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synopsis

The Weird Fiction Review is an annual periodical devoted to the study of weird and supernatural fiction. This 13th issue contains fiction, poetry, and reviews from leading writers and promising newcomers. Each new Weird Fiction Review is a guidebook through the strange and otherworldly, a map to adventures in cinema, art and, of course, fiction. It might not look like a map, but the pages are marked with details and directions to places both far away and closer than you think. Certain locations will be new to some, familiar to others, and all are presented through an original perspective.
       Here you will explore galleries of monsters by Boleslaw Biegas and a re-assessment of his work. Speeding down the highway are creatures in Weird Wheels hot rods designed by Norman Saunders and Gary Hallgren. Richard Taylor’s eerie Lovecraftian book cover landscapes could be primordial sites pointing toward the work of H.P. devotee Guillermo Del Toro, whose films are analyzed in an article by Danel Olson. From there a path can be found which leads to the origins of Cthulhu as explored by Will Murray. And under a specific type of light a trail opens to reveal a copy of The Necronomicon in the hands of Robert M. Price.
       Bizarre dimensions are laden with new and reprinted fiction by Philip Fracassi, E.C. Tubb and Scott Bradfield, locations that would not seem out of place in The Twilight Zone, and which act as signs posts for a surreal exploration of the series itself by Jason V Brock. Then a tear in the 5th dimension opens a window to a pilot crash landing into an extraterrestrial horror comic by Allen Koszowski. Remember, please, to stay on the road when visiting Bruce Elliot’s “Wolves Don’t Cry” and Randall D. Larson’s “The Soul of the Man and The Curse of The Werewolf.” And in the fields beyond the moors a history of Dark Harvest publishing appears in this edition of “Collecting The Modern Macabre.”
       This entire territory seems imbued by the spell of painter, sculptor, poet, and master of fiction Clark Ashton Smith. His broad influence connects many passages through and beyond the decadent, baroque dark humor of Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance, both of whom (among many others) are covered in a history of the San Francisco Bay area through the lens of weird fiction. Many of the roads from Smith’s worlds inevitably lead to Arkham and it is here where ancient markers illuminate the way to “Arkham’s First Crocodile” an excellent story by Jonathan Thomas which details the perils of stealing magic from a reptilian god.
       So pack your bags. Shifting and permeable, the realms in this thirteenth edition of Weird Fiction Review aren’t on any conventional map. Their boundaries are unrecorded by perambulation, and they cannot be seen through a computer screen. These locations will only be revealed when viewed in full color on actual paper. And by next year the landscape may have changed yet again.