“The mere touch of cold philosophy.” – Keats Reviewed in this column: The Man who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé, trans. Sophie Lewis (Pushkin Press, London, 2012) Requiems and Nightmares by Guido Gozzano, trans. Brendan and Anna Connell (Hieroglyphic Press, 2012) The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories by Andrew Duncan (PS Publishing Ltd, 2012) Crackpot Palace by Jeffrey Ford (William […]
“The mere touch of cold philosophy.” – Keats Reviewed in this column: Traveller of the Century by Andrés Neuman, trans. Nick Caistor and Lorenza García (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, USA; Pushkin Press, UK, 2012) Communion Town by Sam Thompson (Fourth Estate, 2012) Hawthorn and Child by Keith Ridgway (Granta Books, 2012) After more of a hiatus than I intended (let’s just […]
“The mere touch of cold philosophy.” – Keats Reviewed in this column: The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit, NY, 2012) Ivyland by Miles Klee (OR Books, NY, 2012) Shiny Thing by Patricia Russo (Papaveria Press, 2011) Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 2012 Recently, the New Yorker has, a little unexpectedly, produced a science-fiction issue. […]
A music hall violinist is haunted by a Vivaldi sonata only he can play, which has the power to start fires and summon the devil. A man wanders into a painting of a Dutch trading port, where a trawler captain on his deathbed relives, even as his wife poisons him, the day he netted a rotting mermaid. Music from a glass organ […]
Michael Moorcock is one of the most famed writers and editors in science fiction and fantasy history, a key figure in the British New Wave movement in the 60s and 70s, which itself held a strong influence on modern weird fiction. Moorcock is famed for his stories detailing the adventures of Jerry Cornelius and Elric of Melnibone, […]
We have before us a book with a peculiar name. It is called The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead’s Town, by Amos Tutuola. Let us gather around this object and poke it with a stick — but gingerly, because at any moment it may transform itself into a bird, or a lizard, or a canoe, or the air […]
All editors have key concepts or ideas about the approach to creating an anthology. Here are a few of the ideas and foci that occurred to us during the preliminary steps of creating The Weird anthology and during the process of research and selection. – Ann & Jeff Edited in the context of: Avoid the Great Certainty (certainty and making […]
(Image by Jeremy Zerfoss) Buy The Weird compendium here… A “weird tale,” as defined by H.P. Lovecraft in his nonfiction writings and given early sanctuary within the pages of magazines like Weird Tales (est. 1923) is a story that has a supernatural element but does not fall into the category of traditional ghost story or Gothic tale, […]
I seem to be working recently on a number of comics that won awards in France (which often, despite purportedly heightened visibility, signifies squat abroad). What can it mean? A syncing up of American and continental tastes when it comes to comics? A realization of the European riches out there and still to be brought over? Expect more […]
(A shot from Julie Taymor’s Titus Adronicus) Over the course of his career, William Shakespeare made many a foray into the darker regions of drama. Beginning with Titus Andronicus, the playwright experimented with different ways in which he could show humanity at its worst. These visions depended on depictions of cruelty, agony and alterity. As his […]