned by Robert Weinberg and Victor Dricks, who purchased it in the late 1970s, and who have licensed it to multiple publishers over the past three decades, including Terminus Publications, DNA Publications, and Wildside Press.

While VanderMeer’s tenure at Weird Tales was occasionally controversial — especially among sword & sorcery fans — she took some brave risks with the magazine. With Stephen H. Segal she presided over an ambitious and successful redesign in 2007, brought home the first Hugo Award in the history of the magazine in 2009, and she assumed his post as editor-in-chief when Segal departed in January of last year. I thought she did a fine job, and she will be missed.

On the other hand, always glad to see a good Cthulhu-themed issue. I’m looking forward to seeing where Kaye intends to sail with Weird Tales.  I expect it will be places both strange and familiar.

Weird Tales 357 Arrives

Weird Tales 357 Arrives

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weird-tales-357The office copy of Weird Tales arrived today, and it looks great. Howard Andrew Jones immediately challenged me to rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock for the right to take it home, and then had the poor grace to win the best two-out-of-three rematch. Bonehead.

Before it passed out of my grasping hands forever, I did notice that this issue has six new short stories, from N.K. Jemisin, Karen Heuler, J. Robert Lennon, Karin Tidbeck, Peter M. Ball, and Mark Meredith, and poems by Kurt Newton and Seth Lawhorn.

Matthew Kressel contributes a non-fiction piece on real-life weird tales, Geoffrey H. Goodwin interviews Caitlin R. Kiernan, and Contributing Editor Kenneth Hite reports on Lovecraft’s fascination with the town of Kingsport in “Lost in Lovecraft.”

Rounding out the issue are four pages of book reviews and an editorial by Ann VanderMeer, in which she reports on staff changes at the magazine, including the resignation of Stephen Segal, who left for an editorial position at Quirk Books. Ann has now become Editor-in-Chief, and continues to serve as fiction editor, and Mary Robinette Kowal and Paula Guran have joined the staff, as Art Director and Non-Fiction Editor, respectively.

We last reported on Weird Tales with issue 356 in November.  Good to see the magazine stick to a regular quarterly schedule, just as promised.

Cover price for the issue is $6.99. It is 80 pages; the gorgeous cover is by Lee Moyer. Their website is here.

Changes at Weird Tales

Changes at Weird Tales

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weird-tales-357Weird Tales editor Ann VanderMeer announces a re-vamped website, higher pay rates, a nifty new submissions portal, a new schedule, and a blog:

In addition to launching this new website, editor-in-chief Ann VanderMeer and publisher John Betancourt have raised the pay rate to 5 cents per word and implemented a new submissions portal for potential contributors… The new site also features a blog, through which VanderMeer and the rest of the Weird Tales team will discuss fiction and topics related to the revamped magazine…

Weird Tales will return to its normal quarterly schedule this year, with future issues slated for May, August, and November.

The submissions portal is based on the one designed by Neil Clarke for Clarkesworld magazine, and he implemented this one for Weird Tales.  Matt Kressel designed the new website.

The upcoming issue of the magazine, number 357 (!) includes fiction from N.K. Jemisin, author of Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Karin Tidbeck, and J. Robert Lennon, plus an interview with Caitlin R. Kiernan.

The Weird Tales team includes Paula Guran, nonfiction editor, and art director Mary Robinette Kowal. Dominik Parisien and Alan Swirsky have joined Tessa Kum as editorial assistants.

The new website is here.