Page:Weird Tales v34n04 (1939-10).djvu/121
Readers, here is news of two exceptionally fine serials that will appear soon in Weird Tales. One of them, The Twilight of the Gods, by Edmond Hamilton, deals with the Norse gods as real persons instead of deities. It is different from anything you have ever read before, and will hold your breathless interest to the last fascinating episode. The other serial, A Million Years in the Future, is by Thomas P. Kelley, author of The Last Pharaoh and I Found Cleopatra. It is undoubtedly the most exciting interplanetary story ever published. Weird to its very core, it deals with the Nine Terrible Sisters, and the ravening Wolves of Worra, and paints an unforgettable picture of the great god Time as he sits spellbound in his black tower on the Moon of Madness.
A New Writing Technique
Miss Leah Drake writes from Owensboro, Kentucky: "The August WT was remarkable for two features which your writers have been working toward for some time: character-study, and a superlative style of writing. I'll take my stand (in Dixie and anywhere else) that for distinguished writing, WT authors can give cards and spades to any of their brotherhood in the 'slicks'. Take Spawn, for example: here is a completely new style of writing. Reminiscent of Charles Fort's, the peculiarly gripping style of this story was something new in the work of putting words together—not an easy feat! Mr. Miller has read his Bible to considerable advantage, for certain sentences, and groupings of words, are Old Testament if I ever read it (which I certainly have!) Then take Apprentice Magician, which was humorous in style, and yet none the less weird and thrilling for that. A comic ghost-story is usually very dull, and certainly not thrilling—yet this story was a true weird tale and the dry drollery of its 'Li'l Abner' hero did not detract from its grotesquery. Mr. Price in some strange way managed to blend two usually irreconcilable elements. Let's hear more about that cute li'l ol' country boy! Giants in the Sky reveals yet a third new idea in WT stories: the entirely logical notion that all unearthly and alien beings are not evil and hostile to man. Long's creatures were outré and unhuman, but in them, as in those of our own race, were the elements of pity and tenderness, and a not-unkind curiosity resembling that of our own scientists. The story was touching, poignant—and so sane! For certainly the denizens of other spheres have the same emotions as we do, seeing that one Creator designed us all! Perhaps the best example of the first two elements of writing that I mentioned—character-study and distinguished style—is the story The Valley Was Still. That was a perfect piece of writing! There was not only the necessary weird element in it—there was an ideal portrait of a Southern soldier; there was the eternal conflict between honor and—the easiest way. And honor won. It was a story that I would place among the great short stories of the world. It had more than a pure style (all Wellman's stories have that)—it had beauty. . . . For these new features of WT stories—for the issues that get better and better each month—let us all give a hur-