Reading a scanned copy of the original Fanciful Tales #1 (Fall 1936) fills me with so many conflicting emotions. Most of them good. On the one hand, just looking at the contents pages delights me with names of authors I love. We have HP Lovecraft, Donald A Wollheim, Robert E Howard, David H Keller and August Derleth. All we need is Clark Ashton Smith and it would be perfect. With the exception of some like William S Sykora, Duane W Rimel and Kenneth B Pritchard, these names are weird fiction royalty. More importantly, I can glean the fannish zeal with which the project was done. I know that “fan fire,” that desire to place words and images in a new way that will thrill (hopefully thousands of) readers (more likely less than a dozen). Fanciful Tales‘ single issue is a perfect example of a “fanzine,” created in a flash of inspiration (that doesn’t necessarily include a lot of proofing). I have created not a few similar works of my own.
Looking at the contents of Fanciful Tales #1, I see DAW (as Don Wollheim was known) had some great connections with published writers and active fans, filling his zine accordingly. All are quite short, little longer than flash fiction. Let’s take a look at each one and consider them individually:
Read the rest:
https://www.michaelmay.online/2015/05/fanciful-tales-of-time-and-space-fan.html
