These days it is timely to be in mourning. So many people feel adrift and confused as if they have lost something intangible but precious. And perhaps they have. Jobs, relationships, even hope for the future — today, all of these shimmer and flash with the dangerous light of precarity. As so many of the characters in […]
Editor’s note: The following is a review for the short story collection, Figures Unseen, by Steve Rasnic Tem. We’re also featuring a story from this collection, “Red Rabbit,” which we invite readers to check out. A little over seven years ago now, I read Steve Rasnic Tem for the first time. This experience came via his long short story, […]
The following is a review of M. John Harrison’s collection, You Should Come with Me Now. We’re also featuring a story from this collection, “Cicisbeo.” I first encountered the work of M. John Harrison in the form of “Egnaro” when it appeared in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories. I knew immediately that I had found something special, […]
Spells from Wakefield Press collects thirteen tales by Michel de Ghelderode, best known as a prolific dramatist, and includes work that has been anthologized alongside other such luminaries of the Weird as Jean Ray and Jean Muno. Each tale contains some unique take on the idea of “spells,” often with a focus on the realistic interpretations of […]
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 […]
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 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 […]