Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 Canadian

A LL STORIES NEW JANUARY, 1946 NO REPRINTS

NOVELETTES

LOST ELYSIUM . Edmond Hamilton 4

There is a world congruent with earth but existing on a different plane of vibration.

a world of unearthly beauty — and horror!

THE MURDEROUS STEAM SHOVEL . Allison V. Harding 44 A big steam shovel is stronger than any bull elephant, got a better memory — and more kilter in 'im!

THE MAD DANCERS --*-- Roger S. Vreeland 58 .... Some were prone to delegate the new plague to one of the sub-sciences beneath the dignity of medicine.

SHORT STORIES

MRS, LANNISFREE ».**■«*,- August Derleth 26

By and by you'll see a figure, white in the moonlight, walking rchndessly toward the sea.

THE CRANBERRY GOBLET «--,-- Harold Lawlor 33

There are all kinds of macabre secrets in this world' — goblins and goblets!

THE FANGS OF TSAN-LO ----- Jim Kjelgaard 76

The air tvas charged with hate and viciousnesa in its most primitive and elemental form.

SOUL PROPRIETOR -_-...- Robert Bloch 87

"One human soul, in reasonable condition, to highest bidder. . . . Owner must dispose of same at once!"

THE MIRROR --.„„-„» Charles King 95

See. it was quite evident! The mirror was actually defying him!

RIDE THE EL TO DOOM -- * * - - Alice B. Harcraft 101

They said the iron horse on stilts had to come down — but there are singular forces beyond our ken that mttst be reckoned with first!

VERSE

MIDNIGHT MOON - ~ * « * - Stanton A. Coblentz 43

HOMECOMING m m » . » - « « « *■ H. P. Lovccraft 56

WEIRD TALES—Issued bi-monthly by The American News Company. Limited, 474 Wellington Street West. Toronto. Ontario, by arrangement with Weird Tales. Inc., 9 Rockefeller Plaza, New York. New York. Copyrighted 1944, by Weird Tales. Inc. Authorized by the Postofflce Department, Ottawa, at second class matter. Manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by self-addressed stamped envelopes and are submitted at the author's risk. Names of all characters used In story and semi-fiction articles are fictitious. If the name of any real person or existing Institution Is used. It Is a coincidence. This magazine was produced In Canada, oa "anndlan paper, by Canadians, Vol. 38, No. S>

The Shining Land Found Again

ALTHOUGH "Lost Elysium" in this number is a sequel to "The Shining Land" (Weird Tales, July, 1945) author Edmond Hamilton writes us that he had no thought of a follow-up yarn when he wrote that first novelette.

"But after it appeared," Hamilton says, "I began to realiae how many interesting possibilities there were for a second yarn."

Herewith are some further notes on the story, forwarded by Edmond Hamilton:

"Lost Elysium/' like "The Shining Land," had its source in my long interest in Celtic mythology. ' Years ago I stumbled on Roleston's "Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race," in my estimation still the best popular account, and ever since then have read everything I could find on this fascinating subject.

It has always seemed to me that the Celtic talcs have more imaginative splendor than any other mythology. They do not have the graceful perfection of the Greek legends, nor the dark, grim power of the great Norse saga of the doomed Aesir, but in sheer, magic beauty they are incomparable.

Terhaps the most remarkable and dis-

tinctive feature of Celtic mythology is the predominance of their strange conception of an Otherworld or Elysium, distinct from the ordinary Earth. It was called Tir Sorcha, or the Shining Land, but was also called Tir nan Og, the I.and of Youth, or Tir n'Ailt, the Other World.

It was not primarily, like the Greek Elysium, an ahode of the dead. Rather it was conceived as a realm of wondrous, golden beauty that existed somewhere in-the Western Ocean but could not be seen by ordinary eyes because it was detached magically from our Earth. It was persistently pictured as consisting of many islands, and the Celts believed that more than one adventurer had managed to enter it and wander through the enchanted archipelago. "The Voyage of Bran" and the ,f Voyage of Maledune" are accounts of such adventures, the latter having been turned into a fine poem by Tennyson.

The great Cttdralain, hero of the later LTltonian myths, also entered this Elysium and there met and loved Fand, one of the great figures of the superhuman Tuatha race. But the Tuatha, more correctly the Tuatha de Dannan, had themselves previously invaded Earth in the fourth of the five great invasions listed by Celtic chronology, and had here fought and defeated the dark and evil Fomorians who were the most hated and dreaded of prehuman races.

From all this dramatic material, which I must emphasize is here only briefly summarized and has many variant versions, I tried to select those incidents and characters which could be woven into a story that would illustrate the richness of the old Celtic lore without doing too much violence to its traditions.

It may be of interest to note that one of the most famous of 20th Century (Continued on Page 32)

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Lost Elysium

STORM gathered orrinnusly over the mid-Atlantic. Black clouds were boiling up across the western sky, and already the screaming wind was piling up great waves that battered at the little auxiliary yawl.

Brian Cullan, sole occupant of the little yawl, stood at its wheel and watched the gathering tempest in ax agony of indecision and dread. Not dread for his personal safety, but fear that the storm might end the wtird quest that had brought him to this ionely ocean waste.

"This storm will sink me unless I run before it," he muttered. "But if I stay, it might open the way to the Shining Land as it did before!"

Cullan's dark, lean young face was haggard as he looked down with tense hope at the ring on his finger. It was a strange ring, a worn, massive hoop of gold set with a curious prismatic crystal. But what he prayed for had not happened. The jewel was still dull, dead.

The storm was coming on with giant strides Even under bare spars, the stout motor of the yawl could hardly keep it from swinging broadside to the climbing waves. He must flee at once if he were to escape the full fury of the tempest. But Cullan's agony of indecision suddenly ended in desperate resolve.

"I'll take the gamble! It's my only chance of entering Tir Sorcha again.

By EDMOND HAMILTON

I've tried everything else and failed."

And boldly he opened the Diesel's power and kept the little craft bucking directly into the storm, to maintain his position.

Brian Cullan had been cruising around this position in the lonely mid-Atlantic for days. Vainly he had been trying to force entrance back into the strange, alien world that by chance he had entered two years before.

The other time, just after the war ended, he had been flying back across the Atlantic to America and home. He had flown into a raging thunderstorm and a strange thing had happened. The

crystal, of the old ring upon his finger hi.d begun to glow weirdly with sparkling force.

The ring was an ancient heirloom in Brian Cullan's family. For his descent was supposed to be from the great Cuchu-lain, the legendary Celtic warrior-hero of two thousand years ago. And from Cuchulain had come down that strange ring which had always been called "The Unlocker."

The ring was a key, that under certain circumstances could unlock the gateway into an alien world. A world congruent with Earth but existing on a different plane of vibration, a world of unearthly

Somewhere tvas that lost, golden land and a love worth the hideous danger of returning

LOST ELYSIUM

beauty and horror that long ago Cuchulain and others had entered and had called Tir Serena, the Shining Land.

Finns into that weirdly different world, Brian Cuilan had found that time in it was different. A year on Earth was but a da\ in the Shining Land. So that the twenty centuries since Cuchulain visited to those who dwelt on it. that other world seemed but a few years And the dwellers in Tir Sorcha were those whom the ancient Celts had worshiped as gods! The Tuatha De, the great race whose chieftains, Lugh and Dagda and others, had been deified long ago by men of Earth, and who still lived and reigned in that other world of far slower time.

And among them — Cullan's heart yearned at the memory—was that Princess Fand, whom the great race had made guardian of the Gateway between worlds Long ago, Fand had loved Cuchulain but hiid let him return u> Earth. And when Brian Cuilan came, to her he was Cuchulain returned for a trick of inheritance had made him the double of his long-dead ancestor.

Cullan's eyes filled with tears that the howling wind and spray of the storm whipped from his cheeks.

"Fand, I swore to come back to you or die trying!" he cried into the roar of wind and waves. "And it's one or the other, now!"

For he had loved Fand, as he had loved no woman of Earth. In her faery-beautiful city Ethne, he had fought for her against her estranged husband Mannanan when that traitorous lord of the great race had sought to seize the Gateway to Earth for his own evil purposes.

He had fought and won, for Mannanan had died in the battle that wrecked