The following story originally appeared in Postscripts #13 (Winter 2007). It is reprinted with the permission of PS Publishing. — The Editors After mentioning my upcoming flight from winter at a New Year’s party in Templeton, I was drawn aside by a young woman who, in a few breathlessly-confided sentences, told me a bizarre tale. Writers often hear confessions, and I puzzled over the encounter […]
The following story comes from D. P. Watt’s recently reprinted short story collection, An Emporium of Automata, available from Eibonvale Press. Watt also has a new collection out this year from Egaeus Press called The Phantasmagorical Imperative and Other Fabrications. Watt’s fiction is a unique blend of magical realism à la Jorge Luis Borges with disquieting settings that recall the works of Robert Aickman. To learn more about Watt, […]
I WE had been put in the mood for ghosts, that evening, after an excellent dinner at our old friend Culwin’s, by a tale of Fred Murchard’s — the narrative of a strange personal visitation. Seen through the haze of our cigars, and by the drowsy gleam of a coal fire, Culwin’s library, with its oak walls and dark old […]
The short story is by far the most popular form of weird fiction — after all, when an idea or situation becomes familiar, it ceases to be weird. Thus, we find the landscape of strange literature littered with short story after short story — some good, others bad. With thousands of potential new short stories being written each year, it’s nothing […]
One of our favorite anthologies this year has been The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron (Word Horde). Edited by Ross E. Lockhart and Justin Steele, The Children of the Old Leech features all new stories created with elements straight out of the weird fiction of author Laird Barron. It’s an exquisite collection of […]
This year has seen a lot of anniversaries in weird fiction. First, there was the centennial anniversary of Robert Aickman, then the bicentennial of Sheridan Le Fanu, and now we’re celebrating the 100th year anniversary of Julio Cortázar (whose birthday was actually before Le Fanu’s birthday last month). Today though, Tor.com is featuring an all new translation […]
Do you know who coined the term “weird fiction”? H. P. Lovecraft popularized the term in his 1927 essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” but Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu is credited with its inception. Today marks the bicentennial anniversary of Le Fanu’s birth in 1814. He was an author of dark tales who is mostly known for his novel Uncle […]
The beach. The cove. Children were playing a brutal game of king of the hill on the pillar I’d once claimed as mine. Behind them, in the shadows of the cliff face, a temporary town, global nomads on the lam, their tents and sleeping rolls spiraling inward, three, four, five layers deep. I clung to the […]
Falling. Falling. Am I no more than some goldfish to be plopped back into the cold water when the sun runs so warm over my scales? Does the eater of the dead deserve no more ceremony than this? Oh, but all of a sudden I am ravenous for so much more than the dead. It is life I would […]
Swim into my mouth and straighten the needle, for I have lost the thread. Ridley DeLeure, I will never know you now, for the shade I pursue has folded his wings around the images and words. My digestive juices have eaten through the parts that might tell me why you came here and not some kinder place. Did […]