Mive and Others

n 1932, the young Carl Jacobi (1908–1997) created a sensation with the haunting story “Mive,” published in the January issue of Weird Tales. One of the most prolific weird fiction writers of the 20th century, Jacobi was an early member of the Minneapolis Fantasy Society. He went on to write dozens of stories for pulp magazines in the weird, fantasy, and science fiction genres. August Derleth was a fan, and three volumes of Jacobi stories were published by Arkham House, but many others remain uncollected or unpublished.

This first volume of Jacobi’s best weird stories includes “Mive,” along with “Revelations in Black,” a mesmerizing vampire tale; “The Satanic Piano,” one of several stories that seek to embody weirdness in music; “Smoke of the Snake,” evoking the opium dens of China; “The Tomb from Beyond,” which takes us to the ancient civilization of Dras; and twelve other chilling tales of supernatural horror.

Jacobi’s tales cover an immense creative range, from bizarre artifacts to supernatural manifestations to mythological horrors, set in locales ranging from the mundane to the far-away and exotic. But his protagonists are frequently just ordinary folk, unwittingly stalked by terror.

The volume has been assembled by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on weird fiction, who has added an illuminating introduction and a bibliography.




Genre: Horror