**
Collection of 21 stories by pulp writer and Weird Tales contributor Carl Jacobi somewhat tarnishes the mystique of that magazine (which originally published 11 of them). The stories, ranging in quality from indifferent to bad, show the author as a capable ideas man, but his plots are typically disorganized, self-contradictory, and laughably contrived. Jacobi’s favorite theme — and it appears in nearly all of these tales — is that of the outside, irresistible force that compels his characters to do things they cannot understand. Jove/HBJ’s 1979 reprint features the following Stephen King quotation on the front cover: “One of the finest writers to come out of the Golden Age of fantasy.” He must have been joking.
Collection of 21 stories by pulp writer and Weird Tales contributor Carl Jacobi somewhat tarnishes the mystique of that magazine (which originally published 11 of them). The stories, ranging in quality from indifferent to bad, show the author as a capable ideas man, but his plots are typically disorganized, self-contradictory, and laughably contrived. Jacobi’s favorite theme — and it appears in nearly all of these tales — is that of the outside, irresistible force that compels his characters to do things they cannot understand. Jove/HBJ’s 1979 reprint features the following Stephen King quotation on the front cover: “One of the finest writers to come out of the Golden Age of fantasy.” He must have been joking.