The baboon lived for some years after its strange adventure, but on dying it made no confession. And such mysteries as to how long it had been the guest of the South African, whether or not it was the same creature that he had once betrayed into captivity, to what extent the two understood one another, and whether or not it was incited to murder on that dreadful evening, were never solved.
And, indeed, nobody had any great desire that they should be.
The Eyrie
WEIRD TALES is not merely “another new magazine.” It’s a brand new type of new magazine—a sensational variation from the established rules that are supposed to govern magazine publishing.
WEIRD TALES, in a word, is unique. In no other publication will you find the sort of stories that WEIRD TALES offers in this issue—and will continue to offer in the issues to come. Such stories are tabooed elsewhere. We do not know why. People like to read this kind of fiction. There’s no gainsaying that. Nor does the moral question of “good taste” present an obstacle. At any rate, the stories in this issue of WEIRD TALES will not offend one’s moral sense, nor will the stories we’ve booked for subsequent issues. Some of them may horrify you: and others, perhaps, will make you gasp at their outlandish imagery: but none, we think, will leave you any the worse for having read it.
We do believe, however, that these stories will cause you to forget your surroundings—remove your mind from the humdrum affairs of the workaday world—and provide you with exhilarating diversion. And, after all, isn’t that the fundamental purpose of fiction?
Our stories are unlike any you have ever read—or perhaps ever will read—in the other magazines. They are unusual, uncanny, unparalleled. We have no space in WEIRD TALES for the “average magazine story.” Unless a story is an extraordinary thing, we won’t consider it.
If the letters we have already received, and are still receiving (weeks before the magazine goes to press), are an augury of success, then WEIRD TALES is on the threshold of a tremendously prosperous career. Some of these letters are accompanied by subscriptions, others request advertising rates and specimen copies; all predict great things for us and express enthusiastic anticipation of “something different” in magazine fiction.
Anthony M. Rud, whose amazing novelette, “Ooze,” appears in this issue, wrote to us as follows: