This post is part of an ongoing series on 101 weird writers featured in The Weird compendium, the anthology that serves as the inspiration for this site. There is no ranking system; the order is determined by the schedule of posts. Joanna Russ (1937– 2011) was an important American writer, academic, and critic whose ground-breaking dystopian novel The Female […]
“The mere touch of cold philosophy.” – Keats Reviewed in this column: Love Among the Particles and Other Stories by Norman Lock (Bellevue Literary Press, 2013) The World of the End by Ofir Touché Gafla; trans. Mitch Ginsburg (Tor Books, 2013) Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur Books, 2013) The President’s Hat by Antoine Laurain; […]
Over forty years ago, Masahiro Mori, a robotics professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, in an essay that appeared in an obscure Japanese Journal called Energy, envisioned a possible response to robots created to be very like humans. He suggested that there would be a “sudden switch from empathy to revulsion as the robot approached, but […]
The aesthetics of the grotesque can be quite broad and far-ranging. The grotesque can be so subtle you miss it on the first interaction with a story, artwork, or film; other times, it’s so shocking that you’ll never forget the image having seen it once (and just once, you have decided, is enough). Then there’s […]
This post is part of an ongoing series on 101 weird writers featured in The Weird compendium, the anthology that serves as the inspiration for this site. There is no ranking system; the order is determined by the schedule of posts. Octavia Butler (1947– 2006) was an American writer who became the first science fiction writer ever to receive […]
“The mere touch of cold philosophy.” – Keats Reviewed in this column: The City’s Son by Tom Pollock (Jo Fletcher Books, 2012) Boneland by Alan Garner (Fourth Estate, 2012) Celebrant by Michael Cisco (Chômu Press, 2012) The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington (Orbit, 2012) American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit, 2013) Samuel Johnson famously opined that “when […]
… and now for something completely different. Pierre Bettencourt (1917−2006) is a merry prankster, an eccentric of French letters. If the history of the French fantastique in the 20th century has gone somewhat underground, if many of its practitioners are forgotten today, Bettencourt is even more obscure, a lifelong outsider artist despite coming from a prominent family: his […]
You’ve seen this story before, or so you think. Seven schoolgirls encounter a malevolent force in an isolated old mansion. As this entity picks them off, one by one, the survivors struggle to unearth a mystery which stretches back decades, hoping they may find a way to live through what was supposed to be an idyllic weekend in the […]
This post is part of an ongoing series on 101 weird writers featured in The Weird compendium, the anthology that serves as the inspiration for this site. There is no ranking system; the order is determined by the schedule of posts. Bruno Schulz (1892 — 1942) was a Polish writer of stories that share some affinity with the work of Alfred Kubin, […]
Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including Bullettime and the forthcoming Love is the Law. His short fiction has appeared, or soon will, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Tor.com, and the anthologies Lovecraft’s Monsters and Best American Mystery Stories. An excerpt of his debut novel, Move Under Ground, is available on site this week […]