Customer Reviews

100 Wild Little Weird Tales

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Along with the traditional writers in genre (H.P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, etc.) this anthology has some lesser known short stories and works by authors of the past. Of particularly interest are Gustav Meyrink, Edwardian ghost story author E.F. Benson, and some of the french conti cruel writers like Maurice Level. As with any anthology of this size and scope, some of the stories don't really work--but overall, a nice, well-rounded collection.

I got this book as a Father's Day gift this year and was really looking forward to cracking it open and reading some great classic weird fiction. Unfortunately, I confess I was a bit disappointed.

This is not to say that there isn't great stuff in here. Certainly the stories by most of the famous names that are included (Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Poe, etc.) are good to great, and there are pleasant suprises from some less familiar names (Maurice Level and Ewen Whyte, neither of whom I was familiar with, contribute a couple of haunting stories each, and the underrated Manly Wade Wellman's "These Doth The Lord Hate" is unexpectedly poignant), but for the most part this is pretty mediocre and predictable stuff. For example, there were at least half a dozen stories where I correctly guessed what the ending would be a page or two in, and that's not something I'm very good at doing.

In conclusion, if you're terminally addicted to pulp fiction, you'll probably wanna pick this up, but for the non-junkie, something like Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors will serve as a much better introduction to what "The Unique Magazine" had to offer.

This really is a beautiful little collection that highlights the best features of the weird fiction genre: tales of the sea, dark gods, madness, ghosts, and vampires. Most of the stories work quite well--only a comparative few fail to satisfy. With this collection you are getting works from the golden age of weird fiction, the 20's, 30's and early 40's--Lovecraft, Quinn, Bloch, Smith, Lieber, Derleth. A must have for the pulp collector.

There's several anthologies of stories from the Weird Tales magazine during it's "golden age," but I admit I bought this one used because it was cheap and seemed like a good way to dip my toe into the genre.

Some of the stories fall flat, but they're all deliciously pulp-ish and many of them are quite good. Coming in at around 580 pages you can figure on the stories being pretty brief, which makes this book great for when you don't have a lot of time or for when you're in more of a "browsing mood." I can see myself moving on to other anthologies with longer stories, but this is a pretty good collection to start with if you love horror fiction but aren't too familiar with Weird Tales.

100 Wild Little Weird Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, published by Barnes and Noble, 1994.

An excellent A to Z (well, A to W) miscellany of strange tales including some very masterful work. Edgar Allan Poe's "Berenice" appears here, along with Bram Stoker's "A Gypsy Propecy," "Hypnos" by H.P Lovecraft, and "These Doth the Lord Hate" by Manly Wade Wellman. Among the many other enjoyable, if lesser known, oddities here is "The Cracks of Time," by Dorothy Quick, in which the god Pan tempts a housewife. From giant, killer slugs to vampires to ghosts to devil worshippers, this creepy anthology would be an ideal Halloween treat for anyone like me who loves stories more than candy.

I owned a copy of this book years ago and it was recently destroyed. I had a hard time locating a new copy, and am very happy I finally have one!