Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: Weird Tales, 2004
Weird Tales continued to date their issues as if they were on a bimonthly schedule, but in fact they managed only three issues this year, after several years of reliably sticking to a quarterly frequency. (The changes at DNA Publications, related to switching distributors in preparation for the launch of a KISS magazine, probably were the cause of this.) The three issues were January/February, March/April, and November/December, #334 through #336 in the whole number system extending back to the original Weird Tales in 1923, and incorporating the years the magazine was called Worlds of Fantasy and Horror.
There were 17 stories this year, three of them novelettes. Three of the stories (including one novelette) were reprints of early 20th Century (or late 19th Century) fiction. Total word count, about 73,000 words, of which about 58,000 words were new. (Average new novelette: 12700, average new short story: 2700 words.)
One novelette was quite good, Michael Bishop's "The Sacerdotal Owl" (March/April), about an American woman meeting her archeologist fiance at a Mayan site in the fictional country of Guacamayo(!). Despite the silly name of the country (sounds like a flavored bread spread), the story is fairly serious in tone -- pretty much the usual thing, silly Americans meddling with the Old Gods and paying for it. The other novelette was Darrell Schweitzer's "Lord Abernaeven's Tale" (January/February), one of his Sekenre the Sorcerer stories, decent enough stuff.
Of the short stories, the best was probably Ian Watson's "Lambert, Lambert" (March/April), a gleefully weird horror piece about a gaoler with an unusual, er, involvement with his prisoners. I also quite liked Tanith Lee's "Midnight" (March/April) (yet another Cinderella retelling), and Melinda Thielbar's "The Ghost of Me" (November/December), a nice contemporary story with a ghost of a different sort.
