Flickers in a darkened movie house. Half-remembered midnight television. Light and shadow on a screen, whether big or small. A “lost” space odyssey, pretend interplanetary nightmares, a mysterious late-nite horror show hostess who may never have existed. Boojums and Alison Maehl (or Alice Mal). Insanity and rumor. Murder and fandom and Hollywood rabbit holes.
In this taut, enigmatic novella, Caitlín R. Kiernan invites the reader to chase the mystery of things that may never have existed or may only have been misplaced—perhaps on purpose and perhaps for the best. Zoetrope Bizarre unfolds like frames of film discarded on a cutting room floor, Kiernan's most ambitious tale of weird cinema since the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Prayer of Ninety Cats.”
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American published paleontologist and author of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including ten novels, series of comic books, and more than two hundred and fifty published short stories, novellas, and vignettes.
2050: The world is a wasteland. All desert. No humans in sight, but something rustles in the shadows behind certain boulders.
2025: The new Caitlin R Kiernan book is here! And it comes with a bonus novella titled Zoetrope Bizarre. Sounds interesting, I think I'll read that one first.
2026: A copy of Zoetrope Bizarre is mysteriously delivered to the Oval office.