The following story appears in the collection Spells by Michel de Ghelderode, out this year from Wakefield Press. It is translated from French by George MacLennan. Michel de Ghelderode (1898−1962) was a Belgian author of drama, poetry, and short stories. Born to a royal archivist father and devoutly religious mother, the author began writing plays in 1916. His work, […]
What follows is an excerpt from Desirina Boskovich’s debut novella Never Now Always out June 27th from Broken Eye Books. Boskovich’s short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare, F&SF, Kaleidotrope, PodCastle, Drabblecast, and anthologies such as Aliens: Recent Encounters, The Apocalypse Triptych and Tomorrow’s Cthulhu. Her nonfiction pieces on music, literature, and culture have appeared […]
The following is an excerpt from the 2017 novel Borne by Jeff Vandermeer. In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech. One day, […]
I. The Detective The rabbit was dead. Was white. Was dead. Was six feet long. Supine. A trace of red against its mouth. A pocket watch half buried in the sand. Rubbery and indistinct, a blackish waistcoat curled across its midriff. While above us the mountain rose like a threat or a throat, unexpected. I could smell the death in […]
Torn Pages Discovered in the Vest Pocket of an Unidentified Tourist (note the rust-red discoloration in the lower left corner) AN EXCERPT FROM HOEGBOTTON’S COMPREHENSIVE TRAVEL GUIDE TO THE SOUTHERN CITY OF AMBERGRIS Chapter 77: An In-depth Explanation For the City’s Apparent Lack of Sanitation Workers (And Why Tourists Should Not Be Afraid) Upon the […]
Translated by Edward Gauvin The bicycle is an ancient model, deliberately picked for its thick, heavy frame and pedals, bare of rubber cover, whose serrated ridges as the hours go by cut first into callus, then the flesh of feet that press upon them. The crankset, big as a gear from a belfry clock, is covered in the […]
Translated by Edward Gauvin It was like a gigantic pyre rising from the center of the gray, argil plain. A colossal intertwining of branches atop which the city seemed bizarrely unbalanced, with its towers broader at the base than the summit, its keeps oddly narrowed toward their crenellations, such that from a distance they might be taken for […]
After you read this story, check out our interview with translator Erik Simon for some background on it and Alfred Leman. Translated by Erik Simon From Der unsichtbare Dispatcher (Berlin, 1980). Kioshi Tokito and Anatol Bykov are plodding over the black sintered tuff. They are silent. There are some things to be discussed, but right now they prefer just […]
The follow story originally appeared in The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing by Nicholas Rombes (Two Dollar Radio, 2014). It is reprinted here with permission of its author. An interview with Rombes is also available today. The problem with The Insurgent, as Laing told me before handing it over to me, was that it had […]
Summer is officially ending today but our coverage of strange science fiction at Weird Fiction Review continues! This week we’re featuring a story by Indian author, illustrator, and journalist Manjula Padmanabhan. “2099” originally appeared in New Delhi-based news magazine Outlook magazine in 1999 as “India 2099” as part of a feature where Indian writers were asked to speculate about the next 100 years. The protagonist of “2099” is modeled after […]