As you probably know already, this year, 2014, has been an amazing year for weird fiction — or as Scott Nicolay puts it succinctly in his article about the Weird, “we are in the middle of a Weird Renaissance.” This year, we saw weird fiction pervade everything from television to the New York Times. We saw some excellent titles from […]
2014 was a year of grad exams, with their attendant reading lists, and merciless work, so I virtually read nothing I wasn’t assigned or paid to. That said, at least some of my reading overlapped with the Weird corner of my personal interests. As we head into winter a year later, I can still recall the few quiet, precious weeks […]
Ghouljaw & Other Stories is one of the finest debut collections I’ve had the pleasure to read this year, every bit as impressive as Jason A. Wyckoff’s Black Horse (2012) and Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters (2013), sharing with these works a breadth of originality that makes it required reading for both readers and writers of Weird Fiction. There is a deep literary and genre […]
In the mid-’90s, a rare-film librarian at a state university in Pennsylvania mysteriously burns his entire stockpile of film canisters and disappears. So begins the novel The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing by Nicholas Rombes. In his novel, Rombes explores the intertwining of life and cinema through a interview with a highly acclaimed but eccentric film librarian, Roberto Acestes Laing. We had a chance […]
The following is an excerpt from the novel The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing by Nicholas Rombes. It is reprinted with the author’s permission. Be sure to check out our interview with Rombes as well. — The Editors Laing is not so good at transitions. As soon as he finishes describing Destroyer he starts in on another film, Black […]
This year has been a fantastic year for D.P. Watt. First, his short story collection, An Emporium of Automata, was reprinted by Eibonvale Press; we printed one of the stories from this collection, “Erbach’s Emporium of Automata”. Also, Watt has a new collection this year from Egaeus Press called The Phantasmagorical Imperative and Other Fabrications and Watt’s fiction was collected in the Zagava/Ex […]
The art of J.K. Potter has graced the covers and interiors of many weird fiction authors, including Tim Powers, Lucius Shepard, Ramsey Campbell, and Clive Barker. His vibrant colors, thoughtful juxtapositions, and sense of the surreal and bizarre are unique in the way they interact with a story’s subject matter. By thoughtfully layering multiple elements into […]
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 narrative of Philip K. Dick’s “The Preserving Machine” is conventional in structure, straightforward even, and deceptively so for a work of what is ultimately high quality weird science fiction. […]
Leonora Carrington (1912 — 2011) was a British-born Mexican surrealist painter. She also wrote several novels and short stories. Her work was influenced by Max Ernst, who she met in 1937 and began living with him in Paris. Ernst was arrested soon after the Nazi occupation of France as his art was deemed “degenerate”. Carrington fled to Spain […]
As a reader, as a writer, I have no question that The Weird exists, both as a mode of expression and an external experience. Nor do I question that we are in the midst of a genuine Weird Renaissance, right this very now. Look not to me to define the parameters of either – I find it right that those boundaries remain vague. […]