Weird Tales, Volume 51
WEIRD TALES #351
November/December 2008
Vol. 63, No. 4
Magazine copyright © 2008 by Wildside Press, LLC. All individual stories copyright © 2008 by their respective authors. All rights reserved; reproduction prohibited without prior permission.
Weird Tales
® is a registered trademark owned by Weird Tales, Limited.
PREFACE
Weird Tales
was the first storytelling magazine devoted explicitly to the realm of the dark and fantastic. Founded in 1923,
Weird Tales
provided a literary home for such diverse wielders of the imagination as H.P. Lovecraft (creator of Cthulhu), Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian), Margaret Brundage (artistic godmother of goth fetishism), and Ray Bradbury (author of
The Illustrated Man
and
Something Wicked This Way Comes
). Today, O wondrous reader of the 21st century, we continue to seek out that which is most weird and unsettling, for your own edification and alarm.
EDITORIAL STAFF
Editorial & creative director | Stephen H. Segal
Fiction editor | Ann VanderMeer
Contributing editors | Bill Baker, Amanda Gannon, Elizabeth Genco, Kenneth Hite, Darrell Schweitzer
Editor emeritus | George H. Scithers
Editorial assistants | Colin Azariah-Kribbs, Tessa Kum
Assistant to the publisher | Renee Farrah
Publisher | John Gregory Betancourt
CONTENTS
Fiction: International Author Spotlight
FIRST PHOTOGRAPH
| by Zoran Živkovi
Sometimes the dominant twin is the silent one.
THE GONG
| by Sara Genge
Across the battlefield, one eunuch envied the maidens.
THE DREAM OF THE BLUE MAN
| by Nir Yaniv
Mystery slept in the shadow of the skyscraper.
THE WORDEATERS
| by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
The child was magical. Too magical.
OUT OF SACRED WATER
| by Juraj
erve
ák
One sorcerer. One war brigade. One ancient forest.
TIME AND THE ORPHEUS
| by chiles samaniego
An ex-pirate's nightclub hosts a singular horn player.
BLEAKWARRIOR MEETS THE SONS OF BRAWL
| by Alistair Rennie
The metadimensional streetfighting throwdown of the year.
Exclusive Novel Excerpt!
THE ALCHEMY OF STONE
| by Ekaterina Sedia
A clockwork girl, emo gargoyles, and a city in turmoil.
Features
VIKTOR KOEN'S BIOMECHANICAL VISIONS
What happens when a classically trained Greek artist enters the digital-mashup millennium?
THE WEIRD TALES INTERVIEW: BILL PLYMPTON
His dreamlike animated tales have lit up countless screens. Bill Plympton talks in depth about the creative process.
Poetry
THE MONSTER WITH THE SHAPE OF ME
| by Brian J. Hatcher
Departments
THE EYRIE
| weirdness in many languages
WEIRDISM
| the apocalypse will be cinematographized
THE LIBRARY
| monsters, ghosts and more Halloween reading
THE BAZAAR
| steampunk beasts and a plethora of skulls
LOST IN LOVECRAFT
| Kenneth Hite finds Cthulhu in the Pacific
COVER ILLUSTRATION | Viktor Koen
* * *
A World Full of Weird Stories
by Ann VanderMeer
In my hands I am holding the latest book from author Leena Krohn:
Kotini on Riioraa.
Unfortunately, it is in Finnish, so while I can admire its beautiful, lavish illustrations, I cannot read it.
I mention this because I had the good fortune to not only meet Leena, but also be invited to her home to share a meal with her and her husband Mikael Böök, while visiting Europe a few years ago. That trip was a true revelation to me. I had the opportunity to meet and spend time with so many wonderful people: writers, editors, artists, and readers. Seven countries in five weeks. And delicious books everywhere I looked—but I couldn't partake! Alas, I am only proficient in English, although in my childhood I could converse in three languages.
Then last year I attended the Utopiales conference in Nantes, France, and spent some time with Jim and Kathy Morrow, who had just released their anthology of overseas science fiction,
The SFWA European Hall of Fame.
We talked for hours that week about the tragedy of Americans missing out on such great stories because we limit ourselves to English.
A reoccurring, if utopian, wish came up again and again:
If only we could all speak the same language.
Then all our fiction could be shared seamlessly— and without huge costs. One of the reasons we don't see much in the way of great new translated fiction is that sometimes the translation can cost even more than what the original writer earns. This makes translation projects cost-prohibitive and publishers reluctant to take the chance. It also deprives us of fantastic work we could be enjoying. That's a damn shame.
The Morrows and I also talked about the differences in fiction around the world; how each country has its own flavor of imaginative storytelling. This led me to think a lot about how great it would be to bring more international fiction to an English-speaking audience. And
that
led to this special issue of
Weird Tales
, wherein all the fiction is from overseas writers.
(In acquiring the stories for this issue, I discovered more wonderfulness than I could fit in one magazine. So rest assured,
Weird Tales
will be bringing you many more international stories in the future.)
Before introducing the tales in this issue, I'd like to take a moment to recognize those remarkable bi-lingual writers who have dedicated their time to crafting high-quality translations of other authors' work. Their efforts go largely unnoticed and unrecognized—yet what they do is so very important. While some of the stories appearing in this issue were originally written in English, others were not, and thus I raise my glass to Daren Bakker, Lavie Tidhar, and Alice Copple-Toši, who've brought their joys to us.
In this issue you will find Slovakian fantasy in the form of a mythic and legendary tale from Jurajerveák. You'll discover strange dreamscapes from an even stranger Israel of the future by Nir Yaniv. Come share an exploration of what happens when words are physical things, in a story from Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, a writer originally from the Phillipines, dwelling now in the Netherlands.
Do you know what eunuchs are like in battle? Sarah Genge of Spain shows us. And Serbian writer Zoran Živkoviunveils what lies unseen in a photo.