ODD?

by Ann VanderMeer, Jeff Vandermeer

ODD?, a new anthology series devoted to eclectic fiction, usually with a fantastical, horrific, magic realist, or surrealist approach. You might also call it strange or even weird. But as the subtitle of “Is it odd or are you too normal?” suggests, “odd” is a truly subjective evaluation. One person’s “what the heck?!” is another person’s “eh—saw that yesterday.”

Each volume will contain reprints (some of them not available otherwise except in expensive limited editions), previously unpublished stories, and new translations of classic and hard-to-find stories. We are committed to bringing you odd material from all over the world, from the past one hundred years, all of it bound together simply by dint of being idiosyncratic, unusual, out-of-the-ordinary.

Here's the full table of

Ann & Jeff VanderMeer - Introduction
Amos Tutuola - "The Dead Babies"
Gustave Le Rouge - "The War of the Vampires" (translation by Brian Evenson and David Beus)
Jeffrey Ford - "Weiroot"
Leopoldo Lugones - "The Bloat Toad" (translation by Larry Nolen)
Mark Samuels - "Apt 205"
Michael Cisco - "Modern Cities Exist Only to Be Destroyed"
Nalo Hopkinson - "Slow Cold Chick"
Sumanth Prabhaker - "A Hard Truth About Waste Management"
Hiromi Goto - "Stinky Girl"
Eric Basso - "Logues"
Edward Morris - "Lotophagi"
Karin Tidbeck - "The Aunts"
Jeffrey Thomas - "The Fork"
Rikki Ducornet - "The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi”
Leena Krohn – “The Night of the Normal Distribution Curve” (translation by Anna Volmari and J. Robert Tupasela)
Amanda le Bas de Plumetot - "Unmaking"
Karl Hans Strobl - "The Head" (translation by Gio Clairval)
Caitlin R. Kiernan - "A Child's Guide to the Hollow Hills"
Stacey Levine - "Sausage"
Danny Fontaine & Jeff VanderMeer – “Myster Odd Theme Song”

Genres: Anthologies, Short Stories, Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, New Weird, Science Fiction

Nook

First published October 9, 2011

About the author

Ann VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press.

Her work as Fiction Editor of Weird Tales won a Hugo Award. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several year's best anthologies. Ann was also the founder of The Silver Web magazine, a periodical devoted to experimental and avant-garde fantasy literature.

In 2009 "Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer and Stephen H. Segal" won a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. Though some of its individual contributors have been honored with Hugos, Nebula Awards, and even one Pulitzer Prize, the magazine itself had never before even been nominated for a Hugo. It was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2009.

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another outstanding anthology from Ann & Jeff VanderMeer with something ODD? for everyone: stories by authors you're probably familiar with (Jeffrey Ford, Nalo Hopkinson, Caitlin R. Kiernan) and other stories from writers you may not know, such as Gustave Le Rouge's "The War of the Vampires" (1909), Eric Basso's "Logues" (1977) and Karl Hans Strobel's "The Head" (1906).

I enjoyed them all, but the two home-run stories for me are "The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi" by Rikki Ducornet and "Sausage" by Stacey Levine. Highly recommended.

[Snowynight · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent selection of stories. Some are better than others.

[Gevera Piedmont · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing.

[Cale · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subtitle of this collection is "Is it odd or are you too normal?" I have to answer that I'm too normal. This is a collection of 20 short stories coming from a wide range of sources (many are translations, some are from the early 20th century) that have nothing in common except a general inaccessibility. I like weird fiction, but I need at least a small piece of normality to get my hook in, and most of these stories denied me that. It's a strange experience reading through a 5-10 page story and still have no concept of why it exists when you finish. And that happened to me several times in this collection.
Some could be considered as tone poems, and work as such (the Fork and The Aunts stand out in that manner), and some seem very steeped in their own cultures, so they work as an interesting look at fantasy in other parts of the world, although some of the translations are rough enough that it is not an easy observation to make.
And then there is Logues, which I could not connect with at all. And The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi, which is the same. And then there are the gut punches of Unmaking and The Head, which are some of the most unsettling body horror I've ever read.
There's nothing here that particularly stands out as wonderful. There's nothing that's absolutely horrible either; just a lot of works that were too obtuse to my way of reading that I got nothing from them. But then again, maybe that just goes to show that I am too normal. If you consider yourself truly odd, try yourself against this and see if your mileage varies.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mix of horror, fantasy, new weird, classic weird tales and other 'weird' fiction collected by the Vandermeers.

While I liked some of the stories, the bundle felt a bit uneven. The start was a bit rough. Amos Tutuola's writing style read like a storyteller was telling it to me, too bad it also sounded made up on the spot without any direction.
The excerpt from Gustave Le Rouge's The War of the Vampires was exactly that: an excerpt.
After that it started to get better. Some standouts for me: Jeffrey Ford's Weiroot and Jeffrey Thomas' The Fork

[Katia M. Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly odd. I had to push myself to read some of these as they seem to be words for words sake. A little like a painting critics go wild over but to you looks like someone dumped a bucket of paint on a canvas and let their dog roll in it. I did enjoy Slow Cold Chick, The Aunts, The Fork, and Unmaking. my stars are for these. Everything else made me feel.. meh.