Fans of Leonora Carrington’s weird and fantastic fiction had their wishes met last April. In celebration of the Surrealist’s centennial (she would have been 100 on April 6th), the literary world has come together to bring most of her catalog back in print, alongside a new evaluation of her life. In the U.S., Dorothy, A Publishing Project […]
Maybe I’m susceptible to some lurking horrors more than others, but Malcolm Devlin’s first short story collection, You Will Grow Into Them, gave me the creeps before I even opened the front cover. Is the gritty, textured skin so prominently foregrounded being pulled off — or is it put on, the way one would a glove? Why is the […]
There is no shortage of good horror and weird fiction about ventriloquism, but it’s always focused on the dummies, isn’t it? Arguably the best part of Dead of Night (1945) is the segment about the ventriloquist’s dummy, Hugo, who makes his owner descend into insanity (or serves as the projection of the ventriloquist’s psychosis, an […]
Fictional cities are a long running theme throughout China Miéville’s work, from New Crobuzon to Besźel. It’s rarer that he deals in real places, although the influence of his early novella The Tain carries themes to his most recent work The Last Days of New Paris. Both deal with post-apocalyptic real cities: London and Paris; and […]
A demon is exorcised from a toe, a recovering addict takes on an ancient magus, an author is exposed to the strange totemic power of words, and a ruthless industrialist reaps what he sows during his foray into an unusual form of engineering. These are some of the ludicrous and unsettling delights to be found in Jeffrey Ford’s […]
Last year, Weird Fiction Review took a close look at a nearly forgotten treasure of cosmic horror, The Rim of Morning by William Sloane. Following on our enjoyment of that two-novel collection, we decided to delve into a slate of other releases from New York Review Books Classics, one of seven imprints published by The New York Review […]
It’s one of the enduring mysteries of the fundamentalist tradition: the Bible, a book commonly taught to children, is filled with R‑rated horrors that would seem more at home in a Tarantino movie than a bedtime story. A twice-widowed woman seduces her father-in-law by the side of the road, as blackmail or a bargaining chip. A childless wife offers her […]
“Stories clawed and fanged, stories that feed on blood,” wrote Jean Muno in his story The Ghoul. It’s a line that neatly sums up Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume Two, edited by Kathe Koja and Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications). Within the pages of this collection lie stories of monsters that draw on the human body for […]
But Horthólary? Horthólary actually entertains the idea that such a creature may have existed. He believes the “evidence” before his eyes. It is inconceivable to him that the facts could lie; that stones might deceive him. from “The Nephilim” Let us say that you saw something strange, just for a second. What do you do? You might […]
Leena Krohn (1947 — ) is one of the most respected Finnish writers of her generation. In her large body of work for adults and children, Krohn deals with issues related to the boundary between reality and illusion, artificial intelligence, and issues of morality and conscience. Her Collected Fiction has just been released by Cheeky Frawg Books […]