This week marks a special time here at Weirdfictionreview.com. The 2012 World Fantasy Convention is taking place this coming weekend, from November 1 – 4 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Guests of Honor for the event include author Elizabeth Hand, encyclopedist John Clute, and artist Richard Kirk. Meanwhile, The Weird is up for a World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, one of two nominations in that category for WFR founders and editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (the other nomination being The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities). And so, the WFR editorial staff will be attending WFC 2012 to take part in the convention, among other things.
November 1 also marks the one-year anniversary of the founding of WFR. We published our first content for readers on Halloween of last year, with an art gallery from Myrtle Von Damitz III, and followed suit with excellent, otherworldly fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art on a regular basis. To think of all that has happened in the past year is simply staggering, and we couldn’t be more thankful for the support we’ve received from our readers.
So, while we all attend WFC to take part in the festivities there, we will be bringing readers an array of excellent content over the next two weeks, in celebration of several things: of WFC 2012 and its Guests of Honor, of Halloween, and of the completion of our first year in publication.
Starting today, we will be running a special feature, 10 Days of Clute, bringing you a different entry on horror and dark fiction from John Clute’s The Darkening Garden every day for the next ten days. Readers can also look forward to an art gallery devoted to the work of Richard Kirk and a 101 Weird Writers essay on Elizabeth Hand and her classic story “The Boy in the Tree,” written by returning WFR contributor Elwin Cotman.
And on Halloween, we have a special treat planned. The first is a brand new story from Stephen Graham Jones, “Xebico,” a must-read for fans of weird fiction. The second is a reprint from The Weird of the story that inspired the writing of “Xebico,” H.F. Arnold’s “The Night Wire.”
Thanks again to all of our readers for your support over the first year of WFR! We’re excited about all the content we still have planned over the next few weeks for you, and we hope you enjoy it too.