Weird Tales Canadian Edition, Vol. 41, No. 1

Catalog Note This November 1948 issue of *Weird Tales* features "The Perfect Host," a novelette by Theodore Sturgeon told in alternating first-person narratives. A fourteen-year-old boy named Ronnie Daniels witnesses a woman jumping from a hospital window while his father waits nearby. The woman—a psychiatric patient—had called to Ronnie from her window, giving him an address (2065) in a new suburban development called Homeland before leaping. Though Ronnie and his father both see the event, and there is blood on Ronnie's trousers, no body appears on the pavement; a nurse at the window sees nothing below. Ronnie's father questions him about what occurred, but Ronnie denies seeing anything unusual. The narrative then shifts to the father's perspective, revealing his own confused recollection of the incident. The story explores the ambiguous nature of what transpired—whether something supernatural occurred or reality itself has become unreliable. The issue also contains seven shorter works of weird and supernatural fiction by Robert Bloch, Stephen Grendon, Carl Jacobi, Malcolm Kenneth Murchie, Seabury Quinn, and Eric Frank Russell.