Weird Fiction

[J-Sun]

I mentioned in the May Book Releases thread that The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories looked really good, if a little expensive for me. The introduction is available online and I thought it might make a good launching point for a general discussion of weird fiction. In searching for previously existing threads, the only relevant one I came across was on Borges who is represented in the anthology.

While not a big fan of generic fantasy I do like some "weird" stuff and am interested in far more that I just haven't gotten around to yet but I'm not well-versed in the (sub?)genre, so I figured I'd mostly listen. But I will say that, while inclusiveness may be a good thing, the only apparent defect this anthology has is that it may be a little too inclusive. It seems like to me that, while I guess the extremes of everything connect to each other, SF would generally be antithetical to "the weird". SF is (quintessentially speaking) about the rational and natural and, while "weird" can be just a mood, that ought to be more "strange" or "whacked out" or something, and actual weird would be about incursions of irrationality and/or the supernatural. Things like Butler's "Bloodchild" and Tiptree's "The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats", and even Martin's "The Sandkings" are SF with maybe just an infusion of horror and not very "weird" at all. I mean, there are obviously some rules of exclusion if only to explain Poe not being "weird".

Still, if selecting superb tales like these are the only "defect", then there's not much to complain about. (An actual defect in the intro concerning one of those stories is that Tiptree's real name is given as Ann rather than Alice, though.)

Anyway - what do people who are already fans and better read think of the essay, the genre, and the great examples of it?

 

[Fried Egg]

I have noticed this on the bookshelves have had a flick through the contents. It does look pretty extensive in its overview of the (sub)genre containing samples coming from many of the great contributors to the field.

One author missing from the introductory essay (but not from the collection) is Robert Aickman. I noticed that the collection contains his story "The Hospice" which if a good choice because, if I were to nominate a single story for someone to read that they might readily grasp the meaning of "weird fiction", that would probably be it. Aickman pretty much nailed it with that one.

Anyway, some people might be interested to see the contents of this collection:

Alfred Kubin, “The Other Side” (excerpt), 1908 (translation, Austria)
F. Marion Crawford, “The Screaming Skull,” 1908
Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows,” 1907
Saki, “Sredni Vashtar,” 1910
M.R. James, “Casting the Runes,” 1911
Lord Dunsany, “How Nuth Would Have Practiced his Art,” 1912
Gustav Meyrink, “The Man in the Bottle,” 1912 (translation, Austria)
Georg Heym, “The Dissection,” 1913 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Germany)
Hanns Heinz Ewers, “The Spider,” 1915 (translation, Germany)
Rabindranath Tagore, “The Hungry Stones,” 1916 (India)
Luigi Ugolini, “The Vegetable Man,” 1917 (new translation by Anna and Brendan Connell, Italy; first-ever translation into English)
A. Merritt, “The People of the Pit,” 1918
Ryunosuke Akutagawa, “The Hell Screen,” 1918 (new translation, Japan)
Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett), “Unseen — Unfeared,” 1919
Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony,” 1919 (translation, German/Czech)
Stefan Grabinski, “The White Weyrak,” 1921 (translation, Poland)
H.F. Arnold, “The Night Wire,” 1926
H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror,” 1929
Margaret Irwin, “The Book,” 1930
Jean Ray, “The Mainz Psalter,” 1930 (translation, Belgium)
Jean Ray, “The Shadowy Street,” 1931 (translation, Belgium)
Clark Ashton Smith, “Genius Loci,” 1933
Hagiwara Sakutaro, “The Town of Cats,” 1935 (translation, Japan)
Hugh Walpole, “The Tarn,” 1936
Bruno Schulz, “Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass,” 1937 (translation, Poland)
Robert Barbour Johnson, “Far Below,” 1939
Fritz Leiber, “Smoke Ghost,” 1941
Leonora Carrington, “White Rabbits,” 1941
Donald Wollheim, “Mimic,” 1942
Ray Bradbury, “The Crowd,” 1943
William Sansom, “The Long Sheet,” 1944
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Aleph,” 1945 (translation, Argentina)
Olympe Bhely-Quenum, “A Child in the Bush of Ghosts,” 1949 (Benin)
Shirley Jackson, “The Summer People,” 1950
Margaret St. Clair, “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles,” 1951
Robert Bloch, “The Hungry House,” 1951
Augusto Monterroso, “Mister Taylor,” 1952 (new translation by Larry Nolen, Guatemala)
Amos Tutuola, “The Complete Gentleman,” 1952 (Nigeria)
Jerome Bixby, “It’s a Good Life,” 1953
Julio Cortazar, “Axolotl,” 1956 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Argentina)
William Sansom, “A Woman Seldom Found,” 1956
Charles Beaumont, “The Howling Man,” 1959
Mervyn Peake, “Same Time, Same Place,” 1963
Dino Buzzati, “The Colomber,” 1966 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Italy)
Michel Bernanos, “The Other Side of the Mountain,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)
Merce Rodoreda, “The Salamander,” 1967 (translation, Catalan)
Claude Seignolle, “The Ghoulbird,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)
Gahan Wilson, “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be,” 1967
Daphne Du Maurier, “Don’t Look Now,” 1971
Robert Aickman, “The Hospice,” 1975
Dennis Etchison, “It Only Comes Out at Night,” 1976
James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats,” 1976
Eric Basso, “The Beak Doctor,” 1977
Jamaica Kincaid, “Mother,” 1978 (Antigua and Barbuda/US)
George R.R. Martin, “Sandkings,” 1979
Bob Leman, “Window,” 1980
Ramsey Campbell, “The Brood,” 1980
Michael Shea, “The Autopsy,” 1980
William Gibson/John Shirley, “The Belonging Kind,” 1981
M. John Harrison, “Egnaro,” 1981
Joanna Russ, “The Little Dirty Girl,” 1982
M. John Harrison, “The New Rays,” 1982
Premendra Mitra, “The Discovery of Telenapota,” 1984 (translation, India)
F. Paul Wilson, “Soft,” 1984
Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild,” 1984
Clive Barker, “In the Hills, the Cities,” 1984
Leena Krohn, “Tainaron,” 1985 (translation, Finland)
Garry Kilworth, “Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands,” 1987
Lucius Shepard, “Shades,” 1987
Harlan Ellison, “The Function of Dream Sleep,” 1988
Ben Okri, “Worlds That Flourish,” 1988 (Nigeria)
Elizabeth Hand, “The Boy in the Tree,” 1989
Joyce Carol Oates, “Family,” 1989
Poppy Z Brite, “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood,” 1990
Michal Ajvaz, “The End of the Garden,” 1991 (translation, Czech)
Karen Joy Fowler, “The Dark,” 1991
Kathe Koja, “Angels in Love,” 1991
Haruki Murakami, “The Ice Man,” 1991 (translation, Japan)
Lisa Tuttle, “Replacements,” 1992
Marc Laidlaw, “The Diane Arbus Suicide Portfolio,” 1993
Steven Utley, “The Country Doctor,” 1993
William Browning Spenser, “The Ocean and All Its Devices,” 1994
Jeffrey Ford, “The Delicate,” 1994
Martin Simpson, “Last Rites and Resurrections,” 1994
Stephen King, “The Man in the Black Suit,” 1994
Angela Carter, “The Snow Pavilion,” 1995
Craig Padawer, “The Meat Garden,” 1996
Stepan Chapman, “The Stiff and the Stile,” 1997
Tanith Lee, “Yellow and Red,” 1998
Kelly Link, “The Specialist’s Hat,” 1998
Caitlin R. Kiernan, “A Redress for Andromeda,” 2000
Michael Chabon, “The God of Dark Laughter,” 2001
China Mieville, “Details,” 2002
Michael Cisco, “The Genius of Assassins,” 2002
Neil Gaiman, “Feeders and Eaters,” 2002
Jeff VanderMeer, “The Cage,” 2002
Jeffrey Ford, “The Beautiful Gelreesh,” 2003
Thomas Ligotti, “The Town Manager,” 2003
Brian Evenson, “The Brotherhood of Mutilation,” 2003
Mark Samuels, “The White Hands,” 2003
Daniel Abraham, “Flat Diana,” 2004
Margo Lanagan, “Singing My Sister Down,” 2005 (Australia)
T.M. Wright, “The People on the Island,” 2005
Laird Barron, “The Forest,” 2007
Liz Williams, “The Hide,” 2007
Reza Negarestani, “The Dust Enforcer,” 2008 (Iran)
Micaela Morrissette, “The Familiars,” 2009
Steve Duffy, “In the Lion’s Den,” 2009
Stephen Graham Jones, “Little Lambs,” 2009
K.J. Bishop, “Saving the Gleeful Horse,” 2010 (Australia)

 

[Abernovo]

That looks interesting. Some well-loved authors and stories in there for me. Saki's Sredni Vashtar; James' Casting the Runes; Bradbury; Kafka; Ben Okri; Joyce Carol Oates; Koja; Angela Carter. Daphne Du Maurier and Tiptree as well.

Not buying much at the minute and I have several of these stories anyway, so I won't be going out to buy this. However, I like the list. Having enjoyed several of the stories included, I might go and look at some of the other authors, especially the more modern ones that I haven't got around to reading yet.

Thanks for this, J-Sun and Fried Egg.

 

[D_Davis]

One author missing from the introductory essay (but not from the collection) is Robert Aickman. I noticed that the collection contains his story "The Hospice" which if a good choice because, if I were to nominate a single story for someone to read that they might readily grasp the meaning of "weird fiction", that would probably be it. Aickman pretty much nailed it with that one.

Mine would be, A. Merritt, “The People of the Pit,” 1918.

 

[D_Davis]

I'm really glad to see Cisco in that collection. By god does that man deserve more readers.

 

[Randy M.]

[...]While not a big fan of generic fantasy I do like some "weird" stuff and am interested in far more that I just haven't gotten around to yet but I'm not well-versed in the (sub?)genre, so I figured I'd mostly listen. But I will say that, while inclusiveness may be a good thing, the only apparent defect this anthology has is that it may be a little too inclusive. It seems like to me that, while I guess the extremes of everything connect to each other, SF would generally be antithetical to "the weird". SF is (quintessentially speaking) about the rational and natural and, while "weird" can be just a mood, that ought to be more "strange" or "whacked out" or something, and actual weird would be about incursions of irrationality and/or the supernatural. Things like Butler's "Bloodchild" and Tiptree's "The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats", and even Martin's "The Sandkings" are SF with maybe just an infusion of horror and not very "weird" at all. I mean, there are obviously some rules of exclusion if only to explain Poe not being "weird".[...]

I'm waiting to read the essay until I have the book in my hands. Still, the general tenor of weirdfictionreview.com is that the anthology was meant to poke, prod and push the borders of what might be considered weird, and controversy was not only expected but encouraged.

The inclusion of the Butler surprised me, but I could probably cook up a rationalization if not a rationale, so I'm curious to see what the Vandermeers say about it. Ditto Michael Shea's "The Autopsy," which is a terrific blend of s.f. and horror; again, I could come up with my own reasons, but I do stumble at the question, if this, why not "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr., which seems to me a sort of template for this story. There are definite tonal differences between the two, and I wonder if that's what the Vandermeers focused on.

As for the Tiptree story. I haven't read that one, but I would nominate her "The Man Who Walked Home" as weird and, maybe, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," the former providing, for me, that sense of cosmic awe (coupled with sadness) that Lovecraft spoke of and occasionally achieved, while the latter puts you pretty nearly in the mind of a delusional young woman.


Randy M.

 

[J-Sun]

...the general tenor of weirdfictionreview.com is that the anthology was meant to poke, prod and push the borders of what might be considered weird, and controversy was not only expected but encouraged.

Yep, that sounds right.

The inclusion of the Butler surprised me, but I could probably cook up a rationalization if not a rationale...

Yeah - it's not a "what were you thinking?" crazy sort of choice. I think I definitely see what they see as weird in it but I think it pushes the boundaries just a touch too far.

Ditto Michael Shea's "The Autopsy," which is a terrific blend of s.f. and horror; again, I could come up with my own reasons, but I do stumble at the question, if this, why not "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr., which seems to me a sort of template for this story.

Exactly - or much van Vogt and so on. It seems like "if SF has a dose of horror in it, it can be 'weird'", which I don't buy at all.

As for the Tiptree story. I haven't read that one, but I would nominate her "The Man Who Walked Home" as weird and, maybe, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," the former providing, for me, that sense of cosmic awe (coupled with sadness) that Lovecraft spoke of and occasionally achieved, while the latter puts you pretty nearly in the mind of a delusional young woman.

I haven't read Tiptree in awhile though I'm a big fan - I just read most all of it a long time ago and haven't gotten back to it yet - and I've never read her with a consciousness of "is this weird?" so maybe it would seem different if I did now but I don't see her as weird at all, really. She's very "odd" at times - usually psychologically intense - very into alien perceptions - and there is sometimes a cosmic scope, as you say, but I just don't really see her as weird at all. I mean, this is given that I don't really know what "weird" is, strictly, but she just seems very science fictional to me and I never felt the need to label her anything else. (I know she's done a few fantasies that I think I've only read one of but I think those are more of the "magical realist" school or something.) Tiptree seems to be usually about human psychology in a this-universe setting. That can get plenty strange, but doesn't seem to be whatever "weird" should be.

 

[nomadman]

Some very good stories there. Nice to see some of the relatively lesser known foreign giants like Buzzati, Akutagawa, Cortazar, etc although I would have chosen different stories to represent them in a couple of cases. Also nice to see Borges there, whose vast contribution to weird fiction has long been ignored IMO. Some of the writers I've never heard of, which is always exciting.

A few names that I would have added: Edogawa Rampo, Kobo Abe, Horacio Quiroga, Roland Topor, and Paul Bowles. Rampo and Bowles wrote two of the most powerful pieces of weird fiction I've ever read, though in both cases no supernatural element was present. Quiroga also wrote some exceedingly powerful and twisted tales, and was a big influence on the development of fantasy fiction in South America.

On the subject of Tiptree, I've lately come to think of her as most definitely writing in the spirit of weird fiction, if not in the genre. Her short story, The Screwfly Solution, is quintessential weird horror with a science fictional veneer. Explanations are brought forward, but the threat that is faced is so overwhelming and so outside the natural experience of humankind as to evoke the starkest form of terror.

 

[Fried Egg]

Does "weird fiction" need to have an element of horror necessarilly? Are we talking about something that is essentially a sub-genre of horror or not?

 

[Randy M.]

Does "weird fiction" need to have an element of horror necessarilly? Are we talking about something that is essentially a sub-genre of horror or not?

I'd think of it as a sub-genre of fantasy that overlaps horror (which already overlaps fantasy), also overlaps s.f. and, maybe, even overlaps mystery/suspense (the only example I can think of is Ellery Queen's ...And on the Eighth Day).

I don't think horror is necessary for the story to be weird; weird is more often concerned with awe and wonder, from which fear sometimes stems.


Randy M.

 

[j d worthington]

Ramsey Campbell has certainly made the distinction that not all horror is weird, and not all weird is horror. Lord Dunsany, for example, wrote some classic weird work, but it is not necessarily horror; while (to use his example) Thomas Harris' novels are horror, but definitely not weird....

Whilst I agree with him to a point, I think this is a modern take on what the very term "weird" means; for historically it has always carried the association with the uncanny, which is, by necessity, an idea which conveys suspense, discomfort, horror, and/or terror....

 

[nomadman]

Does "weird fiction" need to have an element of horror necessarilly? Are we talking about something that is essentially a sub-genre of horror or not?

I don't think weird fiction should be written to a checklist. It doesn't need to have an element of horror, any more than it needs to have an element of the supernatural, the awesome or the cosmic. Rather, all these qualities should be allowed to emerge naturally in the writer's general desire to achieve something beyond the ordinary and mundane. For some writers horror becomes a large part of the story, for others (Borges, Dunsany, Schulz) it's peripheral or even absent.

Of course some aspect of the supernatural is often present in weird fiction, because it's the easiest way to evoke the strange, the outre or the incredible. But even that is not absolutely essential. Stories which play around with the reader's perception or which put them in the mind of a warped personality can achieve many of the same effects. Take Rampo's The Human Chair for example. No hint of the supernatural, not a sniff of the cosmic, just a very odd and obsessive individual who lands on a rather novel way to get close to the woman he loves... It works so well not just because it's a brilliant idea, but because it changes your perception of the everyday objects around you, and leaves you with a lingering uneasiness.

Mainstream horror fiction, on the other hand, seems to aim primarily to horrify and repulse the reader, which can be done in a number of "everyday" ways, horrific murders, mutilations, child torture and so on, none of which is outside our general experience of the world, unfortunately. When the supernatural is involved it's generally in the form of unstoppable ravenous monsters, curses that result in death or calamity, and so on. Again, the intent is the same, to shock, horrify and repulse.

 

[J-Sun]

I don't think weird fiction should be written to a checklist.

It should be written to a flowchart!

Seriously, what do we think of this?

 

[j d worthington]

It's an amusing little conceit. I recall something of the same sort being done for sf in one of the Year's Best anthologies back in the '70s, I believe. Can't recall for certain who the writer was, though....

Of course, the actual etymology of the word puts both ideas quite out of countenance, as it meant fate or destiny. (It derives its adjectival meaning from the Norns or Fates, as in the weird sisters in Macbeth; eventually it became associated with that which was uncanny, etc.).

 

[nomadman]

It should be written to a flowchart!

My point being, simply, that there is no hard formula to writing effective weird fiction. Pretty applicable to any type of story I guess, but moreso for weird writing, which strives for a specific tone regardless of the methods it uses to attain that.

 

[nomadman]

Back on the subject of the anthology, I've read (generous estimate) perhaps a quarter of the writers represented and a little less of the stories themselves. My initial reaction is that it's a pretty solid body of choices; none of the works I'm familiar with stick out as being non-weird or borderline-weird, and there are some obscure classics like Jean Ray's The Mainz Psalter that I'm delighted to see get another airing.

Like I said, I would have chosen a couple of different examples to showcase some of the lesser known writers' works. Buzzati's The Colomber is a fine tale, but far from his best. Like a lot of Buzzati's work, it deals with lost dreams and wasted lives, but it's a little too literal minded in its approach IMO. More effective is his short short tale The Walls of Anagoor, a sort of hypercondensed version of his existential masterpiece The Tartar Steppe. The Devil's Jacket is a well-crafted Bloch esque piece about a bewitched dinner jacket that grants its wearer infinite amounts of money at a terrible price.

Cortazar's Axlotl is a fine tale, and one which skillfully plays around with his familar themes of perceptions, identity, and so on, but my personal favorite in this vein is The Night Face Up, which is a masterpiece, as is The Yellow Flower, a poignant tale of flawed reincarnation. I haven't read the particular Grabinski tale selected, but I have read a couple of his collections. He's a very powerful and intense writer, somewhat like a turn of the century version of Thomas Ligotti. My own favorites of his are Strabissimus, a tale of doppelgangers and the conflicts of one's mind, and The Glance, a solipsistic nightmare. I'd be intersted to see how The White Weyrak stacks up.

Akutagawa's Hell Screen is a classic of Japanese short fiction, and held in high regard in that country. I find it a tad overrated myself. It's carefully constructed, as all of Akutagawa's fiction is, and can be read on a number of levels, but the general plotline, taken from an earlier folktale, is a little stale. And whilst there's nothing I can really fault with it, there's not much that sticks with me either. I don't begrudge its inclusion, though to my mind a better example of weird fiction is the lesser known Horse Legs, a wryly humorous and better-than-it-sounds tale of a businessman who finds he has the legs of a horse and the resultant problems he faces at work, at home and so on. (I note that the above is a new translation however, which might improve my estimation of the work, given Akutagawa's great reputation as a stylist.)

I mentioned Jean Ray above. He's a master of weird fiction and it's great to see two of his classic tales represented.

I've only read one story of Ewers's, Blood. I can't recall any particulars save the setting, the Carribean, and the fact that it left me with a powerful impression. Very uncompromising. Lovecraft considered The Spider to be a first rate story, and Ewers himself a first rate writer so I really must rectify my situation...

 

[j d worthington]

On Ewers... as I mentioned in the other thread, his work is rather difficult to come by. There is, if memory serves, a new translation of Alraune, but the excerpts I saw from it didn't particularly impress me; a bit too flatly literal, whereas Ewers himself ranged from a very naturalistic approach to a very poetic one, depending (and often within the span of a single piece). The advantage of this new translation is that it replaces something which was excised from that of Guy Endore, but I personally found this not enough to compensate for the loss otherwise. Others might greatly disagree.

If you can come across, either at a reasonable price, or at a library, his work, I would definitely recommend it. I would agree that "The Spider" is one of the great weird tales, as I've found it to grow with each reading. While The Sorcerer's Apprentice was not as much to my taste as I would have liked, I really think I need to revisit it in light of my later readings of Ewers, and see if that impression holds. Alraune (in the Endore translation), however, I found very impressive indeed. I also found Strange Stories and Nachtmahr (both story collections) to be rather good. I have never been able to get a copy of Vampire (the third in his novels concerning Frank Braun), so I've no idea how that one stands up.

(I also note that, if you read German, you can find his work for sale at quite reasonable prices. It's the English translations which are so darned costly....)

EDIT: I stand corrected. Both The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Alraune, in their English translations (at least, as far as I can tell from the descriptions) are available as POD for fairly reasonable prices....

 

[dask]

Sounds worth having but not for thirty bucks. That kind of money could buy a whole lot of good second hand anthologies of weird fiction (truly weird or not).

 

[creynier]

please define "weird-fiction"

 

[j d worthington]

please define "weird-fiction"

I'd say that's at least part of the point of the thread, really... and, as the above entries show, that's not an easy thing to do......

On the subject of this anthology in particular... I'll have to get my hands on it at some point; too many things there I don't have, and a fair number I've not read!

On Poe not being considered weird... again, it depends on who is defining it. The editor here may have excluded him, but to many he is one of the fathers of the genre... and I think a fair number of his works would certainly fit.

Weird and sf do go together, though... think of several of the stories in Groff Conklin's Science Fiction Terror Tales, or John W. Campbell's "Twilight" (as moody a piece as one can find); a number of Lovecraft's tales fall into this category: At the Mountains of Madness, "The Colour Out of Space", "The Shadow Out of Time", "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", "The Dreams in the Witch House", "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Whisperer in Darkness"... even "The Dunwich Horror", given the sort of beings the Old Ones are, according to the hints in the tale (super-advanced alien creatures on the level of what we would see as "gods"). There are any number of other examples.

It is a particularly difficult form to pin down because the term itself has often been used for wildly different sorts of things, from sword-and-sorcery fiction to the stranger sorts of sf to outright horror tales... and even humorous fantasy which had a hint of the uncanny, bizarre, or strange to them....

This is especially true now that we have such things as "the new weird" or the anthology New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, which is very Lovecraftian without being restricted to what that term generally implies. I don't think there will be any consensus of opinion on its use, even critically speaking, for a good while yet, if ever....