Douglas Draa

Weirdbook is one of a few Weird Fiction magazines that persist. Weirdtales is likely the most famous, which emerged in the Pulp Era of the early Twentieth Century and comprised horror, dark fantasy, and Sword & Sorcery; Weirdtales exchanged hands over the decades and was carried/edited in the late 1980’s by John Betancourt and Darrell Schweitzer who both play a role in Weirdbook (Betancourt as Publisher & Executive Editor via Wildside Press, and Schweitzer as an anchoring author). In 1967 W. Paul Ganley edited Weirdbook magazine, its compelling run ceased in 1997 (Back issues available via Ganley’s ebay store). A century from its origins, Weird Fiction still has followers, but its identity is split across myriad markets/venues; in 2015, editor Doug Draa partnered with John Betancourt of Wildside Press to reboot the magazine with Weirdbook #31.

Calling Weirdbook #35 a "magazine" seems to minimize this ~200page book which is more a quality anthology. It has 22 contributing authors (18 stories, and 4 sets of poetry) and there are no reviews/advertising/articles one expects in a magazine. Skelos comes to mind as a contemporary magazine (newly kickstarted) which has those non-story features (also worth subscribing to).

In any event, Weirdbook #35 is entertaining and a great value. Douglas Draa continues to share myriad adventures by new & seasoned authors with milieus running the gamut of weird-dark fantasy. It promises that readers will experience some flavor of horror. Expect equal parts ghost stories, psychedelic trips, gory murders, thoughtful introspections, and battles with the unknown! My favorite is the last entry from Darrell Schweitzer’s The Take and the Teller, but I enjoyed most of these (I star/earmark the ones below that I can’t get out of my head and will reread). I’m usually mired in Sword & Sorcery, and reading Weirdbook allows me to branch out. I encourage others to do the same. Get Weirdbook. Don’t trust my “stars/earmarks” but find your own amongst the menu.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. The Pullulations of the Tribe by Adrian Cole, is gothic noir tale in which the sleuths must free hostages; more fun than horrific

2. Dead of Night by Christopher Riley; very weird and satisfying horror on the high seas; contemporary milieu

3. Mother of my Children by Bruce Priddy: short and weird dose of arachnids

4. John Fultz's Man Who Murders Happiness is accurately titled, poignant, and disturbing

5. * English's Handful of Dust a natural engaging story; could be described as ghost story, but it is more than that … I hate wasps BTW

6. Ken Opperman's series of gothic poems re: “Carpathia” are a nice touch.

7. Poetry “translated” by Fredrick J Mayer called Taken from the Tcho Tcho People’s Holy Codex is Elditch/Lovecraftian verses that didn’t make much sense to me (but I’m no acolyte yet, more advanced students of the occult may understand)

8. Revolution a' la Orange by Paul Lubaczewski has nice historical context (1672 Dutch republic and William III) but too many scene breaks

9. Fiends of the Southern Plains by Patrick Tumblety reads as frontier family faced with night haunts that have more faith than the humans--very dark and satisfying.

10. * Stanley B. Webb's Pyrrhic Crusade is unique Sword ‘n’ Sorcery; the pacing was jarring at first, but the tale came together really well and covers a lot of ground

11. Charles Wilkinson's futuristic Migration of Memories is reminiscent of Philip Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) but a touch more realistic than trippy

12. Maquettes by MacKintosh is WWII, Nordic sea horror. Fun variation.

13. The Dinner Fly poem by James Matthew Byers could be paired with Priddy’s story above

14. In the Shadows by JS Watts, offers a new perspective on being depressed (contemporary horror)

15. * "Lagillle's The Spot starts as a well-done, but typical, zombie apocalypse.... but then shifts into a weird trippy horror. Great stuff.

16. Donald McCarthy's Schism in the Sky has a hermetic pastor encountering his god on an alien planet

17. Janet Harriett's To Roam the Universe, Forgotten and Free is a heart wrenching, contemporary ghost story"

18. Lily Luchesi's Rejuvenate is a short circus horror, which felt like a great outline for a larger novel

19. * Crescentini's Vigil Night is dark fantasy at its finest; enough necromancy and madness for an entire army of knights

20. Dead Clowns for Christmas by L.J. Dopp – mashing up the movies “Killer Clowns form Outerspace” and “Chuckie” yields something like this

21. Jessica Amanda Salmonson offers Strange Jests four fable-like poems with fish/water themes

22. * The Tale and the Teller , by Darrell Schweitzer read like a Lord Dunsany masterpiece. This one is worth the price of the book by itself.

The Tale and the Teller – Darrell Schweitzer, opens this way:

“Who is the teller and to whom is the story told? Listen: there are voices, and the wind, and the sighing of the sea. Listen.

If you make your way a hundred miles up the Merimnian coast, you come to the Cape of Mournful Remembrance, and, beyond that, pass into a curious country, where high tablelands reach to the edge of the sea, the drop off sharply, revealing black, granite cliffs.

Now white ruins protrude out of the earth like, old, broken teeth, but once a great city stood there, called Belshadihphon, a name which means “City of a Thousand Moons.” So it was: in the days of the Empire of the Thousand Moons, it was the capital of half the world. Yet there remain only ghosts, and wisps of wind; and, of nights, when the tide rushes into the caves that honeycomb the whole landscape, you can hear millions of souls crying out, all those who died in the wars that brought the place glory. Not for sorrow, not for vengeance. Just crying, wordlessly, faintly, like tide and wind.

It was called the City of a Thousand Moons because, in the great times, the very gods appeared on brilliant nights, rising out of the sea in their luminous robes, wearing masks like full moons, drifting up the cliffs and onto the tabeland, to walk among the pillared palaces of the great city, some of them even, or so it is claimed in stories like this one, to give counsel to the emperor on his throne.

You can still see the moon-masks. They have turned to stone and lie across the beach and the tableland like so many scattered coins.… (plus d'informations)

Weirdbook Magazine aims to deliver a menu of genres: “fantasy, dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, ghost, horror, heroic fantasy, science fantasy or just plain odd” (quote from their submission requests online). This is fitting because “Weird Fiction” grew out of the pulp magazine era (~1920’s) when the above list was all mashed into one genre. In 1967 W. Paul Ganley edited Weirdbook magazine, its compelling run ceased in 1997 (Back issues available via Ganley’s ebay store). A century from its origins, Weird Fiction still has followers, but its identity is split across myriad markets/venues; in 2015, editor Doug Draa partnered with John Betancourt of Wildside Press to reboot the magazine.

Cover and Themes: Weirdbook 31 contains 19 short stories ( ~10 are traditional length, ~9 are very short/flash fiction) and 8 poems. Many associate Weird Fiction with “Mythos/Lovecraft Horror”; expect some influence, but the net was cast wider. The vast majority of the 19 stories are modern-day ghost/horror stories; less represented are ones with sci-fi elements--which had ~3 entries, and the Sword-n-Sorcery/Fantasy-Myth type--numbering ~2. This mix was unexpected because the Front cover by artist Dusan Kostic appeals to Dark Fantasy readers. The cover arguably leads nicely into the opening story by John R. Fultz, which is one of my favorites of the collection. The back cover by Stephen Fabian was originally planned to be the front cover.

If there is a predominant theme across these disparate stories, it is “Finding Personal Identity.” Greater than half of the stories deal with possession, haunts, or missions around the protagonists defining/dealing-with “who they are.” I enjoyed finding that theme but it was not clearly designed. I would have enjoyed the collection even more if there was an explicit sub-theme. With all that could be ‘Weird Fiction,” having a theme per issue would help readers know when they should delve in.

My personal favorites include: Fultz’s ghostly myth Chivaine, the two wilderness adventures from Riley and Aquilone (Into the Mountains with Mother Old Growth and The Grimlorn Under the Mountain), Schweitzer’s ghost story Boxes of Dead Children, and Laish’s plight of a raven The Jewels That Were Their Eyes. Short-fiction wise, Harriett’s Zucchini Season and Gregg Chamberlain’s Missed It By That Much both made me laugh aloud. On the poetry front, the one that most affected me as Bride of Death by Dave Reeder.

In all, Weirdbook is solidly reborn with #31; looking forward to see how #32 shapes up.

Content / Author/ milieu-tone
19 SHORT STORIES:
Chivaine by John R. Fultz (sword-n-sorcery, ghosts, myths)
Give Me the Daggers by Adrian Cole (modern/gothic noir, silly side of carnivals & crime)
The Music of Bleak Entrainment by Gary A. Braunbeck (modern horror sound - physics)
Into The Mountains with Mother Old Growth by Christian Riley (modern wilderness adventure-weird)
The Grimlorn Under the Mountain by James Aquilone (another modern wilderness adventures- weird)
Dolls by Paul Dale Anderson (modern possession ghost-like witches)
Gut Punch by Jason A. Wyckoff (modern possession – crazy mother and psychologists)
Educational Upgrade by Bret McCormick (modern Possession - Gypsy magic)
Boxes of Dead Children by Darrell Schweitzer (modern Ghost Story)
The Forgotten by D.C. Lozar (very short fiction – modern trippy experience)
Coffee with Dad’s Ghost by Jessica Amanda Salmonson (very short fiction – modern ghost story)
Missed It By That Much by Gregg Chamberlain (very short fiction – very funny zombie/writer theme)
A Clockwork Muse by Erica Ruppert (sci-fi-ish, robots)
The Rookery by Kurt Newton (very short fiction – modern day hunting story)
Wolf of Hunger Wolf of Shame by J. T. Glover (sci-fi-ish, non-humanoid protagonist)
Zucchini Season by Janet Harriett (very short, meet Death herself, she can laugh)
The Jewels That Were Their Eyes by Llanwyre Laish (medieval, non-humanoid protagonist)
The Twins by Kevin Strange (very short modern day, resurrection gone bad)
Princess or Warrior? by S.W. Lauden (sci-fi-ish, very short modern day)

8 POEMS:
The City in the Sands by Ann K. Schwader
NecRomance by Frederick J. Mayer
Walpurgis Eve by Kyle Opperman
Sonnets of an Eldritch Bent by W. H. Pugmire
Castle Csejthe by Ashley Dioses
The Shrine by Wade German
Bride of Death by Dave Reeder
Modern Primitive by Chad Hensley… (plus d'informations)