There’s never quite been a magazine such as Weird Tales. In any conversation of genre, it’s hard to place the publication in a tidy box of fantasy, horror or science fiction; over the course of its history, it’s published a range of speculative stories, often crossing from one genre to another. Throughout its 30-year run, the magazine proved to be the starting point for a wide range of authors such as H.P. Lovecraft to Tennessee Williams to C.L. Moore. The magazine was the first dedicated publication devoted to stories that broadly fit into the speculative fiction movement, founded just three years before the first “Scientifiction” magazine, Amazing Stories landed on magazine racks in 1926. The story of the magazine’s history is a remarkable tale of survival, and one that helped to launch many a career in the speculative publishing genres.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
View all posts by Michael Sauers
There’s never quite been a magazine such as Weird Tales. In any conversation of genre, it’s hard to place the publication in a tidy box of fantasy, horror or science fiction; over the course of its history, it’s published a range of speculative stories, often crossing from one genre to another. Throughout its 30-year run, the magazine proved to be the starting point for a wide range of authors such as H.P. Lovecraft to Tennessee Williams to C.L. Moore. The magazine was the first dedicated publication devoted to stories that broadly fit into the speculative fiction movement, founded just three years before the first “Scientifiction” magazine, Amazing Stories landed on magazine racks in 1926. The story of the magazine’s history is a remarkable tale of survival, and one that helped to launch many a career in the speculative publishing genres.
