This week, we’re exploring uncanny literature with Majorie Sandor, the editor of the recent anthology The Uncanny Reader. Be sure to also check out our interview with Sandor. – The Editors And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead –W.H. Auden Trust me: trying to define the uncanny, whether as […]
I’ve always thought of weird fiction and uncanny literature as being one and the same. It was only until recently when I read an anthology called The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows that I realized that while there are many commonalities and similarities, the uncanny and the weird aren’t exactly synonymous. In The Uncanny Reader, the editor, Marjorie Sandor, opens with […]
It is said that even in the Before there were those who fell. The curse of their fall was to become Brainworlds. Sentient and eternally celestial, they were unable to generate or sustain life. They were not so much planets as conscious Wholes. Thus begins American Monster, J.S. Breukelaar’s monstrous novel about a quest for reunion, […]
It is believed that the response of disgust has evolved in animals such as humans in order to prevent them from eating food which may be harmful. Disgust is mainly triggered by the sense of taste although it may also be triggered by smell, touch, or – of course – vision. It’s this last sense which Nathan Ballingrud appeals to in his […]
Inter: between. Sistere: to stand. What is interstitial art? According to the website of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, it is art made in the interstices between genres and categories. It is art that flourishes in the borderlands between different disciplines, mediums, and cultures. It is art that crosses borders, made by artists who refuse to be […]
New Wave Fabulism, New Weird, Magical Realism… Kelly Link’s fiction has been described under a number of labels, and they all inevitably feel insufficient. Her new collection, Get in Trouble, brings with it characteristics that undoubtedly belong to the above categories. Nonetheless, to describe these stories as strictly belonging to any particular genre, regardless of how […]
The characteristic feature of this strange art is that it attempts to depict the extrasensory, to provide symbols for the mysterious forces to which we are subjected in our daily lives but which we do not know – indeed, that is revealed to us only in wild dreams and fantasies, in states of clairvoyant nervous […]
Starting in January, Weirdfictionreview.com will begin its “101 Weird Writers” series, based on the contents of The Weird compendium. This piece on Kubin, whose “The Other Side” is excerpted at the beginning of The Weird, is a prologue to that series. Tomorrow, WFR will post another piece on Kubin by Paul Charles Smith. — Jeff VanderMeer (The city of Pearl, […]
This article is part of our series about the four stories not included in The Weird. See the Four Stories introduction for more information. – The Editors “The world had been sad since Tuesday.” Reading the stories of Gabriel García Márquez reveals that we have been incomplete all this time. A delirious current of imagination and critique […]
In life there are two kinds of places. The places of everyday life. The apartment. The workplace. The hospital. The marketplace. These are the locations of normal reality. Where our everyday dramas and tragedies take place in the light. Careers and relationships. Social standings and money making. But then there is another place. A dark place […]