One of our favorite works so far this year is Dempow Torishima’s Sisyphean. It’s an incredibly unique work that defies categorization. It’s weird for even weird fiction as it blends elements of science fiction and strange biotechnology. It also features illustrations by the author that might fit into a H.R. Giger or Zdzisław Beksiński exhibit, and familiar […]
The following is an excerpt from Dempow Torishima’s 2018 book Sisyphean. It is the second chapter of the title story “Sisyphean.” Be sure to also check out our interview with author Dempow Torishima. Translation by Daniel Huddleston 1 When the on-site disassembler came to the synthorgan factory carrying his packing case, he stared for a moment […]
Translated by Edward Gauvin The bicycle is an ancient model, deliberately picked for its thick, heavy frame and pedals, bare of rubber cover, whose serrated ridges as the hours go by cut first into callus, then the flesh of feet that press upon them. The crankset, big as a gear from a belfry clock, is covered in the […]
Translated by Edward Gauvin It was like a gigantic pyre rising from the center of the gray, argil plain. A colossal intertwining of branches atop which the city seemed bizarrely unbalanced, with its towers broader at the base than the summit, its keeps oddly narrowed toward their crenellations, such that from a distance they might be taken for […]
After you read this story, check out our interview with translator Erik Simon for some background on it and Alfred Leman. Translated by Erik Simon From Der unsichtbare Dispatcher (Berlin, 1980). Kioshi Tokito and Anatol Bykov are plodding over the black sintered tuff. They are silent. There are some things to be discussed, but right now they prefer just […]
It’s pretty rare to see science fiction from Germany much less from the German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany). Today we’re featuring a weird scifi story called “Two Episodes” from GDR writer Alfred Leman (1925 — 2015). This story combines two episodes from Leman’s second short story collection, Der unsichtbare Dispatcher. We asked translator Erik Simon, a German science […]
Summer is officially ending today but our coverage of strange science fiction at Weird Fiction Review continues! This week we’re featuring a story by Indian author, illustrator, and journalist Manjula Padmanabhan. “2099” originally appeared in New Delhi-based news magazine Outlook magazine in 1999 as “India 2099” as part of a feature where Indian writers were asked to speculate about the next 100 years. The protagonist of “2099” is modeled after […]
Translated by James Womack Sever Feliksovich Gansovsky (1918 – 1990) was a prominent Soviet writer of fiction, including science fiction. He wrote some of the best short stories of his generation, several of them collected in English in Macmillan’s Best of Soviet Science Fiction anthologies in the 1980s. He received the Russian Aelita Award in 1989. There is a fierce intelligence […]
Marian Womack is a graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop (2014), and of the Creative Writing Master’s at the University of Cambridge (2016). She was born in Andalusia and writes in English and Spanish. Her fiction in English can be read in Apex, SuperSonic Mag, Weird Fiction Review, and the anthologies Spanish Women of Wonder and […]
In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been posting a series of strange scifi stories this summer at Weird Fiction Review. These are stories that were uncovered by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer as they edited The Big Book of Science Fiction, out this year from Vintage Books. So far we’ve posted stories by two early-20th-century German fantasists Paul […]