Recently Sinister Cinema‘s Armchair Fiction has added two more volumes to their new Masters of Horror series, bringing the total to six.
Like the others, we get larger volumes clocking in at about 300 pages with some of the pulp illustrations. And the focus here is, again, on overlooked but great Weird Tales authors. Sadly, we don’t get much additional info on the authors other than what we read on one page inside and the back cover, so I hope to address that here.
First up is Vol. 5, Thorp McClusky: Weird Tales Nobility. Thorp McClusky (1906-1975) is probably best known for Loot of the Vampire, a two-part story in Weird Tales. The first of his Peters & Ethredge series, it was reprinted as the second volume of Robert Weinberg‘s Lost Fantasy series, along with three other stories by McClusky, only one of which is included in this volume.
Armchair Fiction has reprinted Loot of the Vampire as #D226 in their double-novel series. And they included in their Horror Gems, Volume 11: Thorp McCluskey & Others one of these stories that isn’t in this volume.
This volume has 10 stories, most of which appeared in Weird Tales, only one of which was cover featured. That cover is shown on the back. The front cover is taken from Avon Fantasy Reader #6 when it reprinted “The Crawling Horror.” Two more in the five-story Peters & Ethredge series are included here. The back cover is from Weird Tales of his story “The Lamia in the Penthouse.”
The volume kicks off with “The Crawling Horror.” It tells of a man living alone at a farm who is being menaced by something. It seems to have first eaten all the rats, and then his cats start to disappear. Then it seems to have “absorbed” one of his dogs, and then his other dog disappear. He fears that it will soon progress to humans. For some reason, it hangs around his farm and wants to get in his house. When he weds, things progress. I was surprised by the ending, as it wasn’t what I was expecting.
“The Red God Laughed” is a strange sf tale. Set toward the end of the 21st century, we find the Earth a dead world. All animal life, including humans, are dead. A world war occurred, this time fought with deadly gas, which wiped out all animal life. To this world comes an alien looking for precious water for his dying world. Will he succeed in his mission?
Then I decided to read the two Peters & Ethredge stories. These are the second and third in the series of five, though the second of these two is from Amazing Stories. They star Police Commissioner Charles Ethredge and Detective-Lieutenant Peters of homicide. The first story also includes Ethredge’s fiance Mary, who is his wife in the second. She plays a part in both stories.
The first, “The Thing on the Floor,” is about a dangerous hypnotist. He is able to make a man think he has hemophilia and make Mary steal. They finally confront and stop him, which reveals the deadly secret of his servant. The second, “Monstrosity of Evolution,” has Mary and Charles meet an old friend, a Canadian scientist moving to the city with his elderly aunt. Except he has no aunt. And they notice other unusual things about him. Further, several young women have gone missing in the area of his new home. Can the trio get to the bottom of things?
Volume 6 is Dorothy Quick: Mistress of Dark Fantasy. Dorothy Quick (1896-1962), who contributed to Weird Tales for many years to the exclusion of most other pulp magazines. She also later wrote novels and poetry. Interestingly she met Mark Twain toward the end of his life when she was just a little girl and developed a friendship with him. This was a subject of a book she wrote, and it was turned into a movie Mark Twain and Me (1991). Her first pulp works were actually in Oriental Stories before she moved over to its sister pulp Weird Tales.
This volume has 15 tales, almost all from Weird Tales but one from Fantastic Adventures. Three of these stories were cover featured, including the one used as the cover for this volume, “The Witch’s Mark.” Her picture is on the back cover. These stories vary in length, and many have a romantic element, sometimes staring a couple, sometimes the protagonist finding their love. But not all of them have a happy ending!
In “The Witch’s Mark,” …
In “Strange Orchids,” another cover-featured tale, we have a matter of 18 missing girls, a strange man who has an obsession with orchids, and a focus on our protagonist. Will she be next, and what is the link between the orchid she was given and one of the girls?
In “A Year From Tonight,” a man enters a castle and is somehow transported back in time. Or is he? There he meets a girl from the present who is strangely trapped there. Can he get himself and her out?
In “The Edge of a Cliff,” does a young girl have the courage to leap into the unknown? And why? And who is the stranger that helps her?
In “The Lost Door,” a young man inherits his father’s estate in France with the stipulation he must live there at least half the year. He brings with him an old college pal, and they have a strange encounter with the past, thanks to the “lost door.” What is the fate of his friend?
“The Man in Purple” is an unusual tale that links a couple in modern times to another in the distant past, and an act of revenge from that time.
In “The Lost Gods,” a young couple has an encounter with powerful beings from the Unknown. Can their love hold out?
So these are another great pair of volumes. I’m not sure what we’ll see from them next. I’m behind in reading their volumes, as they have been putting out a lot of nice lost-world/lost-race volumes in that series.
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