Episode 314: Weird Fiction

 

Welcome back! We are so pleased you are joining us for our podcast book group: Reading with Libraries! This week we will be talking about a very interesting genre: Weird Fiction. Not sure what weird fiction means, exactly? Don’t worry, we’ll break it down for you!

In our book group, we have fun talking about books and provide useful information for library people doing Reader’s Advisory work. There are so many books out there that it’s tough to be an expert on all of them. So we pick a new genre each week to chat about and hopefully provide you with some insight into what may be an unfamiliar genre!

Our book group is very inclusive; there are no “right” or “wrong” books here! We just like to read and chat about books, and want you to share what you are reading too! All of us will take away at least a title or two that we want to read at the end of our time together.

Who is joining us this week? We are very pleased to to welcome returning Guest Host Kelly Kraemer!

Beverages:

Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages, and we each came prepared with our own drink to enjoy while we talk about our books. You are an important part of this book group, so if you don’t have a beverage go ahead and get one now.

Each of our beverages will have a recipe or a link on our episode page, so you can try them yourself! Since we are discussing Weird Fiction this week, our recipes are a bit on the strange side:

From the article 10 Weird Cocktails That Sound Gross, But Taste Amazing: 

Sweet and Sour Chicken Toddy

  • .75       OZ       LIME JUICE
    .75       OZ       PINEAPPLE SYRUP
    3          OZ       CHICKEN BROTH
    1.5       OZ       GIN
    .125     TSP     SRIRACHA
    WHOLE STAR ANISE, FOR GARNISH
  • Add all ingredients except gin to a saucepan over medium heat, and heat, stirring, until warm. (Or, add all ingredients except gin and garnish to a mug, stir, and heat until warm in a microwave.)
    Add gin to a mug and top with heated broth mixture from the saucepan. (Or stir gin into heated mug from the microwave.)
    Garnish with a whole star anise.

 

Black Ink Martini

  • 2.25 OZ           GRAPE BRANDY
    .75       OZ       SWEET VERMOUTH
    .75       OZ       LIME JUICE
    .5         OZ       AGAVE
    .25       OZ       SQUID INK
    SPRIG OF      OREGANO
  • Excluding the garnish, add all ingredients to a shaker filled ice and shake.
    Strain into a chilled coupe glass.
    Garnish with a sprig of fresh oregano.

Nonalcoholic Dragon’s Blood Punch

  • 1 (46-ounce) can red punch (recommended: Hawaiian Punch)
    1 (46-ounce) can apple juice
    1 (48-ounce) bottle cranberry juice
    1 (2-liter) bottle ginger ale
    Ice cubes
    Berry vodka, optional
    Orange liqueur, optional

Combine all ingredients in a large punch bowl or pot. Add ice and stir.
For grown-up version, add 4 cups berry vodka and 1/2 cup orange liqueur.
Ladle into serving glasses.

Genre Discussion:

You may be wondering, “What exactly is weird fiction?” So let’s get some definitions!

“According to H.P. Lovecraft, whose tales of implacable cosmic horror defined the genre, weird fiction possesses “a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread,” while contemporary writers use the term to describe fiction that blends horror or science fiction tropes with an otherwise ordinary world.”

The weird is when something is out of place, dreams trespass into the waking world, or powers from another dimension seem to be bleeding into our own. A once-clandestine genre that has since found mainstream popularity through the works of Jeff VanderMeer, China Miéville, and Neil Gaiman, weird fiction (primarily a short story form) penetrates the subconscious, its dreamlike atmosphere irresistible in the hands of masters like Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, and Robert Aickman.

From the Book Riot article: Why You Should Read Weird Fiction:

“Weird fiction can be unpredictable. First of all, weird fiction isn’t really a strict genre. It’s essentially a blend of different genres – a melting pot of science fiction, horror, urban fantasy, Gothic literature, magical realism, and more. Weird fiction is an open system that borrows from these other genres to produce a sense of the Weird in works of literature. The Weird creates a sense of unease within its reading audience, keeping you unsettled with the thought that all is not as it seems – as if there is something dark lurking just under the narrative’s surface. Another benefit to weird fiction’s genre-fluidity is it doesn’t get bogged down in tired stereotypes and stale tropes, so the reader often doesn’t know what causes this sense of dread. You often have no idea where the plot is going!”

Suggested Reading Resources:

Our Book Discussion

Now we are a little more familiar with this week’s genre, and we have enjoyed some of our special beverages, let’s get to the book discussion!

As always, all the images and info below is from Amazon.com. If you click through one of them and buy a nice book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small percentage of their profits. Thanks for helping to support us!

 The Supernatural Enhancements, by Edgar Cantero “When twenty-something A., the European relative of the Wells family, inherits a beautiful, yet eerie, estate set deep in the woods of Point Bless, Virginia, it comes as a surprise to everyone—including A. himself. After all, he never knew he had a “second cousin, twice removed” in America, much less that his eccentric relative had recently committed suicide by jumping out of the third floor bedroom window—at the same age and in the same way as his father had before him . . .

Together with A.’s companion, Niamh, a mute teenage punk girl from Ireland, they arrive in Virginia and quickly come to feel as if they have inherited much more than just a rambling home and an opulent lifestyle. Axton House is haunted… they know it…but the presence of a ghost is just the first of a series of disturbing secrets they slowly uncover. What led to the suicides? What became of the Axton House butler who fled shortly after his master died? What lurks in the garden maze – and what does the basement vault keep? Even more troubling, what of the rumors in town about a mysterious yearly gathering at Axton House on the night of the winter solstice?

Told vividly through a series of journal entries, cryptic ciphers, recovered security footage, and letters to a distant Aunt Liza, Edgar Cantero has written an absorbing, kinetic and highly original supernatural adventure with classic horror elements that introduces readers to a deviously sly and powerful new voice.”

  John Dies at the End, by David Wong “STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don’t put it down. It’s too late. They’re watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you’ll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it’s too late. You touched the book. You’re in the game. You’re under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.

The important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault.“

 The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, by by Jeff VanderMeer (Editor), Ann VanderMeer (Editor)  “From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.

Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won’t find any elves or wizards here…but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled.
The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.”

 

 Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories, by Algernon Blackwood “By turns bizarre, unsettling, spooky, and sublime, Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories showcases nine incomparable stories from master conjuror Algernon Blackwood. Evoking the uncanny spiritual forces of Nature, Blackwood’s writings all tread the nebulous borderland between fantasy, awe, wonder, and horror. Here Blackwood displays his best and most disturbing work-including “The Willows,” which Lovecraft singled out as “the single finest weird tale in literature”; “The Wendigo”; “The Insanity of Jones”; and “Sand.””

 The White People and Other Weird Stories, by Arthur Machen  “Machen’s weird tales of the creepy and fantastic finally come to Penguin Classics. With an introduction from S.T. Joshi, editor of American Supernatural Tales, The White People and Other Weird Stories is the perfect introduction to the father of weird fiction. The title story “The White People” is an exercise in the bizarre leaving the reader disoriented and on edge. From the first page, Machen turns even fundamental truths upside-down, as his character Ambrose explains, “there have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin, who all their lives have never done an ‘ill deed'” setting the stage for a tale entirely without logic.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.”

  The King in Yellow (Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural), by Robert W. Chambers “With its strange, imaginative blend of horror, science fiction, romance and lyrical prose, Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow is a classic masterpiece of weird fiction. This series of vaguely connected stories is linked by the presence of a monstrous and suppressed book which brings fright, madness and spectral tragedy to all those who read it. An air of futility and doom pervade these pages like a sweet insidious poison. Dare you read it?

This collection has been called the most important book in American supernatural fiction between Poe and the moderns. H. P. Lovecraft, creator of the famed Cthulu mythos, whose own fiction was greatly influenced by this book stated that The King in Yellow achieves notable heights of cosmic fear.”

 The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, by H. P. Lovecraft  “Frequently imitated and widely influential, Howard Philips Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the 1920s, discarding ghosts and witches and instead envisioning mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe. S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft’s preeminent interpreter, presents a selection of the master’s fiction, from the early tales of nightmares and madness such as “The Outsider” to the overpowering cosmic terror of “The Call of Cthulhu.” More than just a collection of terrifying tales, this volume reveals the development of Lovecraft’s mesmerizing narrative style and establishes him as a canonical- and visionary-American writer.”

 Annihilation: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy), by Jeff VanderMeer “Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers―they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding―but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.”

  Borne, by Jeff VanderMeer “In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company―a biotech firm now derelict―and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.

One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump―plant or animal?―but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts―and definitely against Wick’s wishes―Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.

“He was born, but I had borne him.”

But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.”

 Magic for Beginners: Stories, by Kelly Link  “Perfect for readers of George Saunders, Karen Russell, Neil Gaiman, and Aimee Bender, Magic for Beginners is an exquisite, dreamlike dispatch from a virtuoso storyteller who can do seemingly anything. Kelly Link reconstructs modern life through an intoxicating prism, conjuring up unforgettable worlds with humor and humanity. These stories are at once ingenious and deeply moving. They leave the reader astonished and exhilarated.”

 

 Perdido Street Station (Bas-Lag), by China Miéville “Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none—not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.

Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda’s request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger.

While Isaac’s experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger—and more consuming—by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon—and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes .”

 Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor “Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.

Nineteen-year-old Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a paper marked “KING CITY” by a mysterious man in a tan jacket holding a deer skin suitcase. Everything about him and his paper unsettles her, especially the fact that she can’t seem to get the paper to leave her hand, and that no one who meets this man can remember anything about him. Jackie is determined to uncover the mystery of King City and the man in the tan jacket before she herself unravels.

Night Vale PTA treasurer Diane Crayton’s son, Josh, is moody and also a shape shifter. And lately Diane’s started to see her son’s father everywhere she goes, looking the same as the day he left years earlier, when they were both teenagers. Josh, looking different every time Diane sees him, shows a stronger and stronger interest in his estranged father, leading to a disaster Diane can see coming, even as she is helpless to prevent it.

Diane’s search to reconnect with her son and Jackie’s search for her former routine life collide as they find themselves coming back to two words: “KING CITY”. It is King City that holds the key to both of their mysteries, and their futures…if they can ever find it.”

 

  House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth — musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies — the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story — of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.”

 The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies, by  John Langan  ” John Langan has, in the last few years, established himself as one of the leading voices in contemporary horror literature. Gifted with a supple and mellifluous prose style, an imagination that can conjure up clutching terrors with seeming effortlessness, and a thorough knowledge of the rich heritage of weird fiction, Langan has already garnered his share of accolades. This new collection of nine substantial stories includes such masterworks as “Technicolor,” an ingenious riff on Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”; “How the Day Runs Down,” a gripping tale of the undead; and “The Shallows,” a powerful tale of the Cthulhu Mythos. The capstone to the collection is a previously unpublished novella of supernatural terror, “Mother of Stone.” With an introduction by Jeffrey Ford and an afterword by Laird Barron.”

 The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All: Stories, by Laird Barron “Over the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as one of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic. Melding supernatural horror with hard-boiled noir, espionage, and a scientific backbone, Barron’s stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous year’s best anthologies. His work has been nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards.

Barron returns with his third collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. Collecting interlinking tales of sublime cosmic horror, including “Blackwood’s Baby,” “The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven,” and the World Fantasy Award–nominated “Hand of Glory,” The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All delivers enough spine-chilling horror to satisfy even the most jaded reader.”

 

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion about Weird Fiction on our Reading with Libraries podcast book group! A special thank you to our Guest Host Kelly Kraemer!

Join us next Thursday with another genre, more guest hosts for our book group, and more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries – which is always interesting! – subscribe to our podcast Linking Our Libraries.

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!