This week on Weirdfictionreview.com, we’re featuring material in honor of Innsmouth Free Press’s recently published anthology Fungi, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Orrin Grey. As you might guess, this anthology is devoted to stories concerning all varieties of mushrooms and fungi in starring or supporting roles.
As the editors put it in their introduction to the anthology, “We wanted to go beyond body horror and Hodgson-esque mushroom people to explore the range of possibilities offered by fungal fiction.” The stylistic diversity in this anthology is quite impressive as a result, zooming between dark fantasy, fungal steampunk, hallucinogenic journeys, otherworldly science fiction, and yes, flat-out weird fiction. Equally impressive is the roster of authors, including former WFR.com site contributors such as John Langan, Jesse Bullington (co-writing with Molly Tanzer), Paul Tremblay, Lisa Bradley, Nick Mamatas, Simon Strantzas, and site co-founder Jeff VanderMeer.
We’ve reprinted A.C. Wise’s story from Fungi this week, “Where Dead Men Go to Dream,” a heartbreaking, hallucinogenic story of fungal oracles and the difficulty of letting go of loved ones. We also have an interview with Moreno-Garcia and Grey, talking about their anthology and what led to its inception, as well as some possible further steps for readers interested in more fungal-inspired stories.
Meanwhile , we also have a new art gallery this week, courtesy of mycologist and photographer Taylor Lockwood. His travels all across the world in pursuit of documenting the beautiful and strange world of fungi have led to some stunning results, as our selection of his photographs will show. We strongly encourage all of our readers to peruse the gallery and then visit Lockwood’s site to examine his extensive body of work.