a convincing quality to it than anything I've read in a long time—in plot, that is. Almost makes me feel like investigating the New York subway system myself."
Praise for the Cover
Frank Bryan, Jr., writes from Nelson, Oklahoma: "Please don't tell me that WT is going bi-monthly; that would be like half killing me. I have always been of the opinion that if you could get enough stories you should come out once a week. I sincerely hope that this will be the only double issue this year. . . . Up to now I have not thought you had put out a good cover, since you apparently do not like Brundage, but whatever I have said or thought I take it back, as the cover on the July issue is impossible to praise highly enough. I think you should not have printed any matter on the cover though, or else have it sort of boxed in down at the bottom. . . . The stories are always good, or better, so there is no need to say anything about them. The more [[Author:Robert E. Howard|Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft stories you print the better I will like it. I am not one of your old readers who are able to refer to King Kull and other classics, so I would appreciate very much your reprinting old Howard and Lovecraft stories. The best story in this issue I think is Almuric."
That Oooogy Feeling
George Aylesworth writes from Mackinaw City, Michigan: "The reprint in the July issue, Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, was excellent. Almuric is coming along nicely and other good ones in this issue were Mansions in the Sky, Far Below, and Lens-Shy. I don't want to renew the interplanetaryarn squabble of '33, but don't you think there are enough mags now (9) devoted to science-fiction so that you do not have to print that type of story? I am a confirmed scientifiction nut but I like Weird Tales, the only mag of its kind, to be weird. In spite of all my brickbats, I'll still buy WT, the only mag that gives me—shall we say, Miss Ferber?—that oooogy feeling."
Diversity of Material
E. Hoffman Price writes from California: "The local colony of writers and would-be writers has for some time marvelled at the diversity of material you offer in WT. As nearly as humanly possible, you seem to have made WT devoid of any 'policy' beyond the broad limitation that the yarn must involve an element of fantasy. While it is true that not every item occuring in the sacred pages is greeted with frenzies of approbation, some of the yarns that have griped us have made quite a hit with other readers; and appealing to a diversity of tastes is really an accomplishment."
A Horse Race
Leah Bodine Drake writes from Owensboro, Kentucky: "I wouldn't have believed it possible if I hadn’t seen it happen, but WT keeps right on doing it. Doing what? Not the 'Turkey Trot,' but putting out a better magazine every month, every one of those 160 pages! This last issue was a dilly! First honors go to Seabury Quinn. I don't see how he does it, but he crashes through every so often with a story so fine, so beautifully written, so sincere, that I think the man must be inhuman. Washington Nocturne was a bit off the beaten track for WT, being less of a weird tale than a timely piece of propaganda, and 'pointing a moral.' It is hard to pick out the place and show horses (it's race-time down in 'Old Kaintuck'!), but my money went on Almuric for place, with Watcher at the Door and The Face at Death Corner tying in a dead heat for third. The others were all thrilling and intriguing tales, especially The Dark Isle; and if the others had to be, of necessity, also-rans, it was a stake-race and not a claiming one. (To get back into English, they were all good, even if they didn't make first, second and third places in my judgment.) The poetry, as is usual in WT, was good. How Virgil Finlay's inventive powers keep going at full stride I cannot imagine. He rings the bell every time with his eery picturizations of famous weird poems. . . . That man surely uses a quill of the Ruhk, or a feather from the wing of a Marid—no earthly pen could ever limn such scenes."
Masters of the Weird
Paul I. McCleave writes from Nantucket, Massachusetts: "Primarily this missive is in-
