Robert E Howard's "Pigeons From Hell" (novelette, haunted house, free)

While I'm not a fan of haunted house tales, & the first of its 3 parts did bore me a bit, the later parts were generally quite readable.

Story summary.

An abandoned house in the US South is haunted by a "zuvembie", a "zuvembie" created by black voodoo in revenge for serious maltreatment of a "mulatto" maid by a former slave owner. Now the zuvembie targets whatever hapless human happens by the place, killing the victim. A lucky escaped victim & a policeman will join hands to kill the zuvembie.

Fact sheet.

First published: Weird Tales, May 1938.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg of Australia.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of Robert E Howard.

Eric Frank Russell's "Somewhere a Voice" (collection): Annotated table of contents & review

I've not read all stories yet. Will fill up entries as I read.

"Dear Devil" is one of the most loved stories of the genre.

ToC below is in order of my preference, best first. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on title goes there. Where I'm aware of an online copy of the story, I include the link. Links on publisher or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. [novelette] "Dear Devil" (A); download scans as part of a larger package; Other Worlds, May 1950: Humanity rises from post-nuclear-war apocalypse - with some external help.
2. [ss] "U-Turn" (as by Duncan H Munro) (B); Astounding, April 1950: State helps a bored man commit "suicide"...  
3. [novelette] "I Am Nothing" (B); Astounding, July 1952: A ruthless dictator has a change of heart...
4. [novella] "Somewhere a Voice" (B); Other Worlds, January 1953: Unsuccessful hike to rescue by the stranded.
5. [ss] "Tieline" (as by Duncan H Munro) (B); Astounding, July 1955: A man alone on an entire planet that houses a space lighthouse is very lonely.
6. [novelette] "Seat of Oblivion" (B); Astounding, November 1941: What's the best place to hide for a runaway death row convict? In another man's body! 
7. [ss] "Displaced Person" (B); Weird Tales, September 1948; religion: Some revolutionaries aren't welcome anywhere.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1965.
Related: Stories of Eric Frank Russell.

C L Moore's "The Tree of Life" (novelette, monster, free): Northwest Smith, always in the service of girls in trouble!

One of the forgettable stories of Moore, unless you have a taste for old-style (Gothic?) horror: horror induced by throwing a lot of adjectives to prejudice the reader (setting up the mood?) - something that bores me. A far more interesting variant of the idea here appears in one of her later stories with Kuttner - "The Children's Hour" (download).

Here we see the interplanetary adventurer Northwest Smith trapped for food by Thag, a 4-dimensional monster, in the ruins of the ancient Martian city of Illar. He will, of course, escape trivially.

Notes.

1. Feedbooks has something labeled a parody of this story title "The Tree of Life Revisited" (download) but author name as "Cathan L Moore". I haven't read that.
2. There is some Lovecraftian imagery & language here, but the influence might have ran in the opposite direction: "apparently Mr Lovecraft was a fan of Ms Moore's".

Fact sheet.

First published: Weird Tales, October 1936.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg.
Download audio from LibriVox.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of C L Moore; Northwest Smith series.

Eric Frank Russell's "Venturer of the Martian Mimics" aka "I, Spy" aka "Spiro" (novelette, detective, free): Exploits of a Martian spy on earth

This is a detective story: Chief Inspector McKechnie of Scotland Yard, with help from Dr Lanigan, solving the case of very unusual phenomena happening around London & then in rest of Europe: a man murdered by electrocution several miles from nearest power lines, then he's seen boarding a bus & a train several hours after his death! A shape shifter that gives electric shocks to anyone touching it. Someone breaking into sensitive installations clearly for espionage purposes. They'll eventually kill the uncatchable.

There is no mystery for reader, though. We see the alien land & shapeshift in the first scene itself. Still a good read; I finished it in a single sitting.

Fact sheet.

First published: Tales of Wonder, #12 (Autumn 1940).
Download full text as part of scans of the Weird Tales, May 1947 (Canadian Edition) where it was reprinted.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Eric Frank Russell (annotated & ranked list).

"Weird Tales", Vol 38 No 4 (May 1947) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Scans of this magazine in CBR format are online as part of a larger package.

This is probably the Canadian edition. There is a note, in small print, on ToC page: "This magazine was produced in Canada, on Canadian paper, by Canadians." And the ToC as well as cover is different from the same issue's description at ISFDB (which I assume is the US edition?)

Table of contents. 

Links on authors fetch more fiction by author. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

1. [novelette] Stephen Grendon's "Mr George": "A child must be guarded in its tender years against those who follow false gods down dim paths to oblivion".
2. [novelette] Harold Lawlor's "The Terror in Teakwood": "What was the Macabre secret of the black casket, more precious than life, more dangerous than death?"
3. [novelette] Eric Frank Russell's "Venturer of the Martian Mimics" (A): "Our young sciences, like our imaginings, have limits but where facts end possibilities start--& they're truly boundless".
4. [ss] Seabury Quinn's "Hoodooed": "When the time comes to fix the hoodoo there is no power in heaven or earth to avert it".
5. [ss] Theodore Sturgeon's "Fluffy": "Don't make enemies with a cat. Why? Well, try it, & find out!"
6. [ss] Allison V Harding's "The Immortal Lancer": "There are places in this world & out of it that you have never dreamed of in your wildest nightmares!"
7. [ss] Robert Bloch's "Sweets to the Sweet": "She wanted a broomstick & a black cat; after all, don't witches have both?"
8. [ss] Herbert Scanlon's "Lizzie Borden Took an Axe": "A locked room, moldering books, muttered curses, in rotting hulk of a house--add up to tragedy".
9. [verse] Stanton A Coblentz's "On a Weird Planet".

See also.

1. Fiction from Weird Tales.
2. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1940s.

Free fiction: Weird Tales, May 1947

Scans in CBR format at Crosseyed Cyclops.

Related: Fiction from Weird Tales; pulp fiction.

Clark Ashton Smith's "Xeethra" (short story, fantasy, free): From goat-herd to king & back to goat-herd

Some other reviewers see the moral of this story as "ignorance is bliss": in a dying world, the ultimate curse is the memory of old days of glory. I personally didn't see it like that, & read the story literally.

Story summary.

Xeethra of title is a young orphan boy, a goatheard in a parched land, raised by his maternal uncle. One day, he discovers a kind of oasis among his pastures - a vast underground garden reached by a cave recently opened. He has an adventure there, tastes a strange local fruit, & is finally chased out by giant guardians.

Ah - tasted the forbidden fruit! That stirs up memories of a past life when he was a king centuries ago, only he doesn't think it was in the past - he thinks he is the king now.

Thus begins the quest for his kingdom. He will find the kingdom, now in ruins. He will rule again, after making a deal with the Demon who will recreate the kingdom through sorcery. But he makes an incompetent king, & will finally be back to ruins after failing a deal he'd made with the demon...

Fact sheet.

First published: Weird Tales, December 1934.
Download full text from Eldrtich Dark.
[via John R Fultz]
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Clark Ashton Smith.

New at Project Gutenberg (17 June 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. Edmond Hamilton's "The Door into Infinity"; download; Weird Tales, August-September 1936.
2. Walter M Miller's "Check and Checkmate"; download; If, January 1953: "Victory hinges not always on the mightiest sword, but often on lowly subterfuge. Here is a classic example, with the Western World as stooge!"
3. Robert Abernathy's "When the Mountain Shook"; download; If, March 1954: "Dark was the Ryzga mountain and forbidding; steep were its cliffs and sheer its crevasses. But its outward perils could not compare with the Ryzgas themselves, who slept within, ready to wake and conquer..."

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

New at Project Gutenberg (10 June 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. Robert E Howard's "Red Nails"; download; Weird Tales, July-October 1936: "a barbarian adventurer, a woman pirate, and a weird roofed city inhabited by the most peculiar race of men ever spawned".
2. Leroy Yerxa's "One-Way Ticket to Nowhere"; download; Amazing Stories, December 1942: "Like a ghost in the night a whole Mono train vanished. And it was up to Jeff Blake to find out where it had gone..."
3. Chester S Geier's "The Sphere of Sleep"; download; Amazing Stories, December 1942: "Brad Nelson had a perfect way to kill Big Tim without any danger of being accused. Then his foot slipped and he was hurled into an unknown world."
4. Mari Wolf's "The First Day of Spring"; download; If, June 1954: "a love story of two young people who met under the magic of festival time. One was Trina, whose world was a gentle make-believe Earth. The other was Max, handsome spaceman, whose world was the infinite universe of space..."
5. Jack Taylor's "The Moralist"; download; Galaxy, June 1956: "Aye, 'tis a difficult thing to be a lady on a far world--but who needs them there?"

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

Short fiction from old pulps, posted to Project Gutenberg today (4 June 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. Arthur B Waltermire's "The Doors of Death"; download; Weird Tales, October 1936: "a banker whose only fear was that he might be buried alive, like his grandfather before him".
2. Clark South's "The Time Mirror"; download; Amazing Stories, December 1942: "Here was a strange mirror indeed! It reflected an image all right, but not an image from the same era in history!"
3. Clee Garson's "Direct Wire"; download; Amazing Stories, January 1943: "Mort and Mike got strange calls on this phone; they didn't come through Central!"
4. Frank M Robinson's "The Worlds of Joe Shannon"; download; If, March 1954: "Strumming a harp while floating on a white cloud might be Paradise for some people, but it would bore others stiff. Given an unlimited chance to choose your ideal world, what would you specify--palaces or log cabins?"
5. Edward W Ludwig's "The Holes and John Smith"; download; If, June 1954: "He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo."
6. Winston K Marks' "The Test Colony"; download; If, September 1954: "Benson did his best to keep his colony from going native, but what can you do when the Natives have a rare human intelligence and know all about the facts of life?"

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

New at Project Gutenberg (31 May 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. Franz Habl's "The Long Arm"; download; Weird Tales, October 1937: "Creeping, writhing, insidiously crawling and groping, the long arm reached out in its ghastly errand of death".
2. F L Wallace's "Accidental Flight"; download; Galaxy, April 1952: "Outcasts of a society of physically perfect people, they couldn't stay and they couldn't go home again--yet there had to be some escape for them. Oddly enough, there was!"
3. Winston K Marks' "Tabby"; download; If, March 1954: "Tabby was peculiar, of course, but seemed harmless: just a little green fly that couldn't even protect itself from ordinary spiders. So the spiders fed, and grew, and fed, and grew..."

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

New at Project Gutenberg (30 May 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. Henry Kuttner's "The Secret of Kralitz"; download; Weird Tales, October 1936: "the shocking revelation that came to the twenty-first Baron Kralitz".
2. Dwight V Swain's "Henry Horn's X-Ray Eye Glasses"; download; Amazing Stories, December 1942: "Henry Horn had a new invention; a pair of glasses that worked on the x-ray principle. But he didn't expect them to reveal Nazi secret agents and their works of sabotage!"
3. Roger Phillips Graham's "The Old Martians"; download; If, March 1952: "They opened the ruins to tourists at a dollar a head but they reckoned without The OLD MARTIANS".
4. Horace Brown Fyfe's "Let There Be Light"; download; If, November 1952: "No matter what the future, one factor must always be reckoned with--the ingenuity of the human animal."
5. Tom Leahy's "Tape Jockey"; download; If, March 1954: "Pettigill was, you might say, in tune with the world. It wouldn't even have been an exaggeration to say the world was in tune with Pettigill. Then somebody struck a sour note..."
6. Sam Merwin's "The Ambassador"; download; If, March 1954: 'All Earth needed was a good stiff dose of common sense, but its rulers preferred to depend on the highly fallible computers instead. As a consequence, interplanetary diplomatic relations were somewhat strained--until a nimble-witted young man from Mars came up with the answer to the "sixty-four dollar" question.'
7. Basil Wells' "Stalemate"; download; If, November 1954: "The rules of a duel between gentlemen are quite different from the rules of war between nations. Is it because gentlemen do not fight wars, or is it that men in war cease to be gentlemen?"

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

New at Project Gutenberg (29 May 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. Manly Wade Wellman's "The Golgotha Dancers"; download; Weird Tales, October 1937: "an artist who sold his soul that he might paint a living picture".
2. Forrest J Ackerman's "Micro-Man"; download; Fantasy Book, Vol 1 No 1 (1947): "The little man dared to venture into the realm of the Gods--but the Gods were cruel!"
   
   Note: I didn't know Ackerman wrote fiction too. I used to think he was the ultimate science fiction fan.
3. Richard S Shaver's "Of Stegner's Folly"; download; If, March 1952: "When a twenty-foot goddess walked out of the jungle, they knew Stegner wasn't kidding."
4. Don Thompson's "The Telenizer"; download; Galaxy, March 1954: "Langston had technicolor delusions; inanimate objects came alive in his hands; THEY were persecuting him, out to get him ... what a relief it was to know he wasn't going insane!"

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

New at Project Gutenberg (24-25 May 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. Seabury Quinn's "Pledged to the Dead"; download; Weird Tales, October 1937: "A tale of a lover who was pledged to a sweetheart who had been in her grave for more than a century, and of the striking death that menaced him".
2. Philip K Dick's "Mr Spaceship"; download; Imagination, January 1953: "A human brain-controlled spacecraft would mean mechanical perfection. This was accomplished, and something unforeseen: a strange entity called--"

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

New at Project Gutenberg (22 May 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. Lloyd Arthur Eshbach's "Isle of the Undead"; download; Weird Tales, October 1936: "the frightful fate that befell a yachting party on the dreadful island of living dead men".
2. H W Guernsey's "Here Lies"; download; Weird Tales, October 1937: "a practical communist who taught his friend when to take him seriously".
3. H Sivia's "The Last of Mrs DeBrugh"; download; Weird Tales, October 1937: "Mr DeBrugh was dead, but he still regarded his promise as a sacred duty to be carried out."
4. Geoff St Reynard's "The Buttoned Sky"; download; Imagination, August 1953: "Legends spoke of Earth's glorious past, of freedom and greatness. But this was the future, ruled by god-globes, as men gazed fearfully at--THE BUTTONED SKY".

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

Sydney Fowler Wright's"Automata" (short story, singularity, free)

One of the early stories about singularity, long before the term was coined. And a much better read than John Campbell's "The Last Evolution" (download), another early story on the subject.

Story summary.

Three untitled but connected stories that explore the implications of ever more capable machines - first must have read like a rant when it appeared, but now appears so prophetic; second, a funny tale of gossip among 4 women from far future, records a major milestone on the path to man's elimination by machines; last is a dark story of the end of the last man.

Notes.

1. I find it curious that even in future so far off, "the Eastern races had been led to destroy themselves" before the presumably Western ones!

See also.

1. The way human rebels are taken care of in "Automata" reminded me of Joseph E Kelleam's "Rust", one of the very best dystopian classics of the genre.

Fact sheet.

First published: Weird Tales, September 1929. [via Earl Kemp]
Download full text.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Sydney Fowler Wright; Fiction from 1920s; Tuesday Classics.

Henry Kuttner's "The Graveyard Rats" (short story, horror, free): Grave robber meets something nastier

This is the first published story of Kuttner.

I've sometimes felt H P Lovecraft was a major influence on Kuttner. A lot of Kuttner's work can be called horror, though he normally presents it in an uncreepy way. Ending of at least 2 of his stories are directly inspired by the very cool ending of Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".

And this story seems inspired by Lovecraft even in its creepiness, though Kuttner doesn't depend as much on reader's prejudices to invoke creepiness as Lovecraft does. This story will probably appeal more to Lovecraft fans than to regular Kuttner fans.

Story summary.

A graveyard overrunning with huge rats burrowing in very wide tunnels. Cases of many graves robbed of the bodies. Many hints that rats are controlled by a subterranean intelligence, old folk's dread of old rat infested houses, unexplained disappearance of previous graveyard keeper, etc.

Current graveyard keeper is a crook, robbing graves himself. When rats rob him of his prey, he goes after them. Of course, he won't be alive by the end.

Fact sheet.

First published: Weird Tales, March 1936.
Download full text from Internet Archive or from this unnamed site.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner, H P Lovecraft; rats & mice in fiction; fiction from 1930s.

H P Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" (novelette, free): Sleeping alien awakens to claim earth!

There is little action; it's mostly a story that builds up atmosphere. And it does so by frequently calling upon its (presumably original) target readers' prejudices - white man's superiority over those of other skin colors, "different" means abominable, worshiping ancient gods is evil, ...

A lot of readers will have a right to take offense at a lot of places. And virtually every other sentence contains a negative adjective - "accursed", "hateful", "awful", "monstrous", ...

This is, however, an obviously influential story - I can see influence on some works of Henry Kuttner, John W Campbell, Jr, & Eric Frank Russell. Probably others too.

Story summary.

Narrator is piecing together the story from notes of his recently dead "great-uncle, George Gammell Angell, Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages in Brown University". During a short period lasting a few days or months, some people across world have been dreaming similar dreams. And there have been discoveries of similar but very ancient idols of a strange anthropoid god belonging to no known religion, on an unknown type of stone, at several places in the world, amid some sort of very ancient local religious cults.

He will eventually get drawn into the story & go interview people & see places involved. And eventually tell us the real story:

Aliens ("Great Old Ones") of huge body stature came to earth when the world of young. Immortal aliens with body of no known materials, building their massive buildings with "wrong" angles that spawn unknown dimensions, ... They've a priest called "Cthulhu".

Over the eons, their city ("R'lyeh") (cities, with R'lyeh only one of them?) has sunk under sea, where these telepathic immortals now lie dead ... no, lie dreaming. The process of their awakening is complex, & can only happen when the stars are in "the right positions". Someone who's not among them must awaken their priest Cthulhu at the right time; priest will then awaken the rest of them.

To ensure there is someone to awaken them, the sleeping ones have telepathically been influencing "sensitive" humans telepathically - ensuring there are fanatic religious bands all over world who will do their bidding at right time.

Now an earthquake has raised above sea surface the undersea building that entombs Cthulhu, & the stars are right. So the telepathic call goes out to nearest cult band to come awaken the priest. The band will be killed in a conflict with white sailors on the way, & the victorious come to claim what the cult wanted them not to see. And will unwittingly awaken the Cthulhu...

Notes.

1. Description of Cthulhu abode - "In this phantasy of prismatic distortion it moved anomalously in a diagonal way, so that all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset." - made me recall the idea of the enchanted palace of Pandavs in "Mahabharat" where Duryodhan kept falling during his first visit because what the eyes saw wasn't real. There must be similar buildings in mythology elsewhere too.
2. According to Wikipedia, this story has the first-ever mention of the fictional alien "Cthulhu".
3. Wikipedia notes the following works as possible influences on this Lovecraft story: Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Kraken", Lord Dunsany's "A Shop in Go-by Street", "The Gods of Pegana" (download), Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla" (download), Arthur Machen's "The Novel of the Black Seal" (download).
   
   "Other inspirations for Lovecraft's story are referenced in the story itself—for example, James Frazer's The Golden Bough, Margaret Murray's Witch-Cult in Western Europe, and W. Scott-Elliot's Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria". I'd not noticed these local references.

See also.

1. H P Lovecraft's "Dagon" (download): Provides "an earthquake has raised an under-ocean city to surface for a while" subplot.
2. Irvin S Cobb's "Fishhead" (download): Probably provides "swampy land with an inland lake & its resident monster who's friend to feared locals" subplot.
3. Henry Kuttner's "Where the World is Quiet" (download) may have been inspired by this Lovecraft story. A localized region of earth's surface inhabited by unnamable alienness where any humans enter at their own peril.

Fact sheet.

First published: Weird Tales, February 1928.
Download full text from DagonBytes. MP3 audio. A graphic novel adaptation at Scribd.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of H P Lovecraft; fiction from 1920s.

Free fiction: A year's worth of "Weird Tales"

Scans in 12 issues in CBR format in 6 RAR files at Crosseyed Cyclops. Two Canadian editions; all others are apparently US editions.

I'd actually downloaded them a couple of months back, but forgot posting.

Note RAR files are generally large - about 150 MB for most files, though a couple of them are smaller. Can be downloading only one file at a time, & must manually download - there is a no-robot verification step. Means some human time will be needed.

1. "Weird Tales 1 rar": May 1950, November 1952. Among the authors: Robert Bloch.
2. "Weird Tales 2 rar": October 1936, October 1937. Among the authors: Robert Bloch, C L Moore, Robert E Howard, Henry Kuttner, Arthur Conan Doyle, H P Lovecraft, Edmond Hamilton.
3. "Weird Tales 3 rar": December 1937, March 1938. Among the authors: Robert Bloch, Edmond Hamilton, Robert E Howard, H P Lovecraft, Jack Williamson, Henry Kuttner.
4. "Weird Tales 4 rar": July 1938, November 1941. Among the authors: Henry Kuttner, H P Lovecraft, Edmond Hamilton, Clark Ashton Smith, Paul Ernst, Robert Bloch, Robert E Howard.
5. "Weird Tales 5 rar": September 1945 (Canadian Edition), July 1944. Among the authors: Robert Bloch, P Schuyler Miller, Ray Bradbury, Edmond Hamilton.
6. "Weird Tales 6 rar": January 1946 (Canadian Edition), May 1947. Among the authors: Edmond Hamilton, Robert Bloch, Eric Frank Russell, Theodore Sturgeon.

Related: Fiction from Weird Tales; old pulps.

Henry Kuttner's "The Spawn of Dagon" (short story, fantasy, free): Saving the Atlantis from sinking!

Sea people, worshippers of the "evil" god "Dagon", once ruled all of earth - back when earth was younger & all watery. As continents arose, sundry land species began dominating the world; every time, the sea people would reclaim earth by sinking the continent!

Now, it's the turn of Atlantis & humans. Only Zend, the dwarf Wizard of Atlantis, with his curious gadget, is standing between the sinking of Atlantis & the human survival.

Gesti, one of the sea people posing as a human, will hire the ruthless killer/robber Elak & his sidekick Lycon, to kill Zend in return for money. And an adventure begins. Through the melee, Elak will switch sides, & ensure that Atlantis survives. And will win a girlfriend, Coryllis, in the process.

Notes.

1. While I'd never heard the word "Dagon" till I read this story, a Google search shows it's a well known Biblical legend. Since reading this, I've found at two Dagon stories of H P Lovecraft too; his famous "Cthulhu Mythos" series apparently has roots in Dagon legends.

Fact sheet.

First published: Weird Tales, July 1938.
Download full text.
Rating: B.

Related.

1. Stories of Henry Kuttner.
2. Kuttner & Moore's hilarious "Hogbens" series of stories too have an Atlantis connection - "grandpaw" is a near immortal from Atlantis where the family probably got their magical powers.
3. Fiction from 1930s.