*Checks wristmeter, logs the levels*
"Sir! We have detected a violent geekyness rise in your reality levels! Sir! Respond, please!!"
There is so much of my soul that I have sold off for whatever reason, chipping away to gain whatever useless trinket that fell apart three hours after the warranty expired, that I'll have to pay it all off in shifts.
However, today I received something that I have been waging a small war of attrition for the past four months to acquire, and I truly think it's worth it:
The first issue of Asimov's Sci-Fi Adventure magazine, Fall 1978. It's not the oldest that I have, nor the most valuable, but it's a worthy addition to my ranks of various Sci-Fi rags that I have collected for the past 20 years.
A lot of the greats pitched in to help their old pal Isaac get his baby off the ground: Poul Anderson, Alan Dean Foster, Asimov himself throws a nibble in as well. Even Harry Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" makes an appearance.
The mag itself is in 8.5 x 11 size, and the text is huge, easy to read. Great graphics, everything was still uninfluenced by Star Wars at this point so you could get some really good original art for a song, probably. Oh, and that cover? It comes as a fold-out 11x17 full color poster as well.
*SIGH*
They just don't make 'em like that anymore, kid. Which is kinda why I collect them. I get some ideas in their purest form out of these old treasures. I love reading them, the way they used to write, the syntax...I even love the smell of old books. That musty, earthy smell you get from a tome that's been on the shelf longer than you've been alive. I can't help but feel transported back to that time, before there was a space shuttle, before there was the internet, before home computers were the norm. Hell, in some parts of America, that was before color T.V.!!
Anyway, I just wanted to -
...Oh yes. I forgot to tell you. One other author makes an early appearance in his career on these pages as well. The story's not bad, a bit rough around the edges, but the kid shows some potential. It's called "Where Now Is Thy Brother, Epimethius?" Maybe a bit long in the tooth, but hell, another 5 years in the biz back in those days, who knows WHAT he'll turn out?
Seems like a nice enough guy. Has a modicum of talent.
Fella by the name of Perry...
5 comments:
Hmm. Maybe I should send you a copy of the lost issue of Weird Tales, the winter of '85.
They didn't have any money -- not even enough to redeem the magazine from the printer when the editor went to collect it. The story goes, the printer refused to let the editor have it without cash on the barrel head, but that when the phone rang and the printer when to get it, the editor grabbed a box and hauled ass. Rest got pulped, and all the copies that exist of that issue -- which is pretty awful across the board -- came from that single box.
The cover art was a direct steal from a lingerie magazine, with a tentacle added ...
Probably apocryphal, that printer/editor tale, but it's a good story, and I like it.
Editor, having no money to pay his writers, sent them extra copies of the issue. I have nine mint copies, never been opened, in the bottom of the gun safe, and last time I looked, they were going for about a hundred bucks a pop ...
My story was about a were-alligator ...
Poor Weird Tales, that rag has gone through Soooooo much. Bankruptcy, poor editorial work, hell, it's been "revived" that I know of 5 times (the current iteration seems to be doing well, thanks to the web).
All the greats were in Weird Tales. Lovecraft, Bloch, Robert E. Howard. Problem was, they submitted stuff that the editor (at the time) thought was too weird (irony) and rejected it. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" is one of them, and now it's so famous that Guellermo del Toro is making a movie about it. They just never seemed to make the connection that an avant garde magazine should contain something DIFFERENT than what you could find elsewhere.
Here's a bit of trivia for you: After they fired the first editor, they actually offered the job to Lovecraft, who refused. By this time he was famous & didn't need it. Snooze you lose, I guess.
The new version isn't bad, in fact the stories are on average better than the ones in Science Fiction Analog. But for some reason it just doesn't cut it for me.
So you got some copies of that '85 fiasco? Yowza. Here I thought I was really scoring on this one.
Wait a sec, A Were-Alligator?
...Only a Louisiana boy could think of that.
"Here's a bit of trivia for you: After they fired the first editor, they actually offered the job to Lovecraft, who refused. By this time he was famous & didn't need it. Snooze you lose, I guess."
Do you have a source on that? Everything I read about it indicated that Lovecraft passed on it because
1. It meant moving to Chicago (or was it Cleveland?) and, IIRC, he was married in NYC at the time; and
2. WT was already in trouble back then and he didn't think it would last much longer, meaning it would be a bad move for him, stranding him when it failed.
Of course, the editor who got the job (Farnsworth Wright) revived the magazine and bought more of Lovecraft's stories so it's probably a good thing for fans of HPL's work that he refused it.
Hi Jas, thanks for your post!
As a matter of fact, I have three sources on Lovecraft's era with Weird Tales, and the reasons you cited were just as valid and probable, I just didn't make them the point of the trivia fact.
However, I think that what he SAID and what he MEANT were two very different things. He moved to NY because of his new wife, and after a short time (I don't think anyone really knows exactly how long, to be honest) he grew to hate it. By the time he was offered the job at Weird Tales, he was no longer young, married, in love nor enthralled with his prospects in NY. In fact, he couldn't find work at all. He had some family back in Providence, and they had places for him to stay so that's where he moved back to.
I don't think he wanted to admit that he couldn't afford Chicago, and might have been more than a little apprehensive about moving to ANOTHER bustling city chock full of the immigrants he couldn't stand, and another completely unfamiliar environment. He knew and loved Providence, and that was his life. In fact, after he left NY and was alone again was when his abilities kicked in full throttle & we got some of his best known stuff today.
This is just my opinion from what I know about him, and although I believe myself to be knowledgeable about Lovecraft, I admit I am no expert. It could have been all of your reasons & none of mine. It could be that we both are wrong. I sort of put myself in his shoes (difficult, since I don't speak 8 dozen non existent alien languages) and wondered what a person with his self-actualization would do in that position. That's all. Nobody has actually told me that he did so-and-so for such-and-such reason, and it's not indicated in any of his letters that are publicly available.
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