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During a web update yesterday at our publisher’s online store, wildsidepress.com, many of the Weird Tales shopping links were inadvertantly broken, including the links to purchase subscriptions and back issues. We apologize for the inconvenience — we’re working now to correct the problem.

All of us at Weird Tales wish a very happy 80th birthday to our editor emeritus, George H. Scithers!

You’d think our favorite engineer-turned-editor — not to mention our wise mentor and good friend — would at least consider relaxing a little. After all, in the ’60s he won Hugos for his fanzine Amra and introduced the tradition of the modern Worldcon Masquerade; in the ’70s he won a couple more Hugos as the founding editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; in the ’80s he took the helm at Amazing Stories; and in the ’90s he shared a World Fantasy Award with Darrell Schweitzer for relaunching Weird Tales. But George has kept the red pen close at hand through the 21st century thus far; his second Cat Tales feline fantasy anthology is forthcoming soon from Wildside Press.

George has been a bit under the weather lately, and his local sf convention (Capclave, in the D.C. suburbs) is likely to be the only con he gets out to this year — so we suspect any birthday greetings you’d like to send him at gscithers(AT)wildsidepress(DOT)com would be particularly appreciated!

We are proud to announce that Weird Tales fiction editor Ann VanderMeer will be a guest of honor at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, honoring the 200th birthday of WT inspiration Edgar Allan Poe! Fellow guests of honor include author Garth Nix, artist Lisa Snellings, and Ann’s partner in crime Jeff VanderMeer — plus WT contributor Jay Lake as toastmaster.

To paraphrase Samwise Gamgee: Well, we’re back.

As you noticed, the Weird Tales website was quiet for a couple of months. That’s because our publisher, Wildside Press, was going through some reorganization that’s finally settled into its new status quo. To sum up: Wildside’s Juno Books line of paranormal and urban fantasy novels has now become an imprint of Pocket Books, where it’s poised for much larger-scale success. The Prime Books line, with its affiliated webzine Fantasy-Magazine.com, has spun off as its own separate publishing house. And our sister journal H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror has closed the doors on its print incarnation (though future web projects may well ensue).

Wildside is now leaner and meaner, and Weird Tales has some fantastic stuff lined up for the rest of 2009. The spring issue, coming your way in a few weeks, features stories by acclaimed authors Jeffrey Ford and Paul Tremblay — as well as exclusive, in-depth interviews with horror master Thomas Ligotti and comics genius Richard Corben. Meanwhile, we’ve begun taking submissions for a new line of micro-fiction: One-Minute Weird Tales! And we’re looking forward to an exciting summer/fall convention season — WorldCon in Montreal this August and Dragon*Con in Atlanta this September, for sure, plus more to be announced.

A semi-casualty of our web downtime was Steven Archer’s daily art series, “Blasphemous Horrors,” which suffered some technical glitches that we didn’t fix quickly enough. So Archer’s getting off the hook early; we’ll be posting about 20 more paintings from here on in, and then later this year the artist will be back with an all-new series of weird fantasy art for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks for bearing with us. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…

Weird Tales’s traditional story submissions are going to remain closed until Memorial Day — but we ARE now publicly opening submissions for our new flash-narrative format: One-Minute Weird Tales! Take a look at this video clip, which has been on our home page for a while, and you’ll get the idea:

These are sharp little micro-stories of 20 to 150 words, presented in a quick sequence of brief one-screen chunks — sort of a funky hybrid of a movie trailer, a Zen koan, and an Adult Swim between-show bumper. They don’t necessarily have to be funny — but they DO have to be immediately grabbing and viciously memorable. And, of course, weird.

Flat payment of $25 for video/online publishing rights. Send your scripts — that is, your stories demarcated with individual screen breaks — within the body of email to weirdtales@gmail.com.

We are thrilled to announce that Weird Tales has just made the Hugo Awards ballot for the first time in the magazine’s storied history! For all of us privileged to be on the team currently producing the oldest fantasy/horror/science fiction magazine of them all — the one that even predates the term “science fiction!” — it’s a proud moment.

Weird Tales is nominated in the category of “Best Semiprozine,” which more or less means “best magazine with circulation under 10,000.” We’re in sterling company, alongside the brilliant British SF magazine Interzone, the pioneering genre trade journal Locus, the terrific online zine Clarkesworld, and the ever-smart commentary of The New York Review of Science Fiction.

Specific congratulations go to Weird Tales contributors Felix Gilman, who’s nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and Peter Atwood, whose WT story “All In” is nominated for Best Short Story in the Canadian counterpart to the Hugos, the Prix Aurora Awards! (Both awards will be announced at this year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal.)

Weird Tales had an amazing 85th anniversary year in 2008, and we’re honored to see it recognized by the Hugo nominators. To all the writers, artists, and fans who make up our family: thank you for being awesome.

Now don’t forget to join Worldcon (a.k.a. Anticipation 2009) and vote!

…is a unique fantasy convention in Denver that brings together a colorful spectrum of music, art, performances, and live-action games alongside the usual far-out fun of convention geekery. This year’s event, taking place March 13-15, promises to be a real treat, with a Dark Wizard’s Ball, a show by the Serpent Moon bellydancing troupe, and live steel swordfighting by the warriors of Castle Wall! Then there’s the incredible French artist guest of honor Gil Bruvel, hot paranormal novelists Ilona & Gordon Andrews as literary guests of honor, songwriter and goth-of-all-trades Voltaire as musical guest, author and Weird Tales contributor Sarah Hoyt serving as toastmaster, and more!

Weird Tales is proud to be joining the festivities as Opus’s special magazine guest, and we encourage fans who can make the festival to come on out — there will be weird fun, prizes and freebies aplenty!

It’s nomination season again for the Hugo Awards — so, for those of you who’d like to support the world’s most prestigious awards for excellence in science fiction and fantasy, here are the categories in which Weird Tales is eligible. (All issues are available in hardcopy, and several of them in ebook format, here; individual stories linked below can be read free online.)

Best Editor, Short Form: Ann VanderMeer

Best Semiprozine: Weird Tales, edited by Ann VanderMeer and Stephen H. Segal

Best Novella: “Black Petals,” by Michael Moorcock

Best Novelette:

• “Renovations,” by Matthew Pridham
• “Right You Are If You Say You Are,” by Norman Spinrad

Best Short Story:

• “The House of Idiot Children,” by W.H. Pugmire & M.K. Snyder
• “Landscape, With Fish,” by Karen Heuler
• “Events at Fort Plentitude,” by Cat Rambo
• “The Stone & Bone Boy,” by Calvin Mills
• “The Heart of Ice,” by Tanith Lee
• “Creature,” by Ramsey Shehadeh
• “The Yellow Dressing Gown,” by Sarah Monette
• “The Talion Moth,” by John Kirk
• “Detours on the Way to Nothing,” by Rachel Swirsky
• “All In,” by Peter Atwood
• “How I Got Here,” by Ramsey Shehadeh
• “Belair Plaza,” by Adam Corbin Fusco
• “An Invitation Via Email,” by Mike Allen
• “Mainevermontnewhampshiremass,” by Nick Mamatas
• “The Stone-Hearted Queen,” by Kelly Barnhill
• “Ganaranok,” by Rory Steves
• “The Difficulties of Evolution,” by Karen Heuler
• “First Photograph,” by Zoran Živković
• “The Gong,” by Sara Genge
• “The Dream of the Blue Man,” by Nir Yaniv
• “The Wordeaters,” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
• “Out of Sacred Water,” by Juraj Červenák
• “Time and the Orpheus,” by chiles samaniego
• “BleakWarrior Meets the Sons of Brawl,” by Alistair Rennie
• “How to Play With Dolls,” by Matthew Cheney
• “Far & Wee,” by Kathe Koja
• “The Last Great Clown Hunt,” by Chris Furst
• “A Lake of Spaces,” by Tim Pratt
• “Catastrophe,” by Felix Gilman
• “The Matching Pair,” by Mark Budman
• “Ms Ito’s Bird,” by Chris Ward
• “Wendigo,” by Michaela Morrissette
• “Purr,” by Michael Bishop
• “My True Lovecraft Gave to Me,” by Eric Lis
• “The Man With the Myriad Scars,” by Ben Thomas

by Stephen H. Segal

Weird Tales might be the world’s oldest speculative-fiction magazine, but here on the inside we feel like the youngest. We spent 2008, our 85th anniversary year, trying our damnedest to act as an ambassador for SF literature, reaching out to engage readers all across the diverse sub-circles of the modern geekosphere.

For starters, there was our big initiative to name “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” Our public call for input received more correspondence than any other project in the twenty years since Weird Tales’s resurrection — and in the end, our readers and writers delivered an unprecedented portrait of the modern imagination, detailing the web of bizarre ideas and aesthetics that linked Philip K. Dick to Andy Warhol, Laurie Anderson to Madeleine L’Engle, and H.P. Lovecraft to Frida Kahlo to that German guy who founded the “Body Worlds” exhibit. We first “published” the 85 Weirdest story on 85 bright blue pages emblazoned across the walls of our anniversary suite party at Norwescon, where guests wandered from corner to corner reading the write-ups, drinking their Unrepentant Harlequins and Headless Thompson Gunners, and pausing to laugh when they saw Jim Henson linking David Bowie and Neil Gaiman on the headboard in the master bedroom.

Aside from those pages on the wall, an awful lot happened on the pages inside the magazine in 2008. We devoted a regular space to publishing chapter excerpts showcasing all sorts of SF-related books and publishers, from Stephen Hunt’s alt-Victorian adventure The Court of the Air to Ekaterina Sedia’s tragic fantasy The Alchemy of Stone to an amazing essay on resurrecting gholas from the BenBella anthology The Science of Dune. We published deep, provocative interviews with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, urban fantasy phenom China Miéville, and legendary animated filmmaker Bill Plympton, among others. We hired popular blogger Amanda Gannon (that’s Naamah-Darling to you LiveJournallers) as Weird Tales’s first-ever arts & culture editor; in her new department, “The Bazaar,” she’s begun spotlighting weird fantasy-inspired artisans ranging from the steampunk taxidermist Jessica Joslin to the mythic maskmaker Andrea Harris. We sought out unique, world-quality creative nonfiction for our “Weirdism” department, and we launched Ira Marcks’ indescribably odd pseudo-comics series “Harvey Pelican & Co.”

Of course, the heart and soul of Weird Tales remains the tales themselves, and 2008 was quite a year for our stories. Fiction editor Ann VanderMeer could have sat back and enjoyed the accolades for acquiring an all-new Elric novella by Michael Moorcock, an original sword-and-sorcery battle by Norman Spinrad, an unforgettable dark-superhero story by Tim Pratt, the return to short fiction of Kathe Koja, two brilliantly disparate pieces by O. Henry Award winner Karen Heuler (a comedy with fish and an allegory with beetles), and an all-international issue with stories from Serbia, Spain, Israel, Singapore, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and the Philippines. But instead, Ann delighted in introducing readers to an onslaught of newer writers who are sure to become some of tomorrow’s superstars. We saw the likes of Ramsey Shehadeh’s post-apocalypic fable “Creature”; Chris Furst’s twisted history “The Last Great Clown Hunt”; Micaela Morrissette’s culinary hallucination “Wendigo”; Chiles Samaniego’s jazz-club folktale “Time and the Orpheus”; Rachel Swirsky’s passionate dream-scene “Detours on the Way to Nothing”; and Matthew Pridham’s stunning first sale “Renovations,” a haunted-house novelette told in the first person by the house itself.

All these stories had to be illustrated, naturally, and Weird Tales was thrilled to introduce a wave of fantastic young artists to the American SF scene in 2008. Issue #348 gave us the unsettlingly seductive fish-women of Finnish artist Saara Salmi, while #350’s straightjacketed jester marked the cover debut of Jason “Stuntkid” Levesque. Our anniversary issue saw two memorably unique interpretations of Elric of Melniboné: the raw, punk-rock cover painting by graphic designer Newel Anderson, and the elegant black-and-white linework of up-and-coming comic-book costume designer Ming Doyle. Classically inspired dark-fantasy illustrators Daniele Serra and Vance Kelly offered up lush, horrific phantasmagoria, while edgy pen-mistresses Star St. Germain and Molly Crabapple gave us werewolves in sun-dresses and rock stars in goblin suits. Meanwhile, online at WeirdTalesMagazine.com, we dove headfirst into what we’re pretty sure is SF publishing’s very first year-long, single-artist daily painting series: “365 Days of Blasphemous Horrors,” mixed-media artist Steven Archer’s quest to create an original Lovecraftian work every day from one Balticon to the next.

Speaking of our website, WeirdTalesMagazine.com was also the home of 2008’s big Spam Fiction Contest, in which we invited all comers to write 500-word flash fictions inspired by the spam headlines in their email inboxes. It was a tough contest to judge: the broad, populist nature of the competition meant that it perpetuated through the blogosphere fast and furious, pinging some mainstream news outlets along the way, and in a single week we received some 175 entries from around the world, fueled by spam titles ranging from the innocuous “Angelina Jolie splits from Brad Pitt” to the ineffable “Parsimonious Wang.” But first-place winner Richard Howard of Dublin did it with panache, celebrating the success of his piece “Let Yourself Look Spiny” by turning right around and selling us another, full-length story to appear in a future print issue.

Other online initiatives in 2008 included the first installment of our all-new YouTube series, “One-Minute Weird Tales” — a new format for flash-fiction delivery that you’ll be seeing a lot more of soon — and the move to begin publishing inexpensive e-book editions of every new issue at Sony’s eBook Store.

Weird Tales also cultivated a presence in the theatrical world in 2008, officially sponsoring several original works of stagecraft. In Chicago, we sent columnist Kenneth Hite to Wildclaw Theatre’s opening-night gala to introduce their new adaptation of Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House. During the Toronto Fringe Festival we showcased the Bradbury-inspired drama “Without Whom,” and at Dragon*Con we gave free magazines and books to the ballroom full of kids participating in the live-action roleplaying narrative “Echoes of Devil’s Reef.” Oh, and while it may not exactly be dignified theatre, the Arizona Comic Con’s inaugural Miss Zombie Beauty Pageant certainly was a memorable live performance, and the winning undead princess took home a specially commissioned, one-of-a-kind edition of Weird Tales stories titled “Zombie Love,” lovingly and dementedly hand-crafted by book artist Patricia Lee.

Last but most certainly not least, we got out there to all sorts of events on our 85th Anniversary Tour and we met you. A fantastic celebration at Norwescon featuring contributing authors Jay Lake, Lisa Mantchev, Ken Scholes, and Cat Rambo. A full Weird Tales panel at the huge New York Comic Con. A VanderMeerian duo at I-Con with Norman Spinrad joining the fun. A Weird Tales lecture at the Library of Congress, starring editor emeritus George Scithers. A weekend full of spectacular fan interaction at Dragon*Con, ranging from the multimedia Weird Tales presentation to artist Steven Archer’s performance with his rock band Ego Likeness to my own turn on the overflowingly packed steampunk panel. An overseas trip to Prague, where Ann was a special guest at the Parcon festival. A standing-room-only Weird Tales group reading at New York’s infamous KGB Bar, featuring the inimitable Jeffrey Ford. And an incredible Worldcon in Denver, where WT contributor Carrie Vaughn headlined a Weird Tales reception full of great art, stimulating conversation, and lycanthrope-inspired Moon Pies.

Readers, writers, artists, friends — we thank you all for making 2008 the most exciting anniversary celebration Weird Tales has had since its 65th in 1988, when it returned from the dead. If you’ll forgive me for badly mixing my SF metaphors, we think this is one techno-magically revivified zombie beast of a magazine that’s still got a whole ‘nother cycle of regenerations left to go.

* * *

Stephen H. Segal is the editorial & creative director of Weird Tales.

DETOURS ON THE WAY TO NOTHING
by Rachel Swirsky

copyright © 2008 / May not be reproduced without permission

(from Weird Tales #349, March/April 2008)

It’s midnight when you and your girlfriend, Elka, have your first fight since you moved in together. Words wound, tears flow, doors slam. You storm out of the apartment, not caring where you go as long as it’s far away from her. When you step off the front stoop onto the sidewalk, that’s the moment when the newest version of me is born.

You get on the subway heading toward Brooklyn and ride until the train rumbles out of the tunnels and squeaks into a familiar aboveground stop. The neighborhood isn’t good, but a friend of yours used to live a few blocks away, so you know the area pretty well. At least you won’t get lost while you work off the rest of your anger. You disembark, let your feet pick a direction, and start walking.

That’s how the logic seems from your perspective, but there’s another explanation: I want you to come to me.

By a series of what you think are random turns, you end up in an alley between high rise buildings. Reinforced doors protect apartments built like warehouses; skulls grin on rat poison warning signs nailed beneath barred panes. Abandoned mattresses and broken radios decay in the gutter, accumulating mold and rust.

In a streetlamp spotlight, an old Puerto Rican man hurls bottles at a fifth story window. “Christina!” he yells. “Open up!” A voice shouts down, “She doesn’t live here anymore!” but the man keeps

throwing. Translucent shards collect around his feet. None have flown back into his face yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

The distraction stops you, as I intended. I wanted people around so you’d be less likely to spook.

You look up and see me. I’m the girl on the roof. The edge where I stand is flat as the sidewalk and has no guard rail. You gasp when you notice my toes edging over the precipice — then gasp harder a moment later when you see my hair floating in the wind. It looks like feathers. Just like feathers.

The Puerto Rican man runs out of bottles. He rubs his sore palms, repeating, “Christina, my Christina, why won’t you open the window?”

Looking up, you gesture between me and the Puerto Rican man, asking: are you Christina? I shake my head and make walking motions with my fingers to say I’ll come down. Not knowing quite why, you put your hands in your pockets and wait.

When I get down to street level, you’re shocked to see it wasn’t an illusion: my hair really is made of feathers. They’re bright blue, such a vivid color that it’s obvious they weren’t plucked from any real bird. They remind you of the ones you and your sister decorated carnival masks with when you were children: feathers dyed to match the way people think birds look.

You reach out to touch them before your sense of propriety kicks in and pulls your hand back. You shuffle your feet with embarrassment. “Hi.”

I find your shyness endearing. I take one hand out of the lined pocket of my ski jacket and wave.

“I’m Patrick,” you say.

I smile and nod, the way people do when they hear information they don’t find relevant.

“What’s your name?” you ask.

I step closer. You tilt your ear toward my lips, assuming I want to whisper. It’s a reasonable assumption, though wrong. I take your chin and gently lift your face so that your gaze is level with mine, and then open my mouth to show you where my tongue was cut out.

You back away. Another second and you’d bolt, so I act fast, pull a card out of my pocket and give it to you.

“Voluntary surgery?” you read. “What are you, part of some cult?”

It’s more a philosophy than a cult, but since it isn’t really either, I wave my hand back and forth: in a way.

Debate wavers in your expression. You still might go. Before you can decide, I take your hand and pull your fingers through my hair.

You breathe hard as your fingertips touch skin beneath my feathers. “All the way to the scalp,” you murmur. That’s when I know I’ve got you. I can see it in the way your eyes turn one dark color from pupil to iris. You’re thinking, how can this be real?

The fantasy has been with you since adolescence. Maybe it started with the feathers you and your sister glued on the carnival masks. They felt so soft that you pocketed a pair — one blue, one white — and took them back to bed with you. Your vision of a bird-woman appeared soon thereafter. Beautiful and silent, she wrapped you nightly in sky-colored feathers that smelled like wind.

In the nearby park, I recreate this. Behind us, a levy of black rocks stands against the East River. Reflected Manhattan lights form a sheen on the water, shimmering like a fluorescent oil spill.

I strip off my clothes and stand naked for you, my shadow falling onto gravel cut with glints of glass. I’m skinny with visible ribs, but soft and fleshy around the belly where you like to stroke your lovers as if they were satin pillows — all the conflicting traits you prefer, combined in one body. Your eyes never leave my feathers.

You will never know how I am possible. My philosophy — my cult, as you called it — is old and secretive. We have no organization, no books of dogma, no advocates to harangue passersby with our rhetoric. Each initiate finds us alone, deducing our beliefs through meditation and self-reflection. Only the magic of our sacrificed tongues unifies us.

Our practices have few analogues in Western thought, though you could call us philosophical cousins to the Buddhists. We believe there is no way to lose the trappings of self so completely as to become someone else’s desire.

If you see me again, I will not be a bird. I will be a figure made of jewels or a woolly primate with prehensile lips. My skin will be rubber. My cock will be velvet. Each of my six blood-spattered breasts will be tattooed with the face of a man I’ve killed. The goal is endless transformation.

I’m still distant from that goal. Though I’ve been transforming for decades, I’m only inching along the path to self-dissolution. I cling to identity; indulge fantasies like this one of telling you my story. Cutting out our tongues is supposed to silence us. Instead, I speak internally. Can you hear me?

I tease you with my feathers, encompassing your face, hands, and cock in turn. When you tire of that, you pull me up against the rocks with my legs around your waist. I throw my head back to let my plumage stream in the wind and you come. I don’t know if you think of Elka, but don’t worry. You can’t be unfaithful with a fantasy.

You recline against the black rocks. “Wow,” you say, “I’m not the kind of person that would ever do this. Elka and I were together three months before…”

Your eyes glaze. This could be bad. There are two possibilities now. You may pull back, stammering her name, or:

You reach for my shoulder. “I know you can’t talk, but can you write? Is there someplace we could go? I have so much to ask.”

I’ve done my job too well. It’s time to leave. I shrug away from your grip and raise one hand to wave. Goodbye.

“Hey, wait!” you shout.

In your fantasies, when you’re done, the bird-woman dissolves into a shower of feathers. Unfortunately, my magic isn’t that versatile. I have to walk away.

You try to chase me so I maneuver through sharp turns and unexpected byways. You don’t know this area as well as you think you do. Soon, your footsteps grow distant and faint.

I retreat to my rooftop and watch from above as you pace in circles around the neighborhood. I hope you will go soon. If you don’t, it may be a sign I’ve done you permanent damage. Finally, you head back to the subway. I have to admit, I’m a little sad when you go. A little jealous, too.

I climb down the building and discover the Puerto Rican man huddled next to a fire escape, muttering in soft Spanish. Tiny cuts bleed on his arms and calves. I consider remaking myself for him, but all he wants is his human Christina. I catch an impression of her: short and blonde, she hates dancing, speaks seven languages badly, calls him The Man She Should Have Loved Less.

As his yearning for this specific, clumsy, jovial woman flows through me, I realize how little I am to you. What is a fantasy? A scrap of yourself made into flesh. An illusion to masturbate with.

Moving away from the Puerto Rican man, I shelter in a doorway and will myself to molt. My feathers float away on the wind and something I was clinging to flies away with them, carried on the same breeze.

I say goodbye to the girl with feathered hair and wait for another’s desire to overtake and shape me. In the few seconds before it does, for one moment, just one, my soul becomes pure essence without form.

It’s the closest I’ve come to nothingness yet.

Rachel Swirsky is a fiction M.F.A. student at the Iowa Writers Workshop and a 2005 graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her stories have appeared in publications and anthologies including Interzone, Subterranean, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2007.