“How To Write a Weird Tale” by Hoy Ping Pong (Wilson “Bob” Tucker) was a typical scathing repudiation of Weird Tales by a Golden Age SF writer. (It appeared in Charles D. Hornig’s The Fantasy Fan, March 1934.) I call Tucker a Golden Ager not because he wrote lots for John W. Campbell but because of his stance. He did produce two “Probability Zero” pieces for Campbell but nothing else. Despite that, Tucker’s attitude is pure Campbell. He is the wit who coined the label “Space Opera” for action-oriented SF. It wasn’t a compliment.
And calling him a “wit” is appropriate. Much of Tucker’s earliest material was done for the fanzines. Like his friend, Robert Bloch, he developed a satiric style of fan writing that took no prisoners. Unlike Bloch, Tucker never wrote for Weird Tales. At the time of this piece’s appearance, Bloch had yet to sell anything to Farnsworth Wright but in a year would become Lovecraft’s apprentice and sell “The Feast in the Abbey” (Weird Tales, January 1935).
Lesson 1
As the slightly racist Hoy Ping Pong, he tears horror fiction a new one:
I have to assume Tucker is targeting Edmond Hamilton here. He was certainly Weird Tales biggest Science Fiction writer. He also recycled the same H. G. Wells invasion plot many times. The specific date of 1926 refers to the years Hamilton first appeared in Weird Tales, August 1926 with “The Monster-God of Mamurth”.
This describes the plot of most Science Fiction magazines as well. Ray A. Palmer never turned down any story with this scenario in it.
Lesson 2
Again Edmond Hamilton comes to mind. In “The Abysmal Invaders” (Weird Tales, June 1929) he had dinosaurs. In “The Dimension Terror” (Weird Tales, June 1928) he crossed dimensions. He used just about every other monster delivery system he could find from monsters from the planet’s core, monsters from comets, man-eating plants created by a mad scientist and many others. Allen Glasser in The Fantasy Fan, September 1933 had made fun of Ed in his “Science Fiction Alphabet”:
H is for Hamilton, who has written a lot;
He sure makes good use of his favorite plot
So Ed being the target is quite likely. Tucker suggests the monsters should go to NYC because the city is used to being destroyed. (Most SF tales seem to be set in that metropolis. And many comic books afterwards. This was the idea behind Dwayne McDufffie”s Damage Control, a company that specializes in cleaning up after superhero fights and monster attacks.)
Lesson 3
Here Tucker is suggesting that a weird tale has to have big words. This is a common complaint against H. P. Lovecraft. Tucker mentions HPL’s friend, and fellow sesquipedalian logophile, Clark Ashton Smith.
Lesson 4
Here Tucker is suggesting that nepotism is rampant in Pulp publishing. I can think of only one case relating to Weird Tales. Farnsworth Wright’s nephew was the prolific Pulpsters, David Wright O’Brien. O’Brien sold almost exclusively to Ray Palmer under five different pseudonyms (John York Cabot, Duncan Farnsworth, Richard Vardon, Clee Garson and Bruce Dennis) as well as his own name. I don’t believe he sold to WT, though O’Brien did do a satire of Weird Tales‘ top draw, Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin. “The Last Case of Jules DeGranjerque” appeared in Fantastic Adventures. O’Brien enlisted in World War II as an airman and was shot down. Ray Palmer lost six authors that day.
I am pretty sure Tucker isn’t thinking of O’Brien because his first sale in 1940. Perhaps Tucker was expressing sour grapes as an unpublished writer? His first Pulp appearance was “Letter: Report of the 196th Convention” in Wonder Stories, November 1934). Since it appeared in the letter section, he probably wasn’t even paid for it.
Lesson 5
Here is the only nugget of real writing advice. I have had ill-informed people suggest this very tactic to me. I don’t recommend it. I received a very angry letter from an editor when I tried it. And pretty much ruined my chances of ever appearing in that magazine ever. (I wish I could recall the details, but decades have passed since and I have been rejected many times since. They tend to blur together.) Tucker’s entire piece is tongue-in-cheek so he probably doesn’t mean it.
Assessment
I wanted to enter into this discussion with an open mind. Are there legitimate criticisms of weird fiction here? We have to read between the lines and past the humor. Smarminess (yes, that’s a real word. Look it up, logophiles!) aside, we can take this away:
- Tucker thinks all weird tales have one plot.
- You don’t have to be accountable and explain where monsters come from.
- Horror writers use annoyingly long words.
- Nepotism helps.
- Just send in the same story again.
Let’s address each in turn:
One
Tucker thinks all weird tales have one plot. This is ridiculous when you consider the variety even in a single issue of Weird Tales. Here is the high-lights from an issue one year earlier, March 1933. Robert E. Howard’s Conan in “The Tower of the Elephant”, Seabury Quinn’s occult detective Jules de Grandin saving some disrobed young thing from werewolves in “The Thing in the Fog”, to the Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique arabesque adventure “The Isle of the Torturers”, a serial installment of Otis Adbelbert Kline’s ERB-style space adventure, Buccaneers of Venus and four traditional horror tales by Harold Ward (soul thief), Paul Ernst (a moth story similar to “The Fly”), S. Gordon Gurwit (weird surgery) and Arlton Eadie (ghosts).
Two
You don’t have to be accountable and explain where monsters come from. This sounds like a Science Fiction fan who doesn’t get the appeal of horror. The lack of an explanation is kinda the point. If you explain away the horrors you end up with the Shudder Pulps or Ann Radcliffe or Scooby-Doo. Be careful what you wish for…
Three
Horror writers use annoyingly long words. Early Lovecraft suffered from this as HPL learned how best to describe the outre. Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated man and his diction was considerably. But not every story is jammed with jewel-rich vocabulary. This is usually his fantasy where he was trying to create an atmosphere of the exotic. Both writers consciously chose their words in an attempt to create something special. Like it or not, some fans were fond of rich language. Tucker wouldn’t be. He was descended from John W. Campbell, the man who gave Science Fiction as much literary style as a car manual. Ironically, much of Tucker’s later work will appear in Fantasy & Science Fiction, the most literary of all SF magazine!
Four
Nepotism helps. It does. I have found very little of it in Pulp publishing. Pulp editors wanted a certain kind of story and they needed a constant supply. Who has time for worrying about where it comes from?
Five
Just send in the same story again. Not sure where Tucker got this. Perhaps some pro bragging about doing it? Editors and sub-editors change fairly frequently so it may because of this.
Conclusion
Final conclusion, Tucker is not a horror fan. His complaints are directed mostly at certain writers. Go read Amazing Stories then. What is sad here is that this attitude held by many SF folk (Isaac Asimov comes to mind despite appearing in Weird Tales in 1950. Still don’t believe me? Go read Lester Del Rey’s The World of Science Fiction: 1926-1976 (1979) This snobbery kept writers like Edmond Hamilton from getting the credit due them. Ed set in motion so many SF ideas (like giant robots, killer robots, mobile plant monsters, super-evolved humans, space opera fleets, etc. His later work for Weird Tales after 1933 is filled with wonderful color and variety. Stories like “He That Hath Wings” (Weird Tales, July 1938) gave us Angel of The X-Men, for instance. Other SF writers like Ray Cummings, J. Schlossal, Nictzin Dyalhis and others all published SF in Weird Tales.
There you have it. How To Write a Weird Tale in Five Easy Lessons. Or how to close your mind and miss out on a great genre of fiction and its best magazine…
