We’ve just grabbed another fistful of letters, and the first one we open is this:
“Dear sir: At last a fiction magazine that is different! Congratulations! You are correct—people do like to read this kind of fiction.
“You asked us to mention the stories we liked and those we didn’t like so well. I enjoyed, in their order, ‘The Thing of a Thousand Shapes,’ which still has me in suspense, ‘The Place of Madness,’ ‘The Weaving Shadows,’ ‘The Grave,’ ‘The Skull,’ ‘The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni.’
“‘The Basket,’ I thought rather pointless. The plot of ‘Ooze’ excellent, but just a trifle above the average reader to understand in detail. ‘The Chain’ was too long drawn out.
“And do give us less of unfaithful wives and husbands. I may seem too critical, perhaps, but let me say that I wish the magazine were published twice a month, for how refreshing to find that interesting stories can be written without ‘love interest.’ Please leave that to the movies and to the countless other magazines.”—S. A. N.
And the next is from Richard P. Israel, 620 Riverside Drive, New York City:
“Dear Sir: Have just finished reading your new magazine, WEIRD TALES, and would like to say it’s a peach. It is just the kind that wakes a man up after he has put in a hard day’s work.... Could you possibly run some snappy, spooky baseball stories? I am sure that almost everybody will like them, baseball being our national game.”
We don’t remember ever seeing anything spooky in baseball; and yet—who knows?—perhaps Mr. Israel can tell us something about the ghosts that haunt the Cubs.
A. L. Richard, 9234 Cottage Grove Avenue, Chicago, knows what he likes and doesn’t like, and he doesn’t hesitate to speak right out in meeting. As witness: