This thread is about the quarterly magazine Weird Tales, edited and directed by IMWAN's own Stephen Segal (Stephen Strange). I'm a subscriber, and this book is the bee's knees.

These are things I like about it generally (I'll post about the latest issue in the next post):

1. It's a quarterly magazine, which means the annual expense of subscribing is low, and there is plenty of time to absorb the aura of each issue before another one comes out.

2. The non-fiction articles are the best -- lots of stuff about classic writers like Lovecraft and Poe, and informative articles about a whole host of oddities in this world. For example, the latest issue has a one-pager about some dude who's art is made to look like authentic artifacts of the gross and the occult (like a werewolf embryo in a jar with a diary page).

3. It's one of the few sources of new fiction short stories. Such magazines are dwindling. If you don't count the literary journals, it's just about down to Analog, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov's, Ellery Queen, and the weekly short story in New Yorker.

4. It has art, as in visual art, sprinkled throughout the pages. Sure, it's twisted, horrific, and weird, but everybody should gaze upon some new art all the time.

The latest issue (Fall 2009) has two Poe articles (one a series of authors telling how he influenced them the other a short piece about all the places the poor guy lived), a Lovecraft article, the usual slate of new fiction, and a great interview with a relatively unknown author who's been hired to write this book:



It's neat to live in a world where this book exists. Apparently, it's the first horror book set in the Star Wars universe.

Any other readers of Weird Tales out there?

Glad you dug the latest issue, Jay!

Yes, this. The magazine consistently has some excellent NF features. I virtually always turn to them first. I appreciate getting some strong features right next to new fiction.

Because it is dense with content and quarterly, Weird Tales is a slow read for me. It can last for months. A story here, a feature there, scattered in between my other reading. It's a magazine to savor, much like the best music magazine in the business, The Big Takeover.

I know Stephen isn't editing Weird Tales anymore, but this kinda sucks:

http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/2011/08/2 ... ird-tales/

I read this, it wasn't that bad.

We'll see what happens. Certainly Marvin Kaye is a long-respected anthologist of fantasy and horror who adores the classic Weird Tales, and he's also a good writer and a nice man. Equally certainly, I'm sorry his team doesn't seem to grasp what a good idea it would be keep the brilliant and devoted Ann VanderMeer around, after she (and I) spent four years rebuilding the magazine to the point where it was once again a respected, modern, genre publication.