The Fantasy Fan November 1933 Read online

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  THE FANTASY FAN

  The Fans' Own Magazine

  Editor: Charles D. Hornig(Managing Editor: Wonder Stories)

  Published 10 cents a copyMonthly $1.00 per year

  137 West Grand Street, Elizabeth, New Jersey

  Volume 1 November, 1933 Number 3

  OUR READERS SAY

  "The second number looks to me even more interesting than the first.Smith's tale was splendid. The remunerative editors were certainlyfools to turn it down. Glad to see that a number of readers areshowing up Ackerman. People like Ackerman are peculiarlyridiculous--one can plainly see that this type of thing is merelyegotistic and a gesture to call attention to themselves. However, mostpeople out-grow this stage. Glad you were able to get something fromyoung Barlow--he's distinctly worth encouraging." H. P. Lovecraft

  Clark Ashton Smith informs us that Astounding Stories has justaccepted one of his tales, "The Demon of the Flowers," and Weird Taleshas just taken "The Tomb Spawn." He tells us that we will find asurprise in connection with his story, "The Weaver in the Vault" inthe January, 1934, Weird Tales.

  "Your editorial was a corker, the various departments okay, andSmith's yarn was worthy of Weird Tales." Allen Glasser. Mr. Glasser isattempting to make a living at writing--and isn't doing so bad at it.The editor prefers to call him "the Arthur J. Burks of the youngergeneration." He has sold stories to dozens of magazines, includingscience fiction.

  "The second issue was swell. I'd like to see more stories by ClarkAshton Smith in future issues of the mag. Yep, 20 pages of excellentarticles and stories."--Ted Lutwin. Clark Ashton Smith is a regularcontributor to THE FANTASY FAN.

  Kenneth B. Pritchard, although he liked the second number immensely,reminds us that we omitted several things that we promised in theSeptember issue. Here's the reason: many articles were crowded out ofthis number, and others were postponed to make room for a number ofmuch better articles which came in the last minute. Everythingpromised will be published in good time, though.

  Lloyd Fowler wants us to keep using the grade of paper that we are,instead of cutting down the number of pages in order to afford abetter grade.

  "THE FANTASY FAN is starting out well."--Ralph Milne Farley

  From A. Merritt, whom everybody knows, we hear that he had started asequel to "Thru The Dragon Glass," but abandoned it because he didn'tlike to write sequels. Our belief is that great authors don't need towrite sequels.

  SUPERNATURAL HORROR

  IN LITERATURE

  by H. P. Lovecraft

  (Copyright 1927 by W. Paul Cook)

  Part Two

  Because we remember pain and the menace of death more vividly thanpleasure, and because our feelings toward the beneficent aspects ofthe unknown have from the first been captured and formalised byconventional religious rituals, it has fallen to the lot of the darkerand more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in ourpopular supernatural folklore. The tendency, too, is naturallyenhanced by the fact that uncertainty and danger are closely allied;thus making any kind of an unknown world, a world of peril and evilpossibilities. When to this sense of fear and evil the inevitablefascination of wonder and curiosity is superadded, there is born acomposite body of keen emotion and imaginative provocation whosevitality must of necessity endure as long as the human race itself.Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with mindssensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought ofthe hidden and fathomless worlds or strange life which may pulsate inthe gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe inunholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.

  With this foundation, no one need wonder at the existence of aliterature of cosmic fear. It has always existed, and always willexist; and no better evidence of its tenacious vigour can be citedthan the impulse which now and then drives writers of totally oppositeleanings to try their hands at it in isolated tales, as if todischarge from their minds certain phantasmal shapes which wouldotherwise haunt them. Thus did Dickens write several eerie narratives;Browning the hideous poem, "Childe Roland"; Henry James, "The Turn ofthe Screw"; Dr. Holmes, the subtle novel "Elsie Venner"; F. MarionCrawford, "The Upper Berth" and a number of other examples; Mrs.Charlotte Perkins Gilman, social worker, "The Yellow Wall Paper";whilst the humorist, W. W. Jacobs, produced that able melodramatic bitcalled "The Monkey's Paw."

  (Continued next month)

  SEQUELS--BY POPULAR DEMAND

  by Walt Z. Russjuchi

  Part Three--Conclusion

  Science Wonder Stories (now Wonder Stories) published a 2-part serialby Edwards in 1930, "A Rescue from Jupiter," and its sequel, "TheReturn from Jupiter," appeared the following year.

  Many characters have been so liked that their author creators havewritten a number of sequel-stories around them in which they areplunged into a series of exciting adventures. The most popular areKeller's Taine of San Francisco, Meek's Dr. Bird, Quinn's Jules deGrandin, Gilmore's Hawk Carse, Burroughs' Tarzan & John Carter,Wright's Commander Hanson, and Fezandie's Dr. Hackensaw.

  Of course, it is realized that only the surface of this subject hasbeen skimmed, but if the reader is further interested in sequels, hemay idle away many an interesting hour considering why stories havesequels, and what stories should have them.

  The Other Gods

  by H. P. Lovecraft

  Atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and sufferno man to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they onceinhabited; but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes ofrock and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains tillnow only the last remains. When they left their older peaks they tookwith them all signs of themselves, save once, it is said, when theyleft a carven image on the face of the mountain which they calledNgranek.

  But now they have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath in the coldwaste where no man treads, and are grown stern, having no higher peakwhereto to flee at the coming of men. They are grown stern, and whereonce they suffered men to displace them, they now forbid men to come;or coming, to depart. It is well for men that they know not of Kadathin the cold waste, else they would seek injudiciously to scale it.

  Sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still nightthe peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to playin the olden way on remembered slopes. Men have felt the tears of thegods on white-capped Thurai, though they have thought it rain; andhave heard the sighs of the gods in the plaintive dawn-winds ofLerion. In cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel, and wise cottershave legends that keep them from certain high peaks at night when itis cloudy, for the gods are not lenient as of old.

  In Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, once dwelt an old manavid to behold the gods of earth; a man deeply learned in the sevencryptical books of earth; and familiar with the Pnakotic Manuscriptsof distant and frozen Lomar. His name was Barzai the Wise, and thevillagers tell of how he went up a mountain on the night of thestrange eclipse.

  Barzai knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comingsand goings, and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemedhalf a god himself. It was he who wisely advised the burgesses ofUlthar when they passed their remarkable law against the slaying ofcats, and who first told the young priest Atal where it is that blackcats go at midnight on St. John's Eve. Barzai was learned in the loreof earth's gods, and had gained a desire to look upon their faces. Hebelieved that his great secret knowledge of gods could shield him fromtheir wrath, so resolved to go up to the summit of high and rockyHatheg-Kla on a night when he knew
the gods would be there.

  Hatheg-Kla is far in the stony desert beyond Hatheg, for which it isnamed, and rises like a rock statue in a silent temple. Around itspeak the mists play always mournfully, for mists are the memories ofthe gods, and the gods loved Hatheg-Kla when they dwelt upon it in theold days. Often the gods of earth visit Hatheg-Kla in their ships ofcloud, casting pale vapours over the slopes as they dancereminiscently on the summit under a clear moon. The villagers ofHatheg say it is ill to climb Hatheg-Kla at any time, and deadly toclimb it by night when pale vapours hide the summit and the moon; butBarzai heeded them not when he came from neighboring Ulthar with theyoung priest Atal, who was his disciple. Atal was only the son of aninnkeeper, and was sometimes afraid; but Barzai's father had been alandgrave who dwelt in an ancient castle, so he had no commonsuperstition in his blood, and only laughed at the fearful cotters.

  Barzai and Atal went out of Hatheg into the stony desert despite theprayers of peasants, and talked of earth's gods by their campfires atnight. Many days they travelled, and from afar saw lofty Hatheg-Klawith his aureole of mournful mist. On the thirteenth day they reachedthe mountain's lonely base, and Atal spoke of his fears. But Barzaiwas old and learned and had no fears, so led the way boldly up theslope that no man had scaled since the time of Sansu, who is writtenof with fright in the mouldy Pnakotic Manuscripts.

  The way was rocky, and made perilous by chasms, cliffs, and fallingstones. Later it grew cold and snowy; and Barzai and Atal oftenslipped and fell as they hewed and plodded upward with staves andaxes. Finally the air grew thin, and the sky changed colour, and theclimbers found it hard to breathe; but still they toiled up and up,marvelling at the strangeness of the scene and thrilling at thethought of what would happen on the summit when the moon was out andthe pale vapours spread around. For three days they climbed higher,and higher toward the roof of the world; then they camped to wait forthe clouding of the moon.

  For four nights no clouds came, and the moon shone down cold throughthe thin mournful mists around the silent pinnacle. Then on the fifthnight, which was the night of the full moon, Barzai saw some denseclouds far to the north, and stayed up with Atal to watch them drawnear. Thick and majestic they sailed, slowly and deliberately onward;ranging themselves round the peak high above the watchers, and hidingthe moon and the summit from view. For a long hour the watchers gazed,whilst the vapours swirled and the screen of clouds grew thicker andmore restless. Barzai was wise in the lore of earth's gods, andlistened hard for certain sounds, but Atal felt the chill of thevapours and the awe of the night, and feared much. And when Barzaibegan to climb higher and beckon eagerly, it was long before Atalwould follow.

  So thick were the vapours that the way was hard, and though Atalfollowed on at last, he could scarce see the grey shape of Barzai onthe dim slope above in the clouded moonlight. Barzai forged very farahead, and seemed despite his age to climb more easily than Atal;fearing not the steepness that began to grow too great for any save astrong and dauntless man, nor pausing at wide black chasms that Atalcould scarce leap. And so they went up wildly over rocks and gulfs,slipping and stumbling, and sometimes awed at the vastness andhorrible silence of bleak ice pinnacles and mute granite steeps.

  Very suddenly Barzai went out of Atal's sight, scaling a hideous cliffthat seemed to bulge outward and block the path for any climber notinspired of earth's gods. Atal was far below, and planning what heshould do when he reached the place, when curiously he noticed thatthe light had grown strong, as if the cloudless peak and moonlitmeeting-place of the gods were very near. And as he scrambled ontoward the bulging cliff and litten sky he felt fears more shockingthan any he had known before. Then through the high mists he heard thevoice of unseen Barzai shouting wildly in delight:

  "I have heard the gods! I have heard earth's gods singing in revelryon Hatheg-Kla! The voices of earth's gods are known to Barzai theProphet! The mists are thin and the moon is bright, and I shall seethe gods dancing wildly on Hatheg-Kla that they loved in youth. Thewisdom of Barzai hath made him greater than earth's gods, and againsthis will their spells and barriers are as naught; Barzai will beholdthe gods, the proud gods, the secret gods, the gods of earth who spurnthe sight of man!"

  Atal could not hear the voices Barzai heard, but he was now close tothe bulging cliff and scanning it for footholds. Then he heardBarzai's voice grow shriller and louder:

  "The mist is very thin, and the moon casts shadows on the slope; thevoice of earth's gods art high and wild, and they fear the coming ofBarzai the Wise, who is greater than they.... The moon's lightflickers, as earth's gods dance against it; I shall see the dancingforms of the gods that leap and howl in the moonlight.... The light isdimmer and the gods are afraid...."

  Whilst Barzai was shouting these things Atal felt a spectral change inall the air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws; forthough the way was steeper than ever, the upward path was now grownfearsomely easy, and the bulging cliff proved scarce an obstacle whenhe reached it and slid perilously up its convex face. The light of themoon had strangely failed, and as Atal plunged upward through themists he heard Barzai the Wise shrieking in the shadows:

  "The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror inthe sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no booksof men or of earth's gods.... There is unknown magic on Hatheg-Kla, forthe screams of the frightened gods have turned to laughter, and theslopes of ice shoot up endlessly into the black heavens whither I amplunging.... Hei! Hei! At last! In the dim light I behold the gods ofearth!"

  And now Atal, slipping dizzily up over inconceivable steeps, heard inthe dark a loathsome laughing, mixed with such a cry as no man elseever heard save in the Phlegethon of unrelatable nightmares; a crywherein reverberated the horror and anguish of a haunted lifetimepacked into one atrocious moment:

  "The Other gods! The Other gods! The gods of the outer hells thatguard the feeble gods of earth.... Look away.... Go back.... Do notsee! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses.... Thatcursed, that damnable pit.... Merciful gods of earth, I am fallinginto the sky!"

  And as Atal shut his eyes and stopped his eyes and stopped his earsand tried to jump downward against the frightful pull from unknownheights, there resounded on Hatheg-Kla that terrible peal of thunderwhich awaked the good cotters of the plains and the honest burgessesof Hatheg, Nir and Ulthar, and caused them to behold through theclouds that strange eclipse of the moon that no book ever predicted.And when the moon came out at last Atal was safe on the lower snows ofthe mountain without sight of earth's gods, or of the Other gods.

  Now it is told in the mouldy Pnakotic Manuscripts that Sansu foundnaught but wordless ice and rock when he did climb Hatheg-Kla in theyouth of the world. Yet when the men of Ulthar and Nir and Hathegcrushed their fears and scaled that haunted steep by day in search ofBarzai the Wise, they found graven in the naked stone of the summit acurious and Cyclopean symbol fifty cubits wide, as if the rock hadbeen riven by some titanic chisel. And the symbol was like to one thatlearned men have discerned in those frightful parts of the PnakoticManuscripts which were too ancient to be read. This they found.

  Barzai the Wise they never found, nor could the holy priest Atal everbe persuaded to pray for his soul's repose. Moreover, to this day thepeople of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg fear eclipses, and pray by nightwhen pale vapours hide the mountain-top and the moon. And above themists on Hatheg-Kla, earth's gods sometimes dance reminiscently; forthey know they are safe, and love to come from unknown Kadath in shipsof cloud and play in the olden way, as they did when earth was new andmen not given to the climbing of inaccessible places.

  * * * * *

  INFORMATION

  If you are puzzled by any fact connected with fantasy fiction, sendyour questions in to us, and we will do our best to answer them. Anyquestion sent in by you and not answered in this issue was receivedtoo late and will appear in our next issue.

  STARTLING FACT

 
Many readers have asked the Editor where they could secure such booksas the "Necronomicon," "The Book of Eibon" and other books of medievalsorcery mentioned in the stories of Clark Ashton Smith, H. P.Lovecraft, and other authors of weird tales.

  Upon these requests, the Editor wrote to Clark Ashton Smith, inquiringof him whether these books had been translated into English as yet ornot, whereupon, Mr. Smith informs us as follows:

  "'Necronomicon,' 'Book of Eibon,' etc., I am sorry to say, are allfictitious. Lovecraft invented the first, I the second. Howard, Ibelieve, fathered the German work on the Nameless Cults. It is reallytoo bad that they don't exist as objective, bonafide compilations ofthe elder and darker Lore! I have been trying to remedy this, in somesmall measure, by cooking up a whole chapter of Eibon. It is stillunfinished, and I am now entitling it 'The Coming of the WhiteWorm'.... This worm mentioned in Eibon is Rlim Shaikorth, and comesfrom beyond the pole on a strange, gigantic iceberg with a temperatureof absolute zero."

  We'll bet that most Smith and Lovecraft fans really believed in theexistence of these books (as did the editor). A reader informs us thatin the July issue of Weird Tales, these books were mentioned in threestories.

  This incident only goes to prove that Smith and Lovecraft have thegift of creating the "illusion of reality," the phrase defined in the1924 Anniversary Number of Weird Tales.

  * * * * *

  Urge your friends to subscribe to TFF.

  ANNALS OF THE JINNS

  by R. H. Barlow

  2--The Shadow From Above

  A midsummer day in the hamlet of Droom. The villagers went about theirvarious tasks, and within the tiny market-square the spice-vendors andthe people from the hills with their exotic burdens of gay fruitscreated a pleasant hum of busy occupation. Sleeping dogs laycontentedly in the warm sunlight, and the squat beasts of burdenambled about peacefully upon their six clawless paws, their grotesquefaces slit with toad-like grins. All was, no one could have denied,entirely calm.