Masters of Fantasy (1981) Anthology Read online

  Masters Of Fantasy

  EDITED BY TERRY CARR &

  MARTIN HARRY GREENBERG

  Copyright © 1981 by Terry Carr and Martin Harry Greenberg

  CONTENTS

  The Rats in the Walls

  H. P. LOVECRAFT

  The Woman of the Wood

  A. MERRITT

  Trouble with Water

  H. L. GOLD

  Thirteen O'Clock

  C. M. KORNBLUTH

  The Coming of the White Worm

  CLARK ASHTON SMITH

  Yesterday Was Monday

  THEODORE STURGEON

  They Bite

  ANTHONY BOUCHER

  Call Him Demon

  HENRY KUTTNER

  Daemon

  C. L. MOORE

  The Black Ferris

  RAY BRADBURY

  Displaced Person

  ERIC FRANK RUSSELL

  Our Fair City

  ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

  Come and Go Mad

  FREDRIC BROWN

  There Shall Be No Darkness

  JAMES BLISH

  The Loom of Darkness

  JACK VANCE

  The Rag Thing

  DONALD A. WOLLHEIM

  Sail On! Sail On!

  PHILIP JOSE FARMER

  One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts

  SHIRLEY JACKSON

  The HellBound Train

  ROBERT BLOCH

  Nine Yards of Other Cloth

  MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  The Montavarde Camera

  AVRAM DAVIDSON

  Man Overboard

  JOHN COLLIER

  My Dear Emily

  JOANNA RUSS

  Descending

  THOMAS M. DISCH

  Four Ghosts in Hamlet

  FRITZ LEIBER

  Divine Madness

  ROGER ZELAZNY

  Narrow Valley

  R. A. LAFFERTY

  Timothy

  KEITH ROBERTS

  Through a Glass—Darkly

  ZENNA HENDERSON

  Jeffty Is Five

  HARLAN ELLISON

  Within the Walls of Tyre

  MICHAEL BISHOP

  Acknowledgements

  INTRODUCTION

  This anthology was created to fill an astonishing gap in fantasy book publishing. While there have been numerous anthologies of fantasy stories, many of them excellent, until now no one has made the effort to gather together in one volume a selection of the finest stories that have been published since the first all-fantasy magazine was born. Masters of Fantasy attempts just that task; it might be called the "definitive" anthology of magazine fantasy. Every story in this book originally appeared in a fantasy magazine, and the overall mixture of styles and subjects shows the rich variety of imagination that these magazines have presented.

  There are no stories here from books, "slick" magazines, literary reviews, or any source other than the central genre publications. In this way we emphasize the development of a cohesive and self-aware literary movement that has brought great changes to the traditional fantasy modes. The stories are arranged in chronological order of their publications, making the pattern of development obvious.

  "Fantasy" connotes different things to different people: one of us might think immediately of ghost stories, another of fairy tales, a third of the Arabian Nights or the tales of King Arthur. These were the basic types of fantasy through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When magazines specifically devoted to fantasy began to appear, they started from this foundation and built an astonishing variety of new types of fantasy. The old forms were updated, new styles and techniques came into use, and even some fundamental assumptions of fantasy writers were reexamined.

  Once regular magazine markets for such stories became available many new writers began to produce fantasy and they brought new approaches to the genre. Perhaps the most noticeable was the faster pace Wright himself made the attempt in 1930 with Oriental Stories; when its sales proved disappointing the title was changed to The Magic Carpet Magazine,but this too was unsuccessful and it died after fourteen issues. In 1939, Better Publications, Inc., publishers of dozens of successful pulp magazines, entered the weird fantasy field with Strange Stories, which did well for a while but was discontinued after twelve issues in favor of more lucrative magazines in other genres.

  These and a few other unsuccessful efforts at serious weird fiction magazines proved that the readership for them was too small to support more than Weird Tales itself (and Weird Tales was only marginally profitable). A number of publishers in the thirties tried to achieve greater sales by producing lurid magazines that combined fantasy with sex and sadism; such titles as Horror Stories, Sinister Stories, Terror Tales and Uncanny Tales published stories like "Mistress of Satan s Hounds and "Brides for the Half-Men." Though they made money for a while, they died as the Depression waned; this was probably not a coincidence.

  But at the same time, two new fantasy magazines were launched that featured types of fantasy stories radically different from those in Weird Tales. In March 1939, John W. Campbell added a fantasy companion to his science fiction magazine Astounding Science-Fiction — titled Unknown, it featured a more "modern" style of fantasy in which terror gave way to rigorously logical consideration of fantasy themes. Its stones were crisply written, often full of adventure, frequently humorous; Theodore Sturgeon, L. Sprague de camp, Henry Kuttner, L. Ron Hubbard and many others wrote excellent fantasies for this magazine. It lasted for four and a half years, until World War II paper restrictions forced its demise.

  Almost concurrently with Unknown's first issue, a new magazine called Fantastic Adventures appeared — edited by Raymond A. Palmer — as a companion magazine to Amazing Stories, it presented a mixture of styles similar to those in Unknown but written for a younger audience. Stories of high adventure were of course featured, but the shorter stones were often comic; they had titles like "The Strange Voyage of Hector Squinch" and "The Horse That Talked." Fantastic Adventures became very successful and lasted till 1953, when it combined with a newer, digest-size magazine, Fantastic.

  The 1940s also saw the rise and great popularity of several fantasy magazines devoted primarily to reprints. Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Fantastic Novels, edited by Mary Gnaedinger, were companion magazines that featured novels reprinted from non-genre pulps and from hardcover books; these tended to be lost-race adventures by, or in the manner of, A. Merritt. The Avon Fantasy Reader concentrated on stones in the stories they wrote. Traditionally fantasy had usually been slow and moody, but in order to please the readers of popular fantasy magazines — all of them "pulp" magazines at first — writers learned to be more spare with their adjectives, and to get their stories moving quickly.

  The first all-fantasy magazine was Weird Tales, founded in 1923 by publisher J. C. Henneberger, who was an admirer of Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories and wanted to promote further writing of that type. The magazine's first editor, Edwin Baird, was less than enthusiastic about the genre and the issues he produced were mostly low in quality. He published the early stories of H.P. Lovecraft, but only because Henneberger insisted; Baird's own attempts to popularize the magazine included publication of articles and stories by Harry Houdini. (These were revised or ghost-written by Lovecraft.) But sales remained poor and after a year and a half Henneberger replaced Baird with a new editor, Farnsworth wright.

  Wright quickly proved to be a superb editor, establishing a reputation in the fantasy genre as towering as that of John W. Campbell was to become in science fiction. In the nearly sixteen years he edited the magazine, Wright discovered and published the work of such write
rs as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore and many more — literally all the major authors of magazine fantasy in the twenties and thirties. (He also published the first story of a teenager who later became famous as Tennessee Williams.) But Wright had long suffered from Parkinson's disease and by 1940 his health was failing. When the magazine was sold to a new publisher, the editorship was turned over to Dorothy Mcllwraith. Wright died later that year, mourned and lauded by his friends and associates in fantasy.

  Mcllwraith was a competent editor but she had to work with a severely curtailed budget (it had never been large), and Weird Tales favorites such as Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith had either died or stopped writing for the magazine. She published early stories by Fritz Leiber and Theodore Sturgeon, and discovered Ray Bradbury, publishing most of his excellent early fantasies. The magazine survived the forties but died in 1954, along with most of the other pulp magazines in all genres; the pulp era had come to an end.

  (The magazine was briefly revived — for four issues — in the early seventies under the editorship of Sam Moskowitz. At this writing, another revival is underway with Lin Carter as editor; it is to appear as a paperback "magazine.")

  Several attempts were made during the 1930s to publish other fantasy magazines that would sell to Weird Tales's readership. Farnsworth from the early Weird Tales and those by authors who had written fantasy-horror before or outside of the pulp magazines such as Stephen Vincent Benet, Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce and William Hope Hodgson. Donald A. Wollheim, a fantasy aficionado, proved himselt to be a fine editor with this series.

  The 1950s began with the inauguration of several new fantasy magazines, all of them in the digest-sized format. Howard Browne edited Fantastic, which we've already mentioned; its early issues presented excellent stories by top writers such as Bradbury, Sturgeon, and Leiber, but its editorial budget was too high to be justified by its sales, so it merged with Fantastic Adventures and, offering lower rates to authors, has varied widely in quality since. There were several excellent but short-lived ventures by other publishers and editors: Damon Knight s Worlds Beyond lasted for only three issues; Lester del Rey's Fantasy Fiction Magazine presented four issues; and H. L. Gold's Beyond survived ten issues. The fifties, a time characterized by humdrum complacency in this country, felt no strong need for fantasy.

  But the most successful new magazine of the period —and arguably the finest fantasy magazine ever published — was Fantasy and Science, launched late in 1949 under the editorship of Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas. Its early issues featured nearly as many reprints as original stories, the reprints being drawn from books and non-genre magazines; but the emphasis soon changed to new stories, at least half of which were science fiction. This enabled the magazine to survive and thrive to the present, attracting not only fantasy fans but also the science fiction readership. (SF readers apparently welcome fantasy occasionally but not as a steady diet.)

  Fantasy and Science Fiction, under the editorships of Boucher and McComas, later of Robert P. Mills, Avram Davidson, Edward Ferman, and currently, Kristine Kathryn Rosch, became the "quality" magazine of fantasy; it has published most of the important fantasy stories of the last thirty years. Authors such as Richard Matheson, Zenna Henderson, R. Bretnor, Avram Davidson, Richard Cowper and far too many others to name established their reputations in its pages.

  In England, Walter Gillings began editing Science-Fantasy in 1950; after two issues, he yielded the editorial chair to E. J. Carnell, who continued the magazine for thirteen years. Kyril Bonfiglioli replaced him and soon changed the title to impulse, later to sf impulse; Harry Harrison edited the final five issues, the last of which appeared in 1967. This magazine brought to prominence such British writers as J. G. Ballard and Keith Roberts, and the U.S. author Thomas Burnett Swain. The fantasy readership was slow to organize, at least in comparison with science fiction fandom, but in recent years fantasy conventions have become common, and literary prizes have been established, such as the World Fantasy Award and Britain's August Derleth Fantasy Award. (Actually, the sf Hugo Award has always been open to works of fantasy, and several such stories have won.)

  There has been a strong resurgence in fantasy book publishing recently, with mass-market houses like Del Rey Books, Dell, and other adopting special logos for their fantasy novels and collections. This renascence was spurred by the great commercial and artistic success of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which set off a boom of so-called "high fantasy" (frequently imitative). A revival of Robert E. Howard's stories about Conan and other warrior-heroes quickly led to many new novels of "sword and sorcery"; and weird/horror fiction has again become popular, originally as a result of the republication of H. P. Lovecraft's works and currently because of the great success of writers such as Stephen King.

  It is a curious fact that though fantasy has again become very popular as far as book sales are concerned, this trend has not yet been reflected in magazine publishing. The market today for short stories of fantasy is mostly confined (with the notable exception of Fantasy and Science Fiction) to book anthologies and semi-professional magazines.

  This situation is as sad as it is peculiar — but there is the hope that readers and writers of fantasy short stories will be inspired by the rich legacy presented in the pages that follow. For as the more than a quarter of a million words of fantasy fiction in this volume indicate, fantasy magazines have produced a significant amount of quality writing over the years in a wide variety of styles, from the humorous to the tragic, from visions of charming apparitions to horrible creatures that go bump in the night.

  TERRY CARR (1937-1987)

  MARTIN HARRY GREENBERG

  Oakland and Green Bay

  The Rats in the Walls

  H. P. Lovecraft

  On July 16,1923, I moved into Exham Priory after the last workman had finished his labors. The restoration had been a stupendous task, for little had remained of the deserted pile but a shell-like ruin; yet because it had been the seat of my ancestors, I let no expense deter me. The place had not been inhabited since the reign of James the First, when a tragedy of intensely hideous, though largely unexplained, nature had struck down the master, five of his children, and several servants; and driven forth under a cloud of suspicion and terror the third son, my lineal progenitor and the only survivor of the abhorred line.

  With this sole heir denounced as a murderer, the estate had reverted to the crown, nor had the accused man made any attempt to exculpate himself or regain his property. Shaken by some horror greater than that of conscience or the law, and expressing only a frantic wish to exclude the ancient edifice from his sight and memory, Walter de la Poer, eleventh Baron Exham, fled to Virginia and there founded the family which by the next century had become known as Delapore.

  Exham Priory had remained untenanted, though later allotted to the estates of the Norrys family and much studied because of its peculiarly composite architecture; an architecture involving Gothic towers resting on a Saxon or Romanesque substructure, whose foundation in turn was of a still earlier order or blend of orders—Roman, and even Druidic or native Cymric, if legends speak truly. This foundation was a very singular thing, being merged on one side with the solid limestone of the precipice from whose brink the priory overlooked a desolate valley three miles west of the village of Anchester.

  Architects and antiquarians loved to examine this strange relic of forgotten centuries, but the country folk hated it. They had hated it hundreds of years before, when my ancestors lived there, and they hated it now, with the moss and mould of abandonment on it. I had not been a day in Anchester before I knew I came of an accursed house. And this week workmen have blown up Exham Priory, and are busy obliterating the traces of its foundations. The bare statistics of my ancestry I had always known, together with the fact that my first American forbear had come to the colonies under a strange cloud. Of details, however, I had been kept wholly ignorant through the policy of reticence always maintai
ned by the Delapores. Unlike our planter neighbors, we seldom boasted of crusading ancestors or other mediaeval and Renaissance heroes; nor was any kind of tradition handed down except what may have been recorded in the sealed envelope left before the Civil War by every squire to his eldest son for posthumous opening. The glories we cherished were those achieved since the migration; the glories of a proud and honorable, if somewhat reserved and unsocial Virginia line.

  During the war our fortunes were extinguished and our whole existence changed by the burning of Carfax, our home on the banks of the James. My grandfather, advanced in years, had perished in that incendiary outrage, and with him the envelope that had bound us all to the past. I can recall that fire today as I saw it then at the age of seven, with the Federal soldiers shouting, the women screaming, and the negroes howling and praying. My father was in the army, defending Richmond, and after many formalities my mother and I were passed through the lines to join him.

  When the war ended we all moved north, whence my mother had come; and I grew to manhood, middle age, and ultimate wealth as a stolid Yankee. Neither my father nor I ever knew what our hereditary envelope had contained, and as I merged into the grayness of Massachusetts business life I lost all interest in the mysteries which evidently lurked far back in my family tree. Had I suspected their nature, how gladly I would have left Exham Priory to its moss, bats, and cobwebs!