Weird Tales - Current Version

Current Version

Weird Tales was more lastingly revived in 1988 under license by publisher/editors George H. Scithers, John Gregory Betancourt and Darrell Schweitzer, beginning with issue 290. The revived magazine saw initial success, publishing notable contemporary writers such as Tanith Lee, Brian Lumley and Thomas Ligotti alongside artists including George Barr, Jason Van Hollander, and Allen Koszowski. However, after years of losses and reversion of the license by Weird Tales, Ltd., Weird Tales later became part of the DNA Publications chain for several years around the turn of the millennium. In 2005, the magazine was sold entirely to Wildside Press (owned by former co-editor Betancourt).

In early 2007, Wildside announced a revamp of Weird Tales, naming Stephen H. Segal the editorial and creative director and later recruiting Ann VanderMeer as the new fiction editor. Scithers and Schweitzer remained as contributors, Betancourt as publisher. The April/May 2007 edition (issue #344) featured the magazine's first all-new design in almost seventy-five years. Subsequently, Weird Tales has published works by a wide range of strange-fiction authors including Michael Moorcock, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Norman Spinrad and Carrie Vaughn, as well as artwork by a younger generation of artists such as Molly Crabapple, Steven Archer and Jason Levesque. Recent issues have also seen the addition of a broader range of nonfiction, ranging from narrative essays to comics to features on weird culture. The magazine has since won its first Hugo Award in August 2009 at the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal, two Hugo Award nominations in subsequent years, and its first World Fantasy Award nomination in more than seventeen years. In January 2010, the magazine announced Segal was leaving the top editorial post to become an editor at Quirk Books. VanderMeer was elevated to editor-in-chief, Mary Robinette Kowal joined the staff as art director, Paula Guran joined as nonfiction editor and Segal became senior contributing editor.

On August 23, 2011, John Betancourt announced Wildside Press would be selling Weird Tales to Marvin Kaye and John Harlacher of Nth Dimension Media. Marvin Kaye took over chief editorial duties, though Ann VanderMeer remained a contributing editor. Issue 359, the first under the new publishers, was published in late February 2012, though most of the content in this issue was handled by the previous editorial team. Some months before the release of issue 359, a special World Fantasy Convention preview issue was given away for free to interested attendees. It was not well received by Locus Online, which stated it was "a preview that bodes not well" and "the other offerings range from mediocre to awful. To really awful . . . It doesn’t bode well for the future of this once-great publication." Since then the first issue under Marvin Kaye's editorial direction has been sent only to subscribers after having lost newsstand distribution earlier in the year. As The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has pointed out, "its future is once again in the balance."

There is some question about who actually owns the magazine and the Weird Tales trademark, though strong evidence points to Viacom/MTV, having acquired the trademark for a planned TV series. Since then, it has been publicly confirmed that Viacom does indeed own the magazine, with a Viacom executive stating: "I can confirm that we have owned the Weird Tales catalog since 2008, but I'm not in a position to disclose what the status of the project is today." However, in the latest issue, the masthead clearly states: "WEIRD TALES ® is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc."

In August 2012, Weird Tales became involved in a media altercation after the editor announced the magazine was going to publish an except from Victoria Foyt's controversial novel Save The Pearls, a novel which many critics have accused of featuring racist stereotyping. This decision received widespread criticism, with authors Jeff Vandermeer (husband of Ann Vandermeer) and N. K. Jemisin announcing they would no longer be submitting material to Weird Tales in response to the decision to publish the extract. Since then the original post has been deleted and the publisher has indicated the magazine will not run the excerpt of Save The Pearls after all.