"Fire burn and
cauldron bubble"
A meeting place for
Sorcerers and Apprentices
Buried Death Fears
Dear Editor:
Congratulations! Your first number of Strange Tales is good; it has all the earmarks of another successful magazine. Cover strikes me as being better than any so far on Astounding Stories. My objection to the Astounding covers is that they try to be illustrations for some story; I mean that the artist usually develops the picture exactly as he would an inside lustration, showing characters in action. Now, to my way of thinking, the human characters who happen to be throwing a javelin at an ape or setting off some celestial pyrotechnics are not important on the cover. Inside they are 100% important, for there the picture must put an actual story-scene before us; must show us John J. Hero in action; but on the cover it is the story idea that is important rather than the portrayal of some definite action of the hero in the story.
And here I started to congratulate you on S. T., and have wound up by bawling you out for Astounding. But perhaps you will gather from this that I liked the S. T. cover immensely.
I have had time only for a hasty skipping through of the contents. What I have seen reads well; I believe that you are hitting a high mark. And now for a suggestion—
Perhaps, even though the readers are invited to express their opinions and likes and dislikes, it is the part of prudence for a contributor to keep his mouth shut. I will take a chance, however, and offer a suggestion, and, since it is offered without my having read the magazine, it will be apparent that this is not a criticism of editorial policy as exemplified therein but merely my own ideas of a possible danger after looking over some of the yarns.
To continue publication you must develop a certain circulation. That means a big field of readers that you reach, and
425
