International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Call for Chapter Proposals

(Essay Collection – Abstracts due Aug. 31)

With its debut in 1923, Weird Tales became the first pulp magazine

with content composed entirely of supernatural and fantastic fiction.

Over its three-decade run, the magazine featured works by some of the

most important and influential writers of speculative fiction in the

first half of the twentieth century, including H.P. Lovecraft, Robert

E. Howard, Ray Bradbury, C.L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch,

August Derleth, Henry Kuttner, Edward Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman,

Seabury Quinn, Frank Belknap Long, and many others. Within its pages

the modern genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction began to

develop and take shape, evolving their own tropes and conventions and

creating the foundation upon which much of modern speculative fiction

rests. Gary Hoppenstand has recently suggested that “no other pulp

magazine was more important to the history of pulp fiction, or to the

temperament of contemporary science fiction and fantasy, than Weird

Tales.”

This volume will collect critical essays that seek to provide a

broader understanding of the magazine Weird Tales and its authors,

artists, readers, and editorial practices, as well as the larger

impact that the periodical had on popular culture and genre fiction.

Possible topics may include:

• Discussions of the major works of the primary WT authors.

• The origin of WT as a genre pulp and its competitors and

successors

• The “Lovecraft Circle” and its influence

• The development of weird fiction fandom as expressed in letters

and fanzines

• Depictions of race and ethnicity in WT.

• Sexuality and gender as expressed in text and art

• The development of new genres like “cosmic horror” and

“sword-and-sorcery”

• The influence of WT and its authors on popular culture

• Philosophy and ideology in the works of WT writers

• Rhetorical approaches in WT

These are only suggestions and other related topics are welcome.

Please submit proposal abstracts of approximately 300 words along with

C.V. or brief bio to both co-editors:

Justin Everett

University of the Sciences

Email: j.everet AT usciences.edu

Jeffrey Shanks

Southeast Archeological Center

Email: jeffrey_shanks AT nps.gov

Chapter proposals due: August 31, 2013

Initial draft due: February 28, 2014

Science-Fiction Studies* is gathering scholarly essays for a special issue on Italian Science Fiction.  The projected publication date is 2015.  Articles on this topic that would be of interest include the following themes or approaches:

–       analysis and discussion of important works of Italian SF (novels, short stories, film, comics, magazines, t.v. series, on-line journals, in the academy, etc.)

–       profiles of important Italian SF writers

–       works of SF written by authors who are considered part of the literary mainstream (e.g. Buzzati, Landolfi, Levi, Morselli, etc.)

–       the critical debate around SF in Italian culture and the academy

–       the socio-cultural impact of science fiction’s visions in Italy

Articles should be written in English, should be between 8,000 and 13,000 words (including endnotes and bibliography), and include a comprehensive bibliography.  Authors should follow Science-Fiction Studies’s formatting guidelines (see below **).

Abstracts (max. 500 words) are due on or by September 30, 2013.  They should be sent via email as an MS Word attachment, or included within the body of the email to Arielle Saiber (asaiber AT bowdoin.edu) and Umberto Rossi (teacher AT fastwebnet.it).

If your proposal is accepted, you will receive a message no later than October 20.  We will then need the complete article by May 31, 2014.  All submitted articles will be sent for peer-review; final acceptance will be based on reviewer reports and those of the special issue’s editors.

* For information about Science Fiction Studies see http://www.jstor.org/page/journal/sciefictstud/about.html  and http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/

** Guidelines for formatting the article: http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/masthead.htm?47,34