Weird Tales August 1937: Edmond Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman & H P Lovecraft

We just read four stories from the October 1937 issue of Farnsworth Wright's famous magazine, Weird Tales, tales of monsters and torturers by world-bestriding colossus H. P. Lovecraft and three other important SF figures: Manly Wade Wellman, Howard Wandrei and David H. Keller.  Another major figure in the history of SF appeared in that issue, one whose influence perhaps rivals even HPL's--empire-building editor Donald A. Wollheim!  Wollheim had a letter printed in that October issue in which he praised the August issue of the same year, noting in particular the Henry Kuttner story ("superb") and the Manly Wade Wellman contribution ("a honey.")  We've already tackled Kuttner's "The Jest of Droom-Avista" (I wasn't crazy about it myself) but today we'll read the Wellman and stories by other writers we here at MPorcius Fiction Log find fascinating.

"World of the Dark Dwellers" by Edmond Hamilton (1937)

Here we have a rare story by Edmond Hamilton, one not reprinted until 2021, when it was included in a small press anthology edited by D. M. Ritzlin entitled Planetary Adventures; "World of the Dark Dwellers" appears there alongside such stories as Henry Kuttner's "The Eyes of Thar," which I have already blogged about, and Poul Anderson's "The Temple of Earth," which I certainly expect to read some day.

"World of the Dark Dwellers" follows a traditional Edgar Rice Burroughs template, but on an abbreviated schedule, the story being only 21 pages.  Our narrator, Eric, is a college student studying physics in New York City and scion of a wealthy Connecticut family.  His father raised him in an eccentric fashion, from his earliest days tutoring him in a strange language apparently unrelated to any language Eric has ever otherwise encountered, insisting he learn swordsmanship, and demanding he devote his university career to the study of the hard sciences.  As the story begins, Eric rushes from NYC to his father's deathbed; Dad gives him a necklace from which hangs an unusual ornament, directs him to a scroll in a safe, and reveals the family secret--Eric is the descendent of the king of another planet!  That king was a genius scientist and beloved of the people, but he was overthrown by traitors allied with subterranean monsters, and fled to Earth using his space warp teleporter machine.  Over many generations each of the exiled king's descendants has taught his own son the tongue of the world of which he is rightful king, the planet Krann, and hoped his son would be a scientist masterful enough to follow the directions on the scroll for creating a new teleporter and use it to get back to Krann and engineer a restoration.

Sure enough, Eric builds the teleporter, straps on a sword, and teleports to Krann.  (Why not bring a Colt .45 or a Browning Automatic Rifle as well?  I mean, he's expecting a fight, isn't he?)  On Krann, in a hideous jungle of black and red vegetation that writhes under an ocher sky, Eric fights carnivorous tentacle trees and meets some outlaws, supporters of Eric's own exiled dynasty.  Immediately our heroes are captured by the soldiers of the usurpers, and carried to the capital on the soldiers' pterosaur-like mounts to stand before the usurper king, a grossly obese man with oiled and curled hair.  

This fat monarch regularly makes delivery of a bunch of human sacrifices to the mysterious subterranean monsters that backstop his unpopular rule, and Eric and his friends are scheduled to join this month's shipment.  They are liberated by anti-regime forces who have heard of Eric's arrival and are massing for a major uprising.  Eric takes command of the uprising, and the government falls, but the Earth-born hero is captured in the fighting along with an attractive woman who is a senior member of the pro-Eric forces.  The usurper king flees underground with a small bodyguard and his captives, expecting that the dwellers below will arm him with superweapons to retake the kingdom he has just lost.

The Dwellers turn out to be worm people ten feet log and two feet thick with vestigial human faces and arms.  Gross!  These freaks are the descendants of humans who took refuge underground from war on the surface; over the centuries their race evolved into this worm form and also developed a severe vulnerability to sunlight.  The worm people have all kinds of advanced technology, and augment their own brains with portions of the brains of those who are offered to them in sacrifice by the illegitimate monarchy above.

Eric and the woman are about to make an involuntary contribution to the vermiform brain trust but then Eric buys them some time by offering to show the worm people how to build a teleporter like the one that brought him here.  Excited at the prospect of plundering brains from all over the galaxy, the Dwellers build a big teleporter at Eric's direction.  But Eric has tricked them--when they activate the machine it teleports the roof of the cavern away, and under direct sunlight the villains are reduced to shriveled black husks.  Their entire race has been exterminated in mere seconds!  Eric and the obese usurper king fight, and Eric is the victor.  He will now claim his throne and the hand of that woman in marriage.

A pedestrian adventure thing; filler, but competent filler that includes some fun little touches like the idea of augmenting your brain with pieces of somebody else's and of course worm people.  

"The Terrible Parchment" by Manly Wade Wellman (1937)

"The Terrible Parchment" is dedicated to the recently deceased H. P. Lovecraft.  It is a somewhat jokey meta/recursive story set in the real world, the main character Wellman himself and featuring as minor offscreen characters Otis Adelbert Kline, Robert Bloch and Clark Ashton Smith.  But the horror elements are actually quite good, so I'm giving it a thumbs up.

A mysterious figure sells a copy of Weird Tales to Wellman's wife, even though the next issue is not due to be retailed yet.  A sheet of ancient scaly hide with writing on it falls from the magazine; this document is repulsively "dank" and "clammy"  to the touch.  Soon the sheet proves to be alive, and the Wellmans struggle against it as it tries to force them to read its text--a full reading of the text, it seems, will summon ancient malevolent beings with no doubt cataclysmic consequences.

Wellman does a great job of describing the escalating behavior of the monster and the couple's response and resistance.  A strong performance.

"The Terrible Parchment" would be reprinted in the 1977 fanzine HPL, which you can read at the link.  This artifact is worth a look, including as it does articles by people like Fritz Leiber and Robert Bloch, an interview with Frank Belknap Long, and illustrations by the likes of Richard Corben and Stephen Fabian.  "The Terrible Parchment" can also be found in multiple Wellman collections and the several editions of Richard M. Price's anthology The Necronomicon.

"The Statement of Randolph Carter" by H. P. Lovecraft (1920)

As a "Weird Story Reprint," the August '37 issue of Weird Tales presents "The Statement of Randolph Carter," which first appeared 17 years earlier in The Vagrant and was then printed in a 1925 issue of Weird Tales.  This is a short one that lacks the specific detail about what is going on that we got from the last Lovecraft reprint we read, "The Shunned House."  I am reading the story in my copy of Arkham House's At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels.

The story is the written testimonial of the title character, who is being interrogated by the authorities because he is believed to be the last man to see and speak to a Harley Warren.  Carter's memory is fuzzy and full of gaps because of the traumatic experience he has been through.  Warren was a student of the occult, with a library of rare and crazy books in a variety of languages; one in particular he recently acquired from a contact in India seems to be the key to his disappearance, but it vanished along with him and can offer no clues.  Carter was Warren's closest friend and a fellow student of the occult, but while Warren was bold, Carter is apparently a "bundle of nerves," at least that was the opinion of Warren, a man who seems to have been prone to using slang and cliches.  (Warren's dialogue may remind readers my age of one of Michael Jackson's immortal singles.)

The night of Warren's disappearance, Warren and Carter went to a strange cemetery the police have not been able to locate, a cemetery that seems impossibly old, one that has been left unmaintained for centuries, its monuments and memorials in a state of extreme decay.  They uncovered a tomb, revealing a staircase and unleashing a horrible smell.  Warren descended alone, trailing behind him a telephone wire--he brought into the abyss with him one handset, leaving the other with the narrator.  From down in the depths Warren reports that he is seeing something astonishing but indescribable, offers a final farewell to Carter and warns him to immediately cover up the tomb and run for his life.  A stunned Carter stays on the line, entreating some response from his friend, until a "gelatinous" voice calls him a fool and says that Warren is dead.

This one leaves a lot to the imagination.  What did Warren see down there?  Had he stepped onto another planet or into another universe?  Are we to think a gloating monster has slain Warren, or is the alien voice, which uses English, after all, that of a transformed Warren, an immortal Warren now contemptuous of Carter and all of mundane ignorant humanity, or a Warren integrated into an alien intelligence?  Has something horrible happened to Warren, or has he welcomed his fate, and warned Carter away because he knows his friend of the "frail nerves" can't handle the wonderful esoteric reality he has embraced?  "The Statement of Randolph Carter" offers an occasion for Lovecraft readers to consider not only these questions, but also whether they prefer the long detailed histories of such stories as At The Mountains of Madness and the aforementioned "The Shunned House" that paint a coherent and complete picture of what is happening or the sort of brief and mysterious narrative we get here.

(I'm giving "The Statement of Randolph Carter" a thumbs up, of course, but I think I prefer things like "The Shunned House.")  

In 1949, Wollheim would include "The Statement of Randolph Carter" in the tenth issue of his magazine Avon Fantasy Reader, and it has recently appeared in a themed British anthology of stories about "weird media."  

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An entertaining trio of stories today.  Three more fragments of weird history await us in the next episode of MPorcius Fiction Log.