The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

[NightBird]

Has anyone seen this/read it yet? Awesome collection of 109 stories and novellas and one excerpt, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. It's a little more than I would normally spend at $14.99, and it's published by Macmillan, so no deals to be found, and the price probably won't go down for a long time, if ever. (US). Published in UK by Corvus, so there may be some deals to be had there. I decided it was worth it because of the contents and being 1152 pages. Each story is prefaced by some information about the author and the story. Many are public domain but many are also hard-to-find translations to English.

We have collected over one hundred years of weird fiction in a single volume of over 750,000 words, starting from around 1908 and ending in 2010. More than eighteen nationalities are represented and seven new translations were commissioned for the book, most notably definitive translations, by Gio Clairval, of Julio Cortazar’s “Axolotl” and Michel Bernanos’ short novel “The Other Side of the Mountain” (the first translations of these classics in over fifty years). The publishers believe this is the largest volume of weird fiction ever housed between the covers of one book.

Strands of The Weird represented include classic US/UK weird tales, the Belgian School of the Weird, Japanese weird, Latin American weird, Nigerian weird, weird SF, Feminist weird, weird ritual, general international weird, and offshoots of the weird originating with Surrealism, Symbolism, and the Decadent movement.

Although anchored in many familiar and iconic names — including Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavia Butler, Clive Barker and George R.R. Martin — The Weird also gave us an opportunity to showcase several great writers not as well known to readers of the weird. French master of weird fiction Claude Seignolle, for example, is represented herein with “Ghoulbird.” Readers will also be delighted to discover the work of the great Catalan writer Merce Rodoreda (with the phantasmagorical “Salamander”), grotesqueries by English surrealist Leonora Carrington, an excerpt from Kafka precursor Alfred Kubin’s cult classic The Other Side, and Hagiwara Sakutoro’s quintessential rumination on the boundary between reality and the weird, “The Town of Cats.”

Other highlights include the short novels / long novellas “The Beak Doctor” by Eric Basso, “Tainaron” by Leena Krohn, and “The Brotherhood of Mutilation” by Brian Evenson.

Table of Contents:

Spoiler:

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)

Amazon

There is also sort of a companion website where they are featuring some of the stories and essays about the authors:

http://weirdfictionreview.com/category/blog/

Nice articles here about the excerpt, The Other Side, and its author, Alfred Kubin:

http://www.dxsuperpremium.com/2007/1...red-kubin.html

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/1...-alfred-kubin/

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/1...-alfred-kubin/

I've only been able to find the whole ebook of this in English at Amazon for $9.99:

http://www.amazon.com/Other-Dedalus-...her+side+kubin

[charlesatan]

Haven't gotten around to reading it in its entirety, but I own both the UK print and eBook version. (The Corvus eBook edition is a bit cheaper by one or two dollars if I'm not mistaken.)

It's a very thick book. To give you an idea, it's a thousand pages long BUT each page runs two columns. Easily the heaviest book I own despite not being a hardcover (ummm, it's heavier than A Dance with Dragons or Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell).

There's one story that's different between the US and UK versions but otherwise should be identical.

It just doesn't have hard-to-find translations, some of them are new as well.

[NightBird]

Oh wow - Now I'm really glad I have the Kindle version. Wouldn't want to haul that hardback around. Lol

[BenG]

I have the Vandemeers' earlier anthology The New Weird, which is a term they apply to writers like China Mieville, K.J. Bishop, and Steph Swainston.

In the introduction they define "New Weird".

New Weird is a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping off point for creation of settings that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy. New Weird has a visceral, in-the-moment quality that often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects ― in combination with the stimulus of influence from New Wave writers or their proxies (including also such forebears as Mervyn Peake and the French/English Decadents)....

[NightBird]

Thanks, Ben. I will check that one out - it looks interesting.

[charlesatan]

Read The New Weird but it's a different beast from The Weird (which spans a long history). New Weird was basically stuff after the New Wave (which is more recognizable in the UK SFF scene than the US, as the latter headed more towards high fantasy and sword & sorcery, although some of the New Wave stuff was published in a section of the New Weird).

[NightBird]

Apparently it's not out in ebook yet anyway.

I think this one is more to my taste.