Weird Fantasy - Influences and Adaptations

Influences and Adaptations

As with the other EC comics edited by Feldstein, the stories in this comic were primarily based on Gaines reading a large number of science fiction stories and using them to develop "springboards" from which he and Feldstein could launch new stories. Specific story influences that have been identified include the following:

• "Martian Infiltration" (issue 15 ) - Martin Pearson's "The Embassy"
• "The Last City" (issue 16 ) - Arthur L. Zagat's "The Lanson Screen"
• "Deadlock!" (issue 17 ) - Murray Leinster's "First Contact"
• "The Duplicates" (issue 9) - William F. Temple's "4-Sided Triangle"
• "A Timely Shock" (issue 10) - Fritz Leiber's "Nice Girl With Five Husbands"
• "The Thing in the Jar" (issue 11) - Ralph Milne Farley's "Liquid Life"
• "A Lesson in Anatomy" (issue 12) - Ray Bradbury's "The Man Upstairs"
• "The End" (issue 13) - Damon Knight's "Not With A Bang" and Miriam Allen deFord's "The Last Generation"
• "Home to Stay" (issue 13) - Ray Bradbury's "The Rocket Man" and "Kaleidoscope"
• "The Long Trip" (issue 15) - A.E. van Vogt's "Far Centaurus"
• "He Who Waits" (issue 15) - Manly Wade Wellman's "The Kelpie"
• "Mass Meeting" (issue 16) - Malcolm Jameson's "Tricky Tonnage"
• "The Green Thing" (issue 16) - John Campbell's "Who Goes There?"
• "...For Us the Living" (issue 20) - Ward Moore's "Bring the Jubilee"

After their publication of "Home to Stay," Ray Bradbury contacted EC about their plagiarism of his work. They reached an agreement for EC to do authorized versions of Bradbury's short fiction. These official adaptations include:

• "There Will Come Soft Rains" (issue 17)
• "Zero Hour" (issue 18)
• "King of the Grey Spaces" (issue 19)
• "I, Rocket" (issue 20)
• "The Million Year Picnic" (issue 21)
• "The Silent Towns" (issue 22)