Exploring WEIRD TALES – “The Night Wire” by H. F. Arnold

Horror fiction takes many forms – from the long, slow build-up to the short, sharp shock. Much of what I have commented on previously has been of the longer, more detailed variety. And, while I will continue to examine such works, I turn now to the pages of Weird Tales magazine for a dose or two (or more!) of the short, sharp shock.

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There is something ungodly about these night wire jobs. You sit up here on the top floor of a skyscraper and listen in to the whispers of a civilization. New York, London, Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore—they’re your next-door neighbors after the street lights go dim and the world has gone to sleep. [page 132]

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“The Night Wire,” written by H. F. Arnold, first appeared in print in the September 1926 issue of Weird Tales (v08 n02). “The Night Wire” was also reprinted in the January 1933 Weird Tales (v21 n01).

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Weird Tales is an American pulp magazine specializing in horror and fantasy. It was founded in late 1922 with its first issue dated March 1923. Weird Tales was known for printing works of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Seabury Quinn, Robert Bloch and many, many other notable genre authors.

Plagued throughout its existence with financial woes, Weird Tales ended its initial publication run in 1954; though subsequently there were several attempts to restart the magazine. The current incarnation’s latest issue was dated Spring 2014.

A truly comprehensive source for pulps is The Pulp Magazine Archive at archive.org. In addition to countless other pulp magazines, it maintains a sizeable percentage of the Weird Tales print run in pdf format. However, in this case, the Archive failed me. The September 1926 issue is one of the few issues missing from the Archive. Fortunately, the Archive did have the January 1933 issue—on which this blog post is based.

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H. F. Arnold is seen as a so-called “lost” author from the early days of Weird Tales and other pulps. One of the very few certain facts known about him is that three and only three of his tales were published:

“The Night Wire” in Weird Tales (Sept. 1926; reprinted Jan. 1933)

“The City of Iron Cubes” (two-part) in Weird Tales (Mar. & Apr. 1929)

“‘When Atlantis Was’” (two-part) in Amazing Stories (Oct. & Dec. 1937)

And that was it. No more.

However, I did come across recently published online sources that provided what I consider to be reliable biographical information on H. F. Arnold. According to these sources, Henry Ferris Arnold, Jr. was born on January 2, 1902 in Illinois. He graduated from Knox College with a degree in science.

He served in the military from 1942 under General Patton and was wounded in battle. He was discharged in 1947. Following his military service, Arnold lived in California until his death. On December 16, 1963, H. F. Arnold died as a result of an accident in his home.

None of the several occupations that he held throughout his civilian life indicated any type of literary interest.

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“The Night Wire” is a powerful piece of weird horror fiction. Taking place over the span of one night where the night manager of a newswire service (the narrator) and his assistant—the only two in the office—experience something unearthly and truly disturbing.

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Reports of the terrifying occurrences at the town of Xebico and the piecemeal nature in which its fate is revealed only heighten horror and confusion in the reader. The mysterious environment, its otherworldly setting and the lethal nature of the fog call to mind Stephen King’s The Mist and John Carpenter’s The Fog. While there is no direct evidence that “The Night Wire” was an inspiration or influence on those works, the similarities are hard to ignore.

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I love the early days of pulp horror in particular the stories in Weird Tales. Weird Tales was masterful in its delivery of the short, sharp shock and “The Night Wire” is a superb example of this. A favorite of mine, “The Night Wire” packs a punch all out of proportion with its length. This post, and others in this occasional series, will focus on such stories found in the pages of Weird Tales.

References

Print Resources

Digital Resources

Arnold, H.F. “The Night Wire.” Weird Tales. Popular Fiction Publishing Company. January 1933. Volume 21 Number 1. [PDF file]. https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v21n01_1933-01_LPM-URF-AT-SAS

Online Resources

Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 26 January 2019), memorial page for Henry Ferris Arnold, Jr (2 Jan 1902–16 Dec 1963), Find A Grave Memorial no. 3385257, citing Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, San Diego, San Diego County, California, USA ; Maintained by Jim Ferris (contributor 46557174) .

Hanley, Terence E. “H. F. Arnold (1902-1963).” Tellers of Weird Tales. Blogger.com. 21 December 2018. Web. 26 January 2019. https://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2018/12/hf-arnold-1902-1963.html

Neslowe, E. B. “The Night Wire (1926) by H. F. Arnold.” Sepulchral Stories. Blogger.com. 27 December 2014. Web. 22 January 2019. http://sepulchralstories.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-night-wire-1926.html

Speller, Maureen Kincaid. “The Weird – The Night Wire – H. F. Arnold.” Paper Knife. Wordpress. 02 January 2012. Web. 28 January 2019. https://paperknife.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/the-weird-the-night-wire-h-f-arnold/

Von Ruff, Al. “Publication: Weird Tales, January 1933.” The Internet Speculative Fiction Database. ISFDB. Web. 22 January 2019. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?61951

Von Ruff, Al. “Summary Bibliography: H. F. Arnold.” The Internet Speculative Fiction Database. ISFDB. Web. 22 January 2019. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?18253

Von Ruff, Al. “Title: The Night Wire.” The Internet Speculative Fiction Database. ISFDB. Web. 22 January 2019. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?86054

Wikipedia contributors. "Weird Tales." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 13 January 2019. Web. 20 January 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_Tales

Random Thoughts on THE LINCOLN HUNTERS by Wilson Tucker

I hope my previous blog post gave readers a clue to this; but I really enjoyed 11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King. It is through 11/22/63: A Novel that I discovered The Lincoln Hunters, the book under consideration today.

11/22/63: A Novel from Stephen King is a fantastic work of time travel fiction. As I reviewed the book some months ago, small ideas kept coming to mind warranting deeper examination. One of these ideas was to explore The Lincoln Hunters, briefly mentioned in King’s book, and any other subtle links to King’s novel. It was a fun and rewarding journey and I found some very interesting tidbits.

I did not have much expectation with this read, never having heard of it before; as well as not having read many works from the mid-twentieth century. To my pleasant surprise, this was a superb tale! Well worth the time!

The several sections of the great marble beehive, T-R divisions started work on the new assignment. Using the preliminary Engineering reports, Traffic began plotting a time-curve for the initial shoot. Cartography uncovered a sheaf of previously used maps and wondered if they couldn’t serve once again. Library pulled from its own hefty files a set of idiomatic tables, and sketches of appropriate costumes. A subdivision of Library commenced working up the costumes. Data checked cross references, seeking background information. Personnel set upon the job of rounding up a suitable crew, beginning with Benjamin Steward, as per the client’s request.

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First published in 1958, The Lincoln Hunters was written by Wilson Tucker in hardback by Rinehart & Company Publishers.

Ten years later (1968), Ace Books released a paperback edition. In this post, it is the paperback edition which will be under consideration. The Lincoln Hunters is a relatively short novel at 192 pages (especially when set against the 849 pages of King’s 11/22/63: A Novel).

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Wilson Tucker was born in 1914 and lived most of his life in his home state of Illinois. He began his involvement with sci-fi as a fan and published his first fanzine in 1932. In 1938, he began the publication of the long-running fanzine Le Zombie. Tucker sold his first piece of his own sci-fi in 1941. Tucker wrote and published other fan-related materials and was honored later in life for his part in the growth of sci-fi fandom. Throughout his writing career, Tucker wrote more than a dozen short stories and a like number of novels.

It is interesting to note that even with his impressive accomplishments as an author and as a fandom pioneer, Tucker . . .

. . . made his principal living as a movie projectionist and theater electrician, starting as a prop man at the Majestic Theater in Bloomington, Illinois. He served as President of Local 193 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), and retired as a projectionist in 1972.[i]

Wilson Tucker died in October 2006 at the age of 91 at his home in Bloomington, Illinois—the town where Lincoln gave his “lost speech.”

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The entire plot of The Lincoln Hunters revolves around a speech given by Abraham Lincoln on May 29, 1856 in Bloomington, Illinois and the attempt to travel back in time to acquire a recording of it. In this speech, Lincoln was credited with incredible oratory and persuasive technique. Adding to this, no known transcripts or any formal written record of the speech was made. All attempts claiming to be such were roundly denounced by others who were present at the event or later debunked.

Further heightening this mythical speech, long-time friend and law-partner of Lincoln, William Herndon claimed that the famous “house divide against itself cannot stand” phrase originated in the Lost Speech along with other concepts that would become familiar later in Lincoln’s career. Things like this lead to the Lost Speech to be regarded like a buried pirate treasure; its mystique growing ever more elaborate with each telling.

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A Supplement to 11/22/63: A NOVEL Blog Post

I consider this post to be, more than anything else, a supplement to my earlier post discussing 11/22/63: A Novel. This post will explore an interesting literary aside to 11/22/63: A Novel (at least, I think it is interesting). Also, I hope to expand this supplementary series into an occasional series of posts.

The Lincoln Hunters is the only time traveling tale mentioned at all in 11/22/63: A Novel, itself a time traveling tale. The pertinent paragraph appears on page 270 of the hardback edition of 11/22/63: A Novel and is as follows:

The fall colors began to bloom—first timid yellow, then orange, then blazing, strumpet red as autumn burned away another Maine summer. There were cardboard boxes filled with coverless paperbacks at the market, and I must have read three dozen or more: mysteries by Ed McBain, John D. MacDonald, Chester Himes, and Richard S. Prather; steamy melodramas like Peyton Place and A Stone for Danny Fisher; westerns by the score; and one science-fiction novel called The Lincoln Hunters, which concerned time-travelers trying to record a “forgotten” speech by Abraham Lincoln.

In the quote, Jake Epping, our protagonist in 11/22/63: A Novel, reveals that he read The Lincoln Hunters when he time traveled back to the 1960s, yet, he makes no comment concerning this, outside of the above quote. In his original time of 2011, Jake is an English teacher at Lisbon High School. As a time traveler, he became George Amberson in the late 50s and early 1960s. I find it a little strange, even noteworthy, that Jake, finding himself in a time traveling situation, does not even make a sarcastic reference to H.G. Wells or his The Time Machine, just this passing reference to a relatively lesser known work.

Further, was it merely coincidental that in a time travel story about a president’s assassination that there is mention of another time traveling book dealing with an earlier president also assassinated? And, in King’s novel the time portal opens onto 1958; while The Lincoln Hunters was first published in 1958. I enjoy this synchronicity and do not, for one minute, believe that it was merely a happenstance.

Therefore, my interest in The Lincoln Hunters was piqued.

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Both The Lincoln Hunters and 11/22/63: A Novel spend almost no time (!) explaining the mechanics of time travel. Aside from a few basic rules, time travel happens via some mysterious, techno-arcane method. Whether bullet or rabbit-hole, the means of time travel (how it is achieved) is secondary. The rules of time travel serve only to enhance plot points and create a sense of urgency.

According to the Green Card Man in 11/22/63: A Novel, the rabbit hole “isn’t a hole at all. It’s a bubble.” That’s all the explanation given. Nothing on where it came from, who made it, or even why they watch over it—Just a cosmic mystery. This kind of situation is a favorite of Mr. King’s to write about. He returns to it over and over. The plotline of the novel unfolds around this—people, many or few, face circumstances imposed from the outside; for some inexplicable and unknowable reason.

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There are a few more posts connected to 11/22/63: A Novel that I have in mind to work on. I think they would contribute to the appreciation of 11/22/63: A Novel. I hope to share them with you all soon.

Good night.

References

Print Resources

Tucker, Wilson. The Lincoln Hunters. Ace Books: New York, 1968.

Digital Resources

Online Resources

Glyer, Mike. “A Century of Tucker.” File 770. Wordpress.com;. 23 November 2014. Web. 14 January 2019. http://file770.com/a-century-of-tucker/

Kemp, Bill. “Bloomington was the scene for Lincoln's famous 'Lost Speech'.” The Pantagraph. The Pantagraph. 14 February 2009. Web. 13 January 2019. https://www.pantagraph.com/news/bloomington-was-the-scene-for-lincoln-s-famous-lost-speech/article_d0c8df3e-c6e0-5e3b-a6e7-70cae3215293.html

Norton, Roger J. “Abraham Lincoln’s Lost Speech.” Abraham Lincoln Research Site. R. J. Norton. Web. 12 January 2019. https://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln63.html

Ruffles, Tom. “The Lincoln Hunters, Wilson Tucker.” The Joy of Mere Words. Wordpress.com. 22 September 2016. Web. 09 January 2019. https://tomruffles.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/the-lincoln-hunters-by-wilson-tucker/

Von Ruff, Al. “The Lincoln Hunters.” The Internet Speculative Fiction Database. ISFDB. Web. 07 January 2019. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?9373

Wikipedia contributors. "Lincoln’s Lost Speech." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 09 January 2019. Web. 11 January 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_Lost_Speech

Wikipedia contributors. "Wilson Tucker." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 09 January 2019. Web. 11 January 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Tucker

Yon, Mark. “The Lincoln Hunters by Wilson Tucker.” SFF World. SFF World. 09 May 2011. Web. 14 January 2019. https://www.sffworld.com/2011/05/bookreview711/

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[i] Wikipedia. "Wilson Tucker."