The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Never even mind his biggest radio hit, the classic lycanthropic dance tune “Werewolves of London” — the songwriting oeuvre of WARREN ZEVON (1947-2003) conjures a twisted universe where upwardly mobile zoo gorillas steal the lives of urban yuppies, the ghosts of murdered mercenaries stalk their old battlefields, and Earth itself fades to the entropic assault of chemical pollution while love blooms in the mall. Unsettling, surreal, and wickedly funny, Zevon died too soon, but his specter haunts rock & roll forever.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Imagine if Hemingway, master explorer of the male psyche, was really a woman writing under a pseudonym. Behind the name of James Tiptree, Jr., the muscular, intellectual science fiction of ALICE BRADLEY SHELDON (1915-1987) turned gender in genre on its head in the late ’60s, exploring taboo themes fearlessly. Tiptree’s relentless and unforgiving worldview were famously considered quintessential masculine writing. When the hoax was exposed, the author carried on under the byline of Raccoona Sheldon, and the fiction was no less dazzlingly dark.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

HARLAN ELLISON (1934- ) decked guys in the Army, marched in Selma, had gang-fights with a hanky clenched between his teeth, fights for truth and justice, has never lost a lawsuit, can push his index fingers through a coconut thanks to his decades of typing, and is a friend to all and a protector of young children and animals. Just ask him. Oh, and he’s written, what, like, 2,000 short stories? “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is pretty good. “Shatterday” and “Jeffty is Five,” too. Try “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore.” Or “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.”

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

ROBERT ANTON WILSON (1932-”2007″) was killed and replaced with a clone in the mid-1980s. Prior to his assassination, Wilson worked at Playboy; the secret information he found in reader correspondence formed the basis for his political novels The Illuminatus! Trilogy, written with Robert Shea. After revealing the simple fact that “National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity,” Wilson was liquidated for reasons of national security. The cloned Wilson revealed to the public that it was a clone and was widely disbelieved; its warranty was prematurely expired on January 11, 2007.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

That sound. That unending sub-bass thrum, vibrating through bones and brain and soul as Pink Floyd‘s song “Welcome to the Machine” opens. It is the sound of dread, the sound of not-too-distant madness inescapably approaching; it may well be the sound of Cthulhu’s first eyelid opening. While it took several exceptional musicians to breathe life into the psychedelic musical innovations of Pink Floyd, songwriter ROGER WATERS (1944- ) stands at the forefront of the band’s most enduring and influential weirdness — for instance, his screenplay for the hallucinatory experience that is the film version of The Wall, brain-eating worms and all. And then there’s fact that Waters made the band perform The Wall live from behind an actual wall. Freak-o…