The third entry in the Year’s Best Weird Fiction series is guest edited by author and editor Simon Strantzas. Strantzas should be no stranger to fans of Weird fiction. He recently edited the Robert Aickman tribute anthology Aickman’s Heirs which won two Shirley Jackson Awards—one for best Edited Anthology and one for Lynda E. Rucker’s story “The Dying Season.” Strantzas was gracious enough to stop by Weird Fiction Review to answer questions about how he defines Weird fiction and how he selected stories for YBWF3. From his responses, I find it interesting that while not every fan may agree with his definition of Weird fiction, Strantzas still provides a very clear and critical framework for how he understands it, along with some insights into what the Weird looks like today and where it may be headed. As a side note, I would also encourage interested readers to check out our interviews with Laird Barron, who edited the first volume, and Kathe Koja, who edited last year’s second volume, in order to gain some perspective into how the Weird is viewed differently by other practitioners.

Weird Fiction Review: Did you read the previous years’ volumes? I’m wondering how you think your selection of stories differ from those of Laird Barron or Kathe Koja.

Simon Strantzas: I dipped into both volumes upon their release, picking my way through the stories that were new to me, revisiting some that weren’t. It seems to me that the first volume was focused on giving a very broad overview of the what constitutes Weird fiction (or at least did so at the time), whereas the second drilled down into a side of the field that hews closer to Fantasy than Horror. This makes it the perfect follow-up in my eyes. Michael Kelly’s mandate for the Year’s Best Weird Fiction series is to show the diversity of the field, and that second volume proved to be a jolt to those who thought they knew what “Weird fiction” was—both those that embraced the term, and those that felt alienated by it. It was a bold and impressive choice, and I think immediately it freed the series from spiraling down a predictable hole.

My own sensibilities about what Weird fiction is and what makes it interesting differ in some ways greatly from those two volumes, yet also stay on perhaps more traditional paths. I suspect I have a greater interest in British and European Horror than the previous editors do, which is likely reflected in my choices. I also lean closer to the Horror side of the Weird fiction spectrum, so many stories I find the most interesting explore the Horror mode in some way. One thing I hope to see more of in future volumes in an influx of writers from outside the Western world, though that carries a number of hurdles, language barriers being only the most obvious.

WFR: In your introduction, you make the case that Weird fiction is just another name for Horror fiction. Would you say that they are completely interchangeable? Or are there perhaps stories that are Weird but not Horror or vice versa?

Strantzas: I wouldn’t call them interchangeable, no. I consider one to be a subset of the other. My argument (laid out, I hope, much more cogently in the introduction to the book) is simply that though there has been fiction called Weird for a long time, the contemporary use of the phrase is relegated to describing the newer forms Horror fiction is taking in this post-millennial age. It’s a term often (not always, but often) used as a short-hand to suggest that because these forms are new and different, they are inherently better than what preceded them, so they need to be divorced completely from what came before so there’s no confusion. “Weird” is too often used as a form of elitism.

One has to remember, though, that all these names are but artificial constructs created to examine and categorize fiction after it’s been written in order to study or sell it. Authors (good ones, at least) don’t tend to worry about such categorizations while writing. What makes weird fiction “Weird” is the author’s desire to tell stories in a different way or with different tools than have been traditionally used. But that’s the same for all leading movements of art, I’d think. I don’t argue that Weird fiction is an interesting and distinct place, I just argue from the perspective that it’s not far enough from its precedents that it can be branched. The Weird is simply new Horror.

WFR: You also acknowledge in your introduction that there’s no consensus around what constitutes Weird fiction. I wonder if you have any theories around why the Weird is such a nebulous genre.

Strantzas: If we accept the tenet that Weird is its own mode, I suspect its nebulousness comes from its relative newness. Established modes like Horror and Science Fiction have existed long enough, and are distinct enough, to have developed tropes and clichés that define them. Should I describe a story where a family moves into a house where a person was murdered, and they suffer through a night of strange noises and unexplained premonitions, you would be hard pressed to find a reader who wouldn’t define that as Horror; just as a story about a rocket ship and an alien planet whose society is both ancient and advanced would be considered Science Fiction. It’s easy for someone to identify these modes. But Weird? Just what exactly is that? Is there a story construct that everyone would agree on as being Weird? The mode is not codified in the same way. In fact, everyone has their own slightly different impression of Weird means. And I don’t consider that a problem. Weird hasn’t existed as a defined (or loosely-defined) thing long enough to develop its own mode-defining hackneyed baggage—it’s still primarily filled with stories on the forefront of literature. It’s and exciting place, but I do wonder if it requires that codification to remain relevant to readers. I remember a similar issue with “Dark Fantasy” a decade or so ago. It was another term bandied around by people who didn’t want to use the word Horror to describe the fiction they liked, but just as Weird fiction it was nebulously defined, and once a generation of readers grew past the term it fell out of favor. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone called a Dark Fantasy author without irony or derision. But perhaps I travel in the wrong circles.

WFR: There are a number of writers in Year’s Best Weird Fiction Vol. 3 that are well established (Ramsey Campbell, Tim Lebbon, Reggie Oliver, etc). Were there any writers that were new? Perhaps new to Weird fiction or even new to you?

Strantzas: About a third of the stories selected for the book were from authors I’d never before read. Michael Kelly does a great job at casting a wide net over the field, looking not only for new voices, but new voices in atypical venues for Weird fiction readers. As a result, the stories he sent me to consider were widely varied in style and subject matter. Some were quiet, some explicit; some were realistic while others fantastic. In essence, he was able to provide a healthy spectrum of work to consider, which made my job harder, but much more interesting. I read each story blind so I might assign it an unbiased ranking on several different levels. Then, on re-read, I ranked each again and took an average. This whittled down my list of serious candidates for the book. At that point it was only a matter of re-reading them again to puzzle out the best fit for style and variation. Simple, but not so simple at all. When dealing with the best of the field, selecting which “best” is better than another is a bit of a fool’s errand. In some case, it boiled down to what appealed most to my own sensibilities. The book as a whole is a reflection of the sort of fiction I enjoy, and another volume filled with dissimilar stories could easily have been assembled from the same material and been as good. The stories in all these best-of series are never the qualifiable best of the year, but rather some of the best that are being presented for the readers’ review.

WFR: Do you consciously strive for a balance of well-known and newer writers, or does this balance arrive more or less as a natural part of the editorial process?

Strantzas: Once I was in the final stage of picking the table of contents, I went through the narrowed-down list I’d assembled with my blinders off and linked each titles to its author. This allowed me to make corrections in balance I might not have been able to otherwise. When I ran into a situation where I had two stories I liked equally well, I considered other factors outside the story to lean toward a final list that was balanced by sex and nationality and experience. I could easily have put together a volume of stories written by only straight white men, but I don’t think that properly reflects the field or the talent in it. These best-of books are more than a book of favorites—instead, they function as an overview of what’s happening in the field and what’s exciting. For me, different voices are what’s exciting, especially new voices. I was thrilled to be able to gives some fledgling writers their first taste of being in a curated best-of anthology, and I have no doubt this won’t be the last time for any of them. I must also admit I was excited to be able to include a new story by Robert Aickman in the volume. Aickman’s work has been transformative for me, and it was surely kismet that I should be invited to co-edit YBWF during the year a major new story of his was first published.

WFR: Speaking of Aickman, you talked about the Strange Tale in your introduction. What are the hallmarks of the Strange Tale? Were there any stories in YBWF3 that you would categorize as Strange Tales or Aickmanesque?

Strantzas: I’d probably call the Aickman tale “Aickmanesque”, but it’s not the only one. I see the Strange tale as a more European style of story telling, as opposed to the American style of Weird fiction. The former is weighed down with such a long history that the stories tend to turn inward, whereas the latter are turned outward in exploration of what the world and the cosmos has to offer. American Weird is thus more direct, and more showy that the Strange. (And, again, let me restate that these are arbitrary divisions intended to aid in understanding movements, not define them). Most of the British writers in the book wrote stories I’d call Strange, and the American writers wrote what I’d call Weird, but this was not always the case. I’d suggest the British D.P. Watt’s story falls closer to the Weird scale, and American ex-pat Lynda E. Rucker’s tale falls closer to the Strange. It’s about atmosphere and mood, and plenty of great stories in this book and elsewhere entwine the two irrevocably.

WFR: You’ve worked in the Weird fiction field for quite a while. Did you spot any trends while editing YBWF3?

Strantzas: I came away from the experience with two observations. The first was that the first-person narrative is popular among many writers of Weird fiction. I’m not certain why this is, but I suspect it’s the same at the vanguard of other modes and fields as well. Perhaps the first person narrative is more engaging because it immediately establishes a rapport between reader and narrator, providing a voyeuristic look into another’s life. Or perhaps the subjectivity of first-person works well with Weird fiction because it allows bizarre encounters and effects to be delivered through experience-by-proxy, which heightens the emotional connection. Whatever the reason, I found after reading through a number of first-person stories that encountering one written from the more traditional third-person perspective was an oasis.

The second thread I noticed deals primarily with what newer writers are bringing to this sort of fiction. We used to speak a lot about cross-genre fiction, but whereas once each mode was its own silo with the occasional writer attempting to mix the contents of one with another, newer writers don’t seem to recognize the existence of those silos at all. Instead, they write as though all the speculative fiction fields were one, and glide between aspects without any sense of inhibition. Within the last few years we’ve seen the field shift in this direction out from under those authors who were working at Weird fiction’s vanguard a decade ago, authors who were still working through the influence of the boom period on their fiction and on the field as a whole. These new writers coming of age now not only missed the influence of that boom period, but because the field became so fallow in its aftermath that they instead found their inspirations elsewhere. That they’re bringing those influences back into our recently revitalized field only bodes well for where it’s going.

WFR: How did editing YBWF3 compare to editing other anthologies like Aickman’s Heirs? I know you’ve talked before about editing fiction after Shadows Edge and you said that you enjoyed writing more. After the success of Aickman’s Heirs, which won a Shirley Jackson Award for best anthology, do you see yourself editing more in the future? What about in the near term?

Strantzas: I edited Shadows Edge because I wanted to understand what the editing process was like, and I discovered I didn’t care much for it. Well, that’s not entirely true; I do love reading new stories by my favourite authors, and I do like introducing readers to names they may not have been previously familiar with. And as much work as editing a book is, it’s still less work than writing a book. But that aside I found the task to be a burden that took time away from my own writing, an endeavour I am much more passionate about than editing. So, I decided then that Shadows Edge would to be my first and only foray into editing. And for a time it was.

When the current wave of tribute anthologies we are going through now was initially ramping up, it occurred to me that I might enjoy contributing to one that focused on Robert Aickman. His influence on the field was becoming obvious, and the timing appeared perfect. But no one else seemed to realize that, and after a while I had to accept that if such a book was ever going to exist, it would have to be because I made it happen. So my second (and, I was adamant, final) foray into editing occurred because I saw a hole that needed filling and filled it. As for the award and its nominations, I’m certainly very happy with the acclaim, and I think the notice the book and many of its stories has garnered is proof that my initial instincts about its need to exist were correct.

Both these books involved me assembling a list of my favourite writers and determining who would be able to write great material related to the theme. It’s almost the reverse of a volume like Year’s Best Weird Fiction, where I was reading stories by authors I didn’t know, authors who were exploring their own themes. Editing a book like that requires putting one’s own feelings aside and absorbing each story as a single unit, and only at the end of the process determining how those units interplay with one another, and if there are any general themes or undercurrents that unite them.

As to editing another book in the near (or distant) future, you know what they say: never say never. But there are no plans, firm or inchoate, at present.

WFR: Do you have any projects you’re currently working on that you’d like share with our readers?

Strantzas: I’m somewhere in the weeds of my fifth collection of short fiction. It’s slowly coming together and I’m hopeful it will be completed and polished for a 2018 release. If all goes well, it will be as much of departure from the last book as that book was from the one that preceded it. After that I’ll be turning my attention back to the short novel I’ve been writing for the past few years. I don’t know when that will see print, or even if, but I’ve grown quite fond of the story as time has progressed and I’m eager to finally see how it all ends. Should it work out well, I have another few ideas for novels that will likely take me the rest of my life to complete. Between these projects, short fiction will continue to appear sporadically in magazines, journals, and anthologies. I have three due in various books that have fallen behind on their publishing schedules, so I’m not sure when they’ll appear, but I remain ever hopeful and patient.

The post Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume 3: An Interview with Simon Strantzas appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

In short, this anthology is bound to put uncanny fiction on the map for modern audiences and the only thing I think that matches its excellence is Sandor’s enthusiasm for the subject which she was happy to speak to us about. Be sure to stick around this week as we’ll also be featuring an exclusive essay on the uncanny based on the anthology’s introduction that Sandor has generously adapted for us to feature at Weird Fiction Review. Also, we’ll be posting the same translation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sand-man” that is included in The Uncanny Reader.

Weird Fiction Review: Why do you think the uncanny has been around for so long and pervaded so many cultures and countries?

Marjorie Sandor: You probably already know the wonderful opening salvo of Lovecraft’s Horror in Supernatural Literature: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” If we think about this in terms of what art has always done for humankind, it’s always hovering in this intersection between the known and unknown—between the “official story” and the obliterated history that is not really gone, but suppressed or forgotten. We’ve been using this word, uncanny for hundreds of years, to describe the way we feel when something utterly mysterious happens close by—in the neighborhood, in the house-and-family, in our own bodies and sense of self. It might be supernatural. It might not. It might be fate. Or it might be chance. The crucial thing is that we can’t resolve it. The uncertainty—and what it makes us do and say—makes us uncanny to ourselves.

One cool thing to add here: the really old Scots/Gaelic word, “canny,” and its German equivalent, “heimlich,” originally meant not only safe and cozy but also private, hidden, and in old Scots, possessed of supernatural knowledge.” You might, for instance, go to a “canny man” to lay a curse on someone who’d pissed you off. This means that canny, as a word, has already secretly given birth to its eventual opposite, uncanny. That’s creepy, no?

But to go back to your question: we’ve always told ourselves stories after meeting with something inexplicable. The more we try to light up all the corners and rid ourselves of dangers, the more this primitive sensation takes root—like a seed of anxiety that will find a home wherever it can. The harder we try to expel it, the more it wants in. You can see why this is so rich and complex and unnerving when it comes to the art of storytelling, and all art forms, for that matter.

WFR: This anthology seems to be quite different from the rest of your work in that you’re the editor (not the writer) and also in terms of subject matter. Why the change?

MS: I’m so glad you used the word “seems.” I used to think of myself as a writer of more-or-less realistic stories, but there’s always been another current running beneath—in fact, I turned in a fairy-tale when I applied to MFA programs in the 1980s. Terrific timing. But now, having taught “the uncanny-in-literature” to my own MFA students for the last decade, I can see it secretly pervading everything I’ve written, fiction or creative nonfiction. For instance, in Portrait of My Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime, a young woman is forever trying to dig up family secrets that should have remained hidden. The final story contains the most well-guarded family secret of all: she receives an incomplete sketch of it from her father on his deathbed, and the key figure from his past might be an apparition, an invention—we never know. In an earlier story, “The Gittel,” a child on the brink of Holocaust-Germany dreams of being stuffed into a black grand piano by his mother. Wouldn’t Freud have loved that? In my recent nonfiction, The Late Interiors, weird dreams, hauntings, and strange coincidences abound. Why is this? I don’t know: I come from a family of Russian-and-Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and I think we dragged a great mystical and folkloric tradition with us to Ellis Island without quite realizing it. Add to this the fabulous ghost stories I was told as a child growing up in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California—those suburbs are miles-deep with repressed histories going back to the first inhabitants of the place.

WFR: Do you view uncanny fiction as a distinct sub-genre or more of a tradition or narrative element?

MS: What a great question. In fact, I don’t think it’s a genre or sub-genre at all—it won’t stay pinned-down. In life, it’s a sensation; so, in literature (or in any art, really), it’s an effect, and finally, it’s one that morphs from reader to reader. In fact, I think it defies genre. You might experience it in a work of total realism about an impoverished and hungry child confronting, for the first time, the foreignness that is the oyster (Chekhov, “Oysters”), or during the slow transformation of an English train-station waiting room on a dark winter’s night, as a whole ghostly world reasserts itself (Aickman, “The Waiting Room”). I titled the anthology The Uncanny Reader to put the emphasis on the reader rather than the writer: to invite other readers into this weird (and yes, idiosyncratic) library. The sensation of the uncanny is so individual, so variable from reader to reader, that there’s no telling who will be unsettled by what. It’s kind of subversive that way, and it lets us, as readers, discover just how peculiar we are.

WFR: Were there any stories you wanted to include but weren’t able to due to copyrights?

MS: Big time. I envisioned an anthology composed almost entirely of reprints, and I also wanted it to have an international scope. And, alas, I was the greenest of greenhorns when I began the process. My vision turned out to be almost comically at odds with the reality of rights acquisition on a limited budget. I was, early on, a bit like Dorothy at the great doors of Oz, confronted by the guard who yells, “Go Away! The great Oz cannot see you now—or ever!” Early on, I longed for Kawabata’s “The Arm” and Julio Cortázar’s “Bestiary.” I probably could have gotten them; I just didn’t know how, at the early stage, to pull it off without spending my whole advance. Then, too, I wrote heartfelt letters to a few very famous contemporary writers and/or their editors, and was greeted with silence—I shan’t name them here; they actually don’t know who they are. So, let’s just say that financially and spiritually, I had to let go of a few. But a lot of people in the business turned out to be angelically kind, and some of them saved me from bankruptcy.

WFR: What other works would recommend to those who’ve enjoyed The Uncanny Reader in terms of books and perhaps other media like film and art?

MS: Films: The Babadook (2014); The Spirit of the Beehive (1973). The Innocents (1961); The Haunting of Hill House (1963). The Quay Brothers’ animation of Schulz’s stories, watchable on Youtube.

Humor—in the sense of the uncanny feeling caused by “unintended repetition.” Watch youtubes of “The Great Flydini” routine by Steve Martin, and “No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Monty Python (with great thanks to the British literary and cultural critic Nicholas Royle for pointing that out.)

Visual Art: most recently, this very exciting art installation of gigantic self-propelled creatures made of PVC pipe and fabric, by Theo Jansen. As I write this, his Strandbeests are moving along Miami Beach. Going back a century, you might check out the work of the symbolist painter Odilon Redon, especially his series of “noirs” based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. If you look at just one, make it “The Teeth,” based on his story “Berenice” (which is in the anthology).

More very early short fiction: the late 18^th century Scottish writer James Hogg—I didn’t include him here because I ran out of room and was dedicated to Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” above all. But Hogg’s Country Dreams and Apparitions are a delight, as is Margaret Oliphant’s late 19^th c. novella, “The Library Window.” And The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James—uncanniest novella of all time. To leap forward to the 1970s: Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip (a great example of uncanniness in photography-and-writing.

Nonfiction: Start with Freud’s very strange essay, “The Uncanny,” then follow it up with a dip into Nicholas Royle’s The Uncanny, Anthony Vidler’s The Architectural Uncanny, and Lawrence Weschler’s essays in Uncanny Valley. Puppet, by Kenneth Gross, is also a dream.

WFR: Have you found other works outside of the uncanny that have been influenced by uncanny fiction in some way?

MS: Ah, yes. That way lies madness—in a good way. You’ll find it in studies of architecture, medicine, robotics design, war, race relations. Nicholas Royle, says in his book The Uncanny, “the world is uncanny.” Why is this? Because it provides an incredibly valuable—and ever surprising—lens through which to look at the way we live now. I’ve discovered that if I reconsider an unsettling encounter, a disturbing work of art, or something as potentially mundane and depressing as an abandoned shopping mall, I don’t look away quite as quickly. Thinking about the uncanny forces us to slow down and consider the nature of our own “first reading” of a moment, person, or place. This could have profound implications in our political and cultural life.

WFR: What are your plans for the future? Do you plan to return to the uncanny again sometime or somehow reuse things you’ve learned while editing this anthology?

MS: I’ve been infected for life. I’ve got a novel-in-progress and new stories and I can feel them edging, of their own accord, deeper into ghostly territory. My most recently published short story is about a haunting: it’s an update of “Pomegranate Seed,” the Edith Wharton story in this anthology. As I wrote it, I found myself confronting my fear of contemporary technology—the story is called “Darkfruit.com.” What a surprising title, given that I’m practically allergic to the world of devices and the Internet. I’m also at work on a novel set in Inquisition Spain: it opens with an old man sitting in an empty palace, holding an obsolete musical instrument and invoking the shade of his dead lover. I think that “knowing” about the uncanny has heightened my sense of just how storied and haunted all our spaces and bodies are. I don’t think my material has changed. But my view of it absolutely has. There’s no going back.

The post A Conversation about the Uncanny appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

Laird Barron, with countless anthologized short stories and a recognizable and respected name in weird fiction, was a formidable choice for first guest editor. Barron recently won the Bram Stoker award for his collection The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. Michael Kelly’s weird fiction credentials are no less impressive with two collections, a novel, and a yearly anthology of weird fiction called Shadows & Tall Trees. The first Year’s Best Weird Fiction hits shelves October 7th (although the ebook is out now) and needless to say, we were incredibly excited to talk with Kelly and Barron about finally having a best-of series.

Weird Fiction Review: Was anything special about this year in terms of starting the series? Was there maybe a tipping point in that you felt there was enough Weird Fiction being published to sustain a yearly best-of series?

Michael Kelly: Many have claimed that there has been a renaissance of ‘Weird Fiction’ in the past few years. In a sense that is true–simply in the fact that there’s been renewed interest in the writings of Thomas Ligotti, Robert Aickman, and others, along with the emergence of ‘new’ voices like Caitlin R. Kiernan, Sofia Samatar, etc. But I believe there has always been an interest in the weird mode, and that its proponents, readers and writers, numbered as many fans as other modes of literature. Several specialty presses–Tartarus, Ex Occidente, Egaeus, Swan River, to name a few–have been publishing and promoting weird fiction for a number of years. Ellen Datlow and Gardner Dozois, bless them, have been editing their respective ‘Year’s Best’ anthologies for three decades now. Truthfully, there could have–and some would say should have–been a ‘Year’s Best Weird’ for 3 decades (or more), as well. It’s an idea I’d been cultivating for a few years, and thanks to the power of crowd-sourcing it’s a vision that is about to be realized. So, there wasn’t any real tipping point. I knew that there would always be enough material to fill the volume. Indeed, we could have filled two volumes.

Laird Barron: Weird fiction has been resurgent over the past decade. The VanderMeers have championed the cause through a couple of anthologies and the founding of a major weird-oriented web site. Weird’s relatives—horror and fantasy—are well-represented by year’s best anthologies. Genre categories often overlap, but a number of people have rightly noted that a gap remains when it comes to the weird. Michael Kelly stepped in and addressed that lack. With the proliferation of the small press, there is an abundance of excellent horror, dark, fantasy, and weird fiction circulating. We could have easily done a second volume.

WFR: Give us an idea of how this first volume came together. Like how it came about, who did what, etc.

MK: I knew from the get-go that I wanted Laird Barron to be my partner in crime. No-one, in my opinion, encapsulates the contemporary weird fiction movement as much as Laird does. He’s a treasure. And he’s got extensive contacts. Laird reached out to his many colleagues for suggestions, (reading hundreds of stories), while I manned the slush pile, reading upwards of 2700 stories. Laird’s task was especially difficult as most of his reading involved stories that were exceptional to begin with (and fit our criteria), while a vast majority of the submissions I read could be dismissed relatively easily due to poor writing or the fact they just didn’t fit the weird mode. So, I would pass along the best weird tales from my readings. Laird, though, was given the unenviable task of ultimate arbiter. Because of rights issues, there were a couple stories we weren’t able to secure, unfortunately.

LB: Mike asked me to helm the inaugural volume. He’s an experienced editor and publisher. His vision for the series appealed to me—a guest editor each year to infuse the series with new blood while Mike acts as curator. Simple and elegant. For Volume One, he read slush and passed along prospects. My own search ranged far afield. I managed to secure most of the stories I wanted. However, as Mike notes, due to rights conflicts, we were unable to reprint a couple of pieces I had my heart set on. In addition to slush-reading, Mike handled the business end of the project. That left me free to agonize over the final table of contents and the honorable mention roster. It was a great partnership and a great experience.

WFR: Looking over the table of contents for YBWF, I see that there’s a nice mixture of established writers along with several newer and lesser known writers. Was that purely coincidental? Should we expect more newer writers in future volumes?

MK: We couldn’t ignore the new voices. They had to be heard. We are witnessing a remarkable era for weird fiction, and the inaugural volume of the Year’s Best Weird Fiction reflects that. So, indeed, purely coincidental that we have managed to compile such a great mix. I’ve no doubt that weird fiction will continue to offer us exciting and relevant new voices.

LB: I made an effort to dig deep when assembling this ToC. The mix is a function of abundant talent and fortuitous timing. It so happened that 2013 saw a wave of terrific work from newer and neglected authors.

WFR: What sort of criteria did you look for in your weird fiction stories when deciding whether to put it in the anthology? What makes a weird fiction story good?

MK: While it may be hard to codify and attach a genre label to weird fiction, to me, weird fiction, at its best, is an intersecting of themes and ideas that explore and subvert the laws of Nature. The Other. The Alien. A sense of unease. These, I believe, were our benchmarks. If a story can touch on those things and resonate on multiple levels, then you’ve a good tale.

LB: I selected for weirdness quotient, and of course that’s a subjective parameter. I selected for excellence; another subjective category and one that is informed by my personal judgment. I selected for a variety of themes and tropes. I selected for diversity in the voices represented. I feel that the utility of a truly great year’s best is more nuanced than simply declaring a handful of stories “the best.” Hartwell and Cramer have referred to such endeavors as snapshots of the field. I interpreted my job as to take the widest angle, highest fidelity shot possible. The weird covers a lot of ground. I attempted honor that.

A proper weird story may consist of any number of elements, but at the core it’s concerned with irrationality, with the alien, and strangeness. Reality is mutable and subject to contravention. Dislocation and dissonance prevail.

WFR: Were there any stories that were really good but didn’t fit into the anthology because they didn’t maybe fit the weird fiction label?

MK: The weird mode, perhaps more than any other mode, is a nebulous thing. It isn’t a genre, as such. It encompasses horror, the macabre, fantasy, science fiction, and other, chiefly speculative, genres. Because a tale has some weird shit going on in it, that doesn’t necessarily make it a Weird tale. There were quite a few excellent tales, truth be told, that we didn’t deem a fit. Many superlative, psychological horror stories, some Westerns, some mediaeval fantasy. These were good stories, yes. Just not Weird stories.

LB: Indeed. As I’ve said, a weird tale may be a composite of different genres or traditions. To qualify for this year’s best, the primary component had to be weirdness. I read a lot of wonderfully dark fantasy and even darker horror, among other genres, that contained some degree of weirdness, but insufficient to make the case for their inclusion. Sorting the borderline cases was a tough time.

WFR: The idea of having a different guest editor each volume is rather interesting. What’s sort of the idea or goal behind this?

MK: I’ve always admired The Best American Series of books from Houghton-Mifflin. Each of their many volumes has a Guest Editor and a Series Editor, so that the flavor of subsequent volumes is different from the previous year’s volume. When I was first cultivating the idea of a Year’s Best Weird Fiction I knew that this was the course I wanted to take. There’s no doubt that the current editors of the various ‘Year’s Best’ anthologies do a great job. They have exemplary taste, and I enjoy their books. But it’s their taste. I like different flavors, different perspectives. What would Laird Barron’s book be like? How about a volume from Kathe Koja? It’s a unique, fresh vision from each editor. Different voices and different approaches make life, and books, interesting.

LB: It’s perhaps the strongest aspect of Mike’s vision for the series. You get consistent editorial overview with Mike as curator. Then every year you bring in a fresh perspective with a guest editor. The system is geared toward diversity.

WFR: I’ve always felt there were different types of weird fiction. For example, there’s American-based weird horror, which seems to be graphic and terrifying, and European-based “strange tales,” which focus more on creating an unsettling and disturbing atmospheres. Did you notice these at all when working on YBWF? Or did you see any other trends in weird fiction?

MK: I think that there used to be a clear demarcation in the two strains of weird fiction. I don’t see that as much, any more. The lines are blurring. The current crop of writers penning weird tales is well schooled in both strains, I believe. That is evidenced in this inaugural volume. It features a wide range of themes and tones.

LB: Historically, you have a point. I agree with Mike that the lines are blurring. Brian Evenson and Aimee Bender can do ambiguity with the best of them. Conversely, Conrad Williams and Clive Barker aren’t afraid of explicit violence. Nonetheless, trends in horror notwithstanding, the weird tale is often one of restraint on both sides of the pond. Once again, it’s the slippery nature of definitions. Many of the tales I find “graphic” or “terrifying” skew toward horror rather than the weird.

WFR: There are a number of great weird fiction anthologies out there including Shadows & Tall Trees. Were there things that made this anthology different from other weird fiction anthologies besides being just a best-of?

MK: I think what makes this a unique anthology is that finally—FINALLY!!—we have an anthology dedicated to a mode of literature that pre-dates all genre classifications and codification. This volume is well past due. And I hope it continues for decades.

LB: An anthology is an artifact of its composition and composers. The selections of the Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume One are necessarily unique as a product of my critical taste, that of Michael Kelly, and the labors of the authors. It’s a diverse anthology and by virtue of being a year’s best, it possesses a rare intensity of purpose.

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