Obtain Problems with “Bizarre Stories” (1923-1954): The Pioneering Pulp Horror Mag Options Authentic Tales by means of Lovecraft, Bradbury & Many Extra

We are living in an generation of style. Flick through TV presentations of the decade to peer what I imply: Hor­ror, sci-fi, fan­ta­sy, tremendous­heroes, futur­is­tic dystopias…. Take a casu­al look on the bur­geon­ing glob­al movie fran­chis­es or mer­chan­dis­ing empires. The place in ear­li­er many years, hor­ror and fan­ta­sy inhab­it­ed the teenage area of B‑motion pictures and com­ic books, they’ve now change into dom­i­nant varieties of pop­u­lar nar­ra­tive for adults. Telling the sto­ry of ways this took place would possibly contain the type of long soci­o­log­i­cal analy­sis on which peo­ple stake aca­d­e­m­ic careers. And to find­ing a con­ve­nient start­ning for that sto­ry wouldn’t be simple.

Do we commence with The Cas­tle of Otran­to, the primary Goth­ic nov­el, which opened the door for such books as Drac­u­l. a. and Franken­stein? Or will we open with Edgar Allan Poe, whose macabre quick sto­ries and poems cap­ti­vat­ed the general public’s imag­i­na­tion and impressed a mil­lion imi­ta­tors? Perhaps. But when we actual­ly wish to know when essentially the most pop­ulist, mass-mar­ket hor­ror and fan­ta­sy started—the sort that impressed tele­vi­sion presentations from the Twi­gentle Zone to the X‑Recordsdata to Tremendous­nat­ur­al to The Stroll­ing Lifeless—we want initially H.P. Love­craft, and with the pulpy magazine­a­zine that pub­lished his strange sto­ries, Bizarre Stories.

Debut­ing in 1923, Bizarre Stories, writes The Pulp Magazine­a­zines Undertaking, professional­vid­ed “a venue for fic­tion, poet­ry and non-fic­tion on most sensible­ics rang­ing from ghost sto­ries to alien inva­sions to the occult.” The magazine­a­zine intro­duced its learn­ers to previous mas­ters like Poe, Bram Stok­er, and H.G. Wells, and to the lat­est bizarre­ness from Love­craft and con­tem­po­raries like August Der­leth, Ash­ton Smith, Cather­ine L. Moore, Robert Bloch, and Robert E. Howard (cre­ator of Conan the Bar­bar­ian).

Within the mag’s first few many years, you wouldn’t have idea it very influ­en­tial. Founder Jacob Clark Chicken­nen­berg­er strug­gled to show a prof­it, and the magazine­a­zine “nev­er had a big cir­cu­l. a.­tion.” However no magazine­a­zine is consistent with­haps wager­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the explo­sion of pulp style fic­tion that swept throughout the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry or even­tu­al­ly gave delivery to the jug­ger­nauts of Mar­vel and DC.

Bizarre Stories is huge­ly settle for­ed by means of cul­tur­al his­to­ri­ans as “the primary pulp magazine­a­zine to spe­cial­ize in tremendous­nat­ur­al and occult fic­tion,” issues out The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion (even though, as we now not­ed earlier than, an difficult to understand Ger­guy name, Der Orchideen­garten, tech­ni­cal­ly were given there ear­li­er). And whilst the magazine­a­zine won’t had been huge­ly pop­u­lar, because the Vel­vet Beneath­flooring was once to the speedy unfold of var­i­ous sub­gen­generation of rock within the sev­en­ties, so was once Bizarre Stories to hor­ror and fan­ta­sy fan­dom. Each­person who learn it both get started­ed their very own magazine­a­zine or fan­membership, or started writ­ing their very own “bizarre fic­tion”—Lovecraft’s time period for the type of tremendous­nat­ur­al hor­ror he churned out for sev­er­al many years.

Fanatics of Love­craft can learn and down­load scans of his sto­ries and let­ters to the edi­tor pub­lished in Bizarre Stories on the hyperlinks beneath, delivered to us by means of The Love­craft eZine (by means of SFFau­dio).

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Bizarre Stories, Sep­tem­ber 1923 – Sep­tem­ber 1923

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Bizarre Stories, Octo­ber 1923 – Octo­ber 1923

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Bizarre Stories, Jan­u­ary 1924 – Jan­u­ary 1924

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Bizarre Stories, March 1924 – March 1924

Impris­oned With The Pharaohs – Might/June/July 1924

Hyp­nos – Might/June/July 1924

The Tomb – Jan­u­ary 1926

The Ter­ri­ble Previous Guy – August 1926

Xmas Hor­ror – Decem­ber 1926

The White Send – March 1927

Let­ter to the edi­tor of Bizarre Stories, Feb­ru­ary 1928 – Feb­ru­ary 1928

The Dun­wich Hor­ror – April 1929

The Tree – August 1938

A laugh­gi From Yug­goth Section XIII: The Port – Sep­tem­ber 1946

A laugh­gi From Yug­goth Section X: The Pigeon-Fly­ers – Jan­u­ary 1947

A laugh­gi From Yug­goth Section XXVI: The Famil­iars – Jan­u­ary 1947

The Town – July 1950

Hallowe’en In A Sub­urb – Sep­tem­ber 1952

Fanatics of ear­ly pulp hor­ror and myth—–or grad stu­dents writ­ing their the­sis at the evo­lu­tion of style fiction—can view and down­load dozens of problems with Bizarre Stories, from the 20s to the 50s, on the hyperlinks beneath:

The Inter­internet Archive has dig­i­tized copies from the Twenties and Thirties.

The Pulp Magazine­a­zine Undertaking hosts HTML, Turn­E-book, and PDF ver­sions of Bizarre Stories problems from 1936 to 1939

This website has PDF scans of indi­vid­ual Bizarre Stories sto­ries from the forties and 50s, includ­ing paintings by means of Love­craft, Ray Brad­bury, Dorothy Fast, Robert Bloch, and Theodor Stur­geon.

And to be informed a lot more concerning the his­to­ry of the magazine­a­zine, you might want to beg, bor­row, or thieve a duplicate of the pri­cy col­lec­tion of essays, The Distinctive Lega­cy of Bizarre Stories: The Evo­lu­tion of Mod­ern Fan­ta­sy and Hor­ror.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the First Hor­ror & Fan­ta­sy Magazine­a­zine, Der Orchideen­garten, and Its Ordinary Artwork­paintings (1919–1921)

Input a Large Archive of Amaz­ing Sto­ries, the International’s First Sci­ence Fic­tion Magazine­a­zine, Introduced in 1926

Down­load 15,000+ Unfastened Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian primarily based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness