Nuovi incubi: I migliori racconti weird

by Laird Barron (Guest Editor), Michael Kelly (Series Editor), Elena Furlan (Translator)

Nuovi incubi
I migliori racconti weird
Dove si cela il fantastico, l'insolito, il weird? Forse nell'ambito domestico di geometrie incomprensibili o nelle ombre inquietanti di una piccola cittadina americana? Nelle profondità inimmaginabili di antiche stelle che si specchiano in un vulcano? O ancora nelle improbabili (ri)nascite tra piume di uccello e pellicce di volpe? Negli occhi di chi legge o nella penna di chi scrive? Un viaggio nei meandri del sogno, dell'ignoto, ventidue racconti popolati da fantasmi, mostri, madri e figli, soldati e topi geneticamente modificati e infarciti di richiami letterari, da Hoffmann a Emily Dickinson, passando per H.P. Lovecraft e Thomas Ligotti. "Nuovi incubi" è il volume inaugurale dell'antologia Year's Best Weird Fiction che annualmente presenta il meglio dei racconti weird in lingua inglese. Racconti di: Michael Blumlein, Kristi DeMeester, Jeffrey Ford, John R. Fultz, Richard Gavin, Maria Dahvana Headley, John Langan, Livia Llewellyn, Moreno Pavanello, W.H. Pugmire, Joseph S. Pulver Sr., Chen Qiufan, Anne-Sylvie Salzman, Sofia Samatar, Simon Strantzas, Anna Taborska, Jeffrey Thomas, Karin Tidbeck, Paul Tremblay, Jeff VanderMeer, Damien Angelica Walters, A.C. Wise.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Weird Fiction, Anthologies, Fantasy, Fiction, Speculative Fiction

500 pages, Paperback

First published August 26, 2014

About the author

Laird Barron, an expat Alaskan, is the author of several books, including The Imago Sequence and Other Stories; Swift to Chase; and Blood Standard. Currently, Barron lives in the Rondout Valley of New York State and is at work on tales about the evil that men do.

Photo credit belongs to Ardi Alspach

Agent: Janet Reid of New Leaf Literary & Media

Reviews

[Iophil · Rating 2 out of 5]

[ITA/ENG]
Una raccolta "weird" che non mi è sembrata molto ispirata o originale. È sicuramente anche questione di gusti, ma la maggior parte dei racconti è scivolata via senza accendere particolari emozioni.

Degni di nota, a mio parere:
- "Il diciannovesimo gradino" di Simon Strantzas
- "Nel limbo" di Jeffrey Thomas
- "La chiave del tuo cuore è fatta d'ottone" di John R. Fultz
- "Nessun altro al mondo all'infuori di te" di Jeff VanderMeer

Curiosamente, tra questi sono presenti due dei pochi autori che conoscevo già prima della lettura. Simon Strantzas (scrittore da tenere d'occhio, vi consiglio caldamente il suo Soli carbonizzati, sempre pubblicato da Hypnos) e Jeff VanderMeer (di cui ho letto -e non apprezzato- il primo volume della Trilogia dell'Area X).

La veste editoriale è di tutto rispetto e si nota la cura che Hypnos ha messo (e mette sempre) nella creazione del volume. Un plauso a questa coraggiosa casa editrice, che continua a proporre al mercato italiano autori vecchi e nuovi che troppo spesso vengono ignorati.
Solo un piccolo appunto. Tradurre "Year's Best Weird Fiction" con "Nuovi incubi" mi è parso un pochino fuorviante: buona parte dei racconti proposti non sono horror (e d'altronde lo stesso Michael Kelly nella prefazione specifica che "weird" non equivale necessariamente a "horror"), ma quell' "incubi" nel titolo italiano mi ha fatto pensare che il tema orrorifico sarebbe stato ben più marcato nei testi.

Avendoli comprati e letti più o meno in contemporanea, mi è venuto naturale il confronto tra questo libro e Strane visioni: Il meglio dei racconti del premio Hypnos, altra antologia (tutta italiana!) di Hypnos, che invece mi è piaciuta moltissimo e che vi segnalo!

***

A "weird" collection not very inspired or original, as far as I'm concerned. Ok, it's a matter of taste, but most of the stories have slipped away without turning on particular emotions in me.

Noteworthy, in my opinion:
- "The Nineteenth Step" by Simon Strantzas
- "In limbo" by Jeffrey Thomas
- "The key to your heart is made of brass" by John R. Fultz
- "No breather in the world but thee" by Jeff VanderMeer

Curiously, among these there are two of the few authors I knew before reading. Simon Strantzas (a writer to keep an eye on, I strongly recommend his book Burnt Black Suns and Jeff VanderMeer (I read-and I didn't like- the first volume of his Area X trilogy).

You can notice the care that Hypnos has put (and always puts) in creating the volume. My approval goes to this brave publishing house, who continues to propose to the Italian market new and old authors that too often are ignored.
Just a small note. Translating "Year's Best Weird Fiction" with "New Nightmares" is a bit misleading: most of the tales are not horror (and in the preface Michael Kelly specifically says that "weird" does not necessarily mean "horror") but that "nightmares" in the Italian title made me think that the horror theme would be much more marked in the collection.

Reading them more or less at the same time, I made a comparison between this book and Strane visioni: Il meglio dei racconti del premio Hypnos, another Hypnos anthology with just Italian authors. I loved it and I recommend it!

[Sarinys · Rating 5 out of 5]

L’antologia annuale del racconto di genere è una tradizione utilissima all’appassionato, che la può usare per conoscere nuovi autori e tendenze. Il weird è un genere tra la fantascienza, l’horror e qualcos’altro, difficile da definire e, forse per questo, meno conosciuto rispetto alle declinazioni più note del fantastico. L’idea di Michael Kelly di lanciare una selezione annuale esclusivamente dedicata al weird è quindi una bella novità.

IL WEIRD

Kelly sceglie un curatore diverso per ogni edizione della sua raccolta. La prima, sui racconti del 2013 e pubblicata in Italia da Hypnos nel 2015, è curata da Laird Barron, un bravo autore di weird-horror contemporaneo. Il ricambio del curatore dà modo alla raccolta di presentare punti di vista diversi su un genere sfuggente come il weird. Le prefazioni di Kelly e Barron si avventurano proprio nel territorio impervio della definizione di weird. Dice Kelly: «La letteratura weird non è specificatamente horror o fantasy. E non è una novità. È sempre stata presente. Questo perché in realtà non si tratta di un genere, in senso stretto. Questo rende la sua definizione alquanto difficile, e forse imprudente. La letteratura weird è un tipo di letteratura che è presente all’interno di altri generi. I racconti weird furono scritti ben prima che gli editori iniziassero a codificare ed etichettare i generi letterari. Potete trovare infatti esempi di letteratura weird nei giornali letterari, nelle pubblicazioni horror, nei periodici di fantasy e fantascienza, e in vari altri giornali e antologie di genere e non, preannunciano l’avvento della narrativa speculativa del fantastico».

Per spiegare il significato di weird, Barron fa l’esempio del racconto I salici di Algernon Blackwood: «In poche pagine, Blackwood trasforma la campagna bucolica e banale in un ambiente ostile e alieno. [...] Lentamente, inesorabilmente, e inevitabilmente, la facciata della normalità viene strappata per rivelare l’argento del nudo universo. Il protagonista e il suo compagno si interrogano sulla provenienza della maligna presenza, o presenze, nel fiume e nei salici. Ma essi non possono comprenderne la natura, poiché è ben oltre le loro possibilità. Tutto ciò che sanno è che per loro la realtà è completamente cambiata. Hanno intravisto qualcosa che è molto più grande di loro, e che è spaventoso. Spaventoso perché incomprensibile e anche perché l’uomo è un animale che è da poco uscito dalle caverne. Il cervello umano, con tutta la sua capacità di adattamento, non reagisce bene quando i suoi codificati punti di riferimento vengono messi in discussione».

I RACCONTI

La collezione di racconti scelta da Barron rispecchia quest’immagine di weird, permeata da una vena apocalittica che ritroviamo in quasi ogni storia. Le declinazioni di questo weird sono tante e variegate. Ci sono quelle nei canoni della ghost story, spesso però poco convenzionali: in Dovrei sussurrarti del chiaro di luna, del dolore, di pezzi di noi? di Damien Angelica Walters il fantasma che perseguita il protagonista forse è temuto, forse è desiderato; in La ragazza con il cappotto azzurro di Anna Taborska il contesto da cui nasce l’orrore è la persecuzione degli ebrei in Polonia durante la l’Olocausto; in Una caverna di mattoni rossi di Richard Gavin permane l’ambiguità sulle vere cause dell’orrore, aggiungendo il dubbio al terrore del protagonista.

In altri racconti, si esce dalla dimensione spettrale del weird, per entrare in una strana terra di nessuno, a volte popolata da mostri, come in Nei meandri del sogno di W.H. Pugmire, che parla di un mostruoso verso cui tendere, a costo dell’annichilimento, o come in Bor Urus di John Langan, in cui l’incontro col mostruoso è una sfida attesa dal protagonista per tutta la vita.

Poi ci sono dimensioni in cui il mostruoso e l’ordinario si fondono portandoci in mondi grotteschi, come nei bellissimi Fornace di Livia Llewellyn e in Il krakatoano di Maria Dahvana Headley, in cui il weird è lo schiudersi dell’universo che si rivela incomprensibile, maestoso, terribile. Ci sono incubi conturbanti, dove il weird si fa strada nei corpi delle donne collocandole in un punto cieco tra vita e morte, come in Fox into Lady di Anne-Sylvie Salzman e Come piuma, come osso di Kristi DeMeester.

Ci sono i racconti in cui il weird filtra in una realtà che si rivela soggetta a nuove leggi aliene all’umano. Tra questi, abbiamo il bel racconto, più canonicamente di fantascienza, di Chen Qiufan, L’Anno del Ratto, e due esempi strepitosi di come la pulsione weird possa manifestarsi nel genere fantascientifico: Success di Michael Blumlein, decisamente New Weird, e il più surreale Colpo di luna di Karin Tidbeck. Merita una menzione anche La chiave del tuo cuore è fatta d’ottone di John R. Fultz, stravaganza postumana e steampunk.

È una raccolta dove il livello rimane sempre alto, soprattutto quello della scrittura. Troviamo stili diversi, prose più liriche e altre più asciutte, ma le autrici e gli autori scelti da Barron hanno sempre una caratteristica in comune: scrivono tutti benissimo.

Tradotto bene da Elena Furlan.

La lista completa dei racconti:

Simon Strantzas - Il diciannovesimo gradino
Paul Tremblay - Swim vuole sapere se va così male come pensa SWIM
A.C. Wise - Il Dottor Blood e l’Ultra Favoloso Squadrone Glitterato
Chen Qiufan - L’Anno del Ratto
Sofia Samatar - Il fantasma di Olimpia
Livia Llewellyn - Fornace
Damien Angelica Walters - Dovrei sussurrarti del chiaro di luna, del dolore, di pezzi di noi?
John Langan - Bor Urus
W.H. Pugmire - Nei meandri del sogno
Maria Dahvana Headley - Il krakatoano
Anna Taborska - La ragazza con il cappotto azzurro
Joseph S. Pulver Sr.- (lui) Sogna di orrori lovecraftiani
Jeffrey Thomas - Nel Limbo
Richard Gavin - Una caverna di mattoni rossi
Anne-Sylvie Salzman - Fox into Lady
Kristi DeMeester - Come piuma, come osso
Jeffrey Ford - Un piccolo demone
Michael Blumlein - Success
Karin Tidbeck - Colpo di luna
John R. Fultz - La chiave del tuo cuore è fatta d’ottone
Jeff VanderMeer - Nessun altro al mondo all’infuori di te

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abridged from https://doomsdayer.wordpress.com/2015...


So we all love weird fiction now, right? The Weird got a lot of attention, True Detective(and, by extension, Chambers and Ligotti) was everywhere, the Southern Reach trilogy (which are weird, genre-specific books, marketing be damned) is huge, and now we have the first-ever annual year’s best series devoted to the field. I think that an argument could probably be made tracing this explosion back to the success of Lost… but actually making that argument would require a re-engagement with Lost, which I’m not willing to do.

Of course, a helpful part of this renaissance is the fact that basically anything can be classified as weird if you squint and look at it from the right angle. In the foreword here, for example, Series Editor Michael Kelly tells us that the weird “includes ghost stories, the strange and macabre, the supernatural, fantasy, myth, philosophical ontology, ambiguity, and featuring a helping of the outré. Weird fiction, at its best, is an intersecting of themes and ideas that explore and subvert the laws of Nature.” While that first sentence supports the idea that pretty much anything goes (and it doesn’t even mention science fiction, which is nonetheless present in this anthology), that second sentence seems more useful in delineating what’s going on here. Along those same lines, Laird Barron, the Guest Editor for this volume (there will be a new one every year, with Kathe Koja taking up the reigns for the imminent Volume 2), writes in his introduction that a weird tale “contravenes reality in some essential manner; that it possesses at least a hint of the alien; and that it emanates disquiet or disorientation.” I wouldn’t disagree with any of that, but I think it has to be possible to pin down the genre a bit more.

...

So then what is weird fiction? I’m not entirely sure anymore that that is a question that is worth answering, but it’s hardly fair to critique other people’s definitions without offering one of my own, so:

Stories wherein an irruption (the two definitions of which I’m kind of mushing together here: “to rush in forcibly or violently” and “to undergo a sudden upsurge in numbers especially when natural ecological balances and checks are disturbed“) of otherworldly/supernatural/contranatural/uncanny Weirdness provides a liminal threshold between the rational world and wherever else the protagonist finds herself.

Unpacking that a bit gives us some tendencies, at least some of which must be present but not necessarily all (weird fiction being a fuzzy set, of course):

1. Tonally dark, often increasingly-so as the work progresses
2. Brings about an epistemological shift in the protagonist and/or narrator (and reader?) that decenters humanity, and perhaps especially reveals the modern/rational worldview to be fundamentally flawed.
- I wrote elsewhere that this liminality makes sense “both in its larger sense of a threshold, and its more esoteric/academic sense: the middle stage of a ritual, after the previous relationship with the world has been dissolved but before the new one has been put into place.”
3. An intrusion of supernatural/uncanny/irrational/Wrongness
- This is the opposite of Clute’s thinning - the larger, richer reality is intruding rather than receding, and its absence would not be mourned.
4. At the end of the story, the status quo remains upended
5. Lacks a good/evil binary
6. Curiosity lands the protagonist in hot water (so the binary tends toward knowledge/ignorance)
7. Narrated from within our world
8. Not sure about this one, but: rarely weird (unusual/innovative/outlandish) in a narrative or structural sense?


Where that leaves me, I’m afraid, is more and more convinced that weird fiction is simply fantastic/supernatural horror that is perhaps just a bit more intellectually-inclined. Horror is, with the possible exception of romance, probably the most reviled of the lowbrow genre world, and weird fiction is now, I think, possibly a just way to recapture some cultural capital for its exponents - which means we’ve come a long way from its roots in the pulps. This would account for the subsuming of the uncanny and for the claim that it is genre-fiction-without-genre.

I know most weird fiction partisans will disagree with me here, but it’s where I’ve ended up. It’s also entirely likely that all I’ve accomplished here is defining the brand of weird fiction that I personally find most enjoyable. So be it.

[Note: the below was written months before the “introduction” above, and while I wish the two sections were more integrated more effectively... they aren’t.]

As for the stories here: unusually for a generic anthology, almost all are well-written and effectively structured and paced, and we even have a (relatively) even gender spread, although it could have used more selections from non-white and non-Anglo authors.

The standouts, for me, were the four that seemed most Ligottian in flavor - “Furnace,” “Eyes Exchange Bank” (both of which first appeared in a Ligotti tribute collection), “Swim Wants to Know If It's as Bad as Swim Thinks,” and “In Limbo” - in which down-on-their-luck protagonists in down-on-their-luck communities suffer under an encroaching and unknowable weirdness. I need to read more from those four authors, but I also need to read more Ligotti.

Also of note were the Samatar and Ford stories, both authors whose work I consistently enjoy but whose stories here were in conversation with previous works I don’t know (Hoffmann’s “The Sandman" and the poetry of Emily Dickinson, respectively). The Pugmire and Pulver stories also explicitly engage with previous Weird works, although less successfully, and all of the stories here reflect and converse with their generic predecessors to some degree or another. There was a surprising lack of cosmic horror, but I suppose that’s an accurate reflection of the state of the field today - these stories tend more toward the insular (families are a recurring theme), and the evil/indifference of the universe isn't even personified in the form of Old Ones or somesuch.

The Nineteenth Step by Simon Strantzas
A couple find that sometimes there’s an extra stair in a house they’re renovating. Spatial impossibilities and epistemological collapse echoing House of Leaves and Madeline Yale Wynn’s “The Little Room” (1895). I’m not sure that the ending is entirely earned - like Jack Ketchum’s “The Box” (1994), it takes the irruption (inexplicable, as in most weird stories) and makes it a winking, glaringly explicit hole in the story. This might be an intentional “fuck you” to the reader.

Swim Wants to Know If It's as Bad as Swim Thinks by Paul G. Tremblay
Swim, from Someone Who Isn’t Me, from the nomenclature of an online User Forum (ha ha) frequented by our meth-addicted narrator. Swim has lost custody of her daughter, who has been sent to live with Swim’s own abusive mother. Her attempt to rescue the daughter from the mother’s house while some sort of monsters invade from the sea is interspersed with flashbacks to a previous time she kidnapped said daughter and farther back to her own childhood suffering at her mother’s hands. A fractured and masterfully dissociative fugue.

Dr. Blood and the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron by A. C. Wise
Hedwig and the Angry Inch in space - glamorous genderbending Buck Rodgers types take on a supervillain on Mars. Short and vaguely metafictional (mockingly generic plot/setting, names like Philip Howard Craft the Third, Richard Carnacki Utley, etc). Because I am the way that I am, it is very frustrating that I’ve only managed to piece together some of the name references, and at some point I’ll probably try to sit down and work out the others. I’m not sure that I would have classified this as Weird.

The Year of the Rat by Chen Qiufan
Science fiction - young, underemployed college graduates in a future China are given work hunting down genetically engineered rats. I’ve wavered in the past on how appropriate SF is for weird fiction because of the doubled layer of removal from the real world, but it works here because the shift from rational to irrational is so pronounced and shocking as hallucinations or irruptions enter the narrative and the line between human and rat becomes increasingly fluid.

Olimpia's Ghost by Sofia Samatar
Epistolary riffing on Hoffman’s “The Sandman” - which I haven’t read. Beautifully written, of course, but like the Wise story, I’m haunted by the knowledge that I’m missing something. This story never exploded with weirdness the way I expected (hoped?), because her novel has one of the all-time great mind-melting irruption scenes, but that’s a feature, not a bug - this is a slow creep of a story. Some day I will read “The Sandman” and then I will reread this story (hopefully once Samatar has a collection of her short work published).

Furnace by Livia Llewellyn
A weird place story about a mother and daughter in a rotting, rust belt town. The association between family relations and a disintegrating world is a well-worn one (see Joyce Carol Oate’s “Family” (1989) and particularly Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas (2009), where this story would have been right at home and also a standout), and Llewellyn does it one better by tossing in elements of a bildungsroman and somehow still makes it work. One could also relate it to Peter Straub’s “A Short Guide to the City” (1990), but peopled with actual characters, and there’s something of Anna Kavan’s Ice (1967), too, but people with relatable characters.

Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us? by Damien Walters Grintalis
The narrator’s partner has died of cancer, and is now a ghost whose haunting takes the form of strewing around photographs of herself (himself?). I liked the combination of 1st and 2nd person, but did not like the incredibly flowery language, which tried very hard to impress but just did not connect for me.

Bor Urus by John Langan
Weird as midlife crisis. During intense thunderstorms, a man has recurring visions of a monstrous entity. Like “The Willows,” this relies on the more-alike-than-you-expect casting of natural weirdness and the weird supernatural. Feels like a typical Lovecraftian declensional confession of a descent into madness, but pulls back at the last minute and veers off into more optimistic territory. The reveal of the monster was a little underwhelming, but overall I did enjoy this one. My notes tell me that it reminds me of Gene Wolfe’s “Procreation” (1985), but I can’t remember why off the top of my head.

As far as I can tell “bos urus” means auroch, but I have yet to figure out the switch to “bor” instead. Something to do with the north?

A Quest of Dream by W. H. Pugmire
Even more directly Lovecraft pastiche (the Dreamlands, this time, focusing on nightgaunts), but revisioned through a rather twee, foppish kind of lens. Seems more like dark fantasy than weird to me, but I guess if it’s Lovecraft pastiche we all just have to accept it.

The Krakatoan by Maria Dahvana Headley
An ambiguously-gendered child who has lost several mothers falls in with a local malcontent who has lost his wife, and they use the local observatory to look down instead of up, hoping to find their missing loved ones under the Earth. This one never clicked for me, although I can’t put my finger on exactly why that was.

The Girl in the Blue Coat by Anna Taborska
I remain unconvinced that the mere presence of a ghost necessarily makes a story Weird - perhaps especially if the ghost fails M. R. James’s “malevolent or odious” criteria. This opens and closes with a famous reporter giving his deathbed confession to a ghostwriter working on his autobiography. Within that frame is a rather straight-forward ghost story about a Jewish girl murdered by Polish collaborators during World War II. This idea of the weighing of history on the present is what makes the best horror fiction effective, but we’re missing the irruption that makes the best weird fiction effective. Plus, the ending frame is rather silly (“I’m not… that… strong…”).

(he) Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror... by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
Fractured stream-of-consciousness metafiction about Pugmire writing his Lovecraftian pastiche; Pulver channeling the Beats to write about Pugmire channeling the Decadents. Good god.

In Limbo by Jeffrey Thomas
A member of the precariat has his social isolation literalized as an encroaching darkness devouring the rest of the world. Not particularly similar thematically, but the setting/irruption is similar to that of “The Mist” (1980), which in turn echoed “The Willows” (1907), which I am increasingly convinced is the ur-text of the Weird.

A Cavern of Redbrick by Richard Gavin
A Bradbury-ish tale where a kid staying with his grandparents for the summer encounters a ghost and stumbles on something that’s not quite right. Some unconvincing neologisms (summerland, redbrick), and while it’s weirder than the Taborska, I’m still not convinced it slips from “ghost story” territory into “weird tale.”

Eyes Exchange Bank by Scott Nicolay
An academic visits an old friend in a decaying Rust Belt town and finds himself in an exceptionally well-drawn oppressive and uncanny situation, increasingly alienated from both his friend and their surroundings. The explosion of horror that closes the story feels almost extraneous after the rest of the story. It’s striking how similar and yet how different this and the Llewellyn are.

Fox Into Lady by Anne-Sylvie Salzman
Weird as sexually-charged body horror as the fear/isolation/despair of a new mother. A Japanese woman gives birth to a fox-monster, which proceeds to terrorize her. What this has to do with David Garnett’s seemingly endless “Lady Into Fox” (1922, kind of a rural counterpoint to Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”) I haven’t worked out just yet.

Like Feather, Like Bone by Kristi DeMeester
The climax, but where’s the rest of the story? A woman whose child has drowned confronts a goblinish little girl under her porch who is eating birds. In some ways the obverse of the previous story, but flash fiction usually just leaves me wanting more. I am interested in seeing what DeMeester does in the future, though.

A Terror by Jeffrey Ford
Emily Dickinson, notorious weirdo, has an encounter with Death that emphasizes the power of words. I like Ford’s writing so much I can even enjoy him doing a story about a poet and the power of words.

Success by Michael Blumlein
A story about a mad scientist and his slightly-less-mad wife. A Weird synchronicity: I have a lot of unfinished reviews of Gene Wolfe books, both because I’m a lazy and slow writer and because they are very hard books to write about, but one of the odd themes of his that I was trying to pick out through all of them is his fixation on Lamarckism. Reborn and rebranded as epigenetics, the same theme pops up here, in a kind of inverted cosmic horror unveiling/mental-illness-as-body-horror story that seems indebted to Machen in some respects. Blumlein, a doctor, writes in a very detached, clinical manner that also brings J. G. Ballard to mind. I respected this story, but I’m not sure that I loved it.

Moonstruck by Karin Tidbeck
Weird as menstruation and as a vector for looking at the relationship between mothers and maturing daughters (this and the Llewellyn approach similar themes in completely disparate manners). Like a gloomier version of Cosmicomics (1965), this reads almost like science fiction ideas revisioned as folktale.

The Key to Your Heart is Made of Brass by John R. Fultz
An automaton, having lost the key necessary to wind his clockwork heart, finds himself stuck in a boilerplate blackmail scheme. Somewhere between good steampunk (industrial revolution in fantasyland) and bad steampunk (Victorianish mannerpunk). Great setting, good prose (in second person), unimpressive plot, bad gender politics (to the point that I fruitlessly expected some sort of last minute twist).

No Breather in the World But Thee by Jeff VanderMeer
Well, who knows about this one. Jettisons the anchor of normality entirely, which leaves us more in bizarro territory, I think. A much weirder (and Weirder) prefiguration of the Area X books - we have a fixation on repetitions of past intrusions and the Weird Place and reconstituted and weirded human bodies and even a Weird biological tower. It didn’t really work for me, but hey, it was definitely weird.

I look forward to Volume 2.

[Ctgt · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories were good not great and it's probably more about my expectations than anything else. With Barron running the show I anticipated mind bending and spectacular but none of these tales really reached those heights for me.

There were moments here and there;

The Nineteenth Step by Simon Stranzas had a bit of a House of Leaves vibe

In her tired state, she thought she saw the steps move ever so slightly, as though they had settled into place only as she'd turned the corner.

Furnace by Livia Llewellyn had the weirdest feel to it;

-I don't see anything different, my mother said.-Everything looks the same as I remember. This is the way it should be.
-I know,the young man said. -It all looks the same on the outside. It always has. You have to look underneath.
-How can one look underneath? I asked.
-You just do. You just know.

And my favorite story A Terror by Jeffrey Ford imagining a weird moment in Emily Dickinson's life.

"Why a poet?"
"The spell has to be undone. I'm not sure how, but word magic, I'm guessing, can best be subdued with words. You know, I almost decided to snatch Walt Whitman instead."
Emily winced. "The man's pen has dysentery."

Eventually she lifted the pen and drew ink. The first line came strong to the paper, and there was a pause-a moment, a day, a year-before she hesitantly began the second line. Slowly, the poem grew.

A solid but undewhelming collection.

6/10

[Joe Gola · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of short stories, mostly in a strange, spooky and haunting mode but also including forays into science fiction, steampunk, and humor. The unifying element is good storytelling, and even if some of the tales aren't precisely Weird Fiction with capitals W and F, they are all very well-told. The list of standouts, for me, is quite long: "Swim Wants to Know If It's as Bad as Swim Thinks" by Paul Tremblay, in which a fragmented consciousness encounters something monstrous; "Year of the Rat" by Chen Qiufan, a futuristic war story with a twist; the Kafkaesque "Furnace" by Livia Llwellyn, which is just generally bonkers, but in a good way; "The Krakatoan" by Maria Dahvana Headley, which could be described as black-magic realism, "A Cavern of Redbrick" by Richard Gavin, a good-old-fashioned lock-your-doors ghost story; "A Terror" by Jeffrey Ford, in which a famous literary personage meets Death; and "No Breather in the World but Thee" by Jeff VanderMeer, in which many terrible things happen (much worse than last year).

Readers who are just looking for Lovecraftian rehashes might be disappointed—only "A Quest of Dream" by W.H. Pugmire evokes the spirit of the man from Providence—but for anyone who has been longing for a diverse, entertaining, and even challenging collection of weird fiction, this first volume of a year's best could be the start of something big.

[Frederick Heimbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure I've ever read a satisfying anthology. Maybe I'd make an exception for Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions; I can't think of another one. Anthologies, in my experience, mix too many duds in with the winners.

This book is no exception. I'd say about a third of the stories left me scratching my head--and it wasn't so much of the "what did that story mean" scratching, although there was plenty of that, but more of the "what the heck was the editor thinking, selecting this piece of crap?" scratching.

I hate to blame industry politics, but that's where the evidence takes me. If an author was someone I've already heard of, or had an especially impressive bio, you could (usually) count on a story that felt like a dusty old trunk story or something dashed-off. In most cases, these stories suffer from meandering endlessness; you get to the last page and wonder how on earth it's going to get wrapped up, and then you find out: oh, there is no wrap-up.

And yet, I have to give this collection 4 stars, to honor the several stories I really loved. Paul Tremblay's "Swim Wants to Know if it's as Bad as Swim Thinks" gets inside the head of a madwoman, a tricky thing, which Tremblay pulls off with aplomb. John Langan's "Bor Urus" tells of glimpsing an alternate, numinous world through a storm. I loved this story, with its inscrutible Greek monster-gods; it would be perfect for the weird-numinous podcast I keep threatening to start. Richard Gavin's "A Cavern of Redbrick" was the mirror image of Langan's, a young boy's glimpse of the numinous realm's demonic side, and the evil it tempts him to unleash, unwittingly. Jeffery Thomas shares a dark vision of a man spiraling downward into isolated, uncombed and unshaven despair in a grim story called "In Limbo" that turns shockingly hopeful and tender in the very last sentence. Kristi Demeester's "Like Feather, Like Bone" disgusted me, with its opening paragraph of a little girl retreating underneath a porch to eat a dead bird, but I have to admit it achieved, in just three pages, exactly the effect its author manifestly intended. In a similar vein, I felt like I was left out of the target audience of Karin Tidbeck's "Moonstruck," about a girl's first period and it's power to move the moon off its course (or was the moon acting on her?), but I can't deny the story's impact.

Jeffrey Ford pulls together details from the life of Emily Dickinson and Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw" in an almost-too- but not-quite-too-clever, mashup he calls "A Terror." By the end, it had convinced me of its genius. This contrasts with another lit-referenced story by Sophia Samatar, which didn't work for me. Was it because I wasn't in on the inside joke? I've actually read the referenced sandman story by Hoffmann, so I'm not sure how I was left out.

I would also like to single out for rebuke the story "A Quest of Dream" by the Lovecraftian dandy W.H. Pugmire. Based on the story's decadent content, for example the author describing a boy's "tender kiss upon my eyes" and his fingers combing through the author's hair, I'm guessing the attraction of the dreamworld described, from the author's point of view, is its lax enforcement of statutory rape laws.

For my money, the masterpiece of the collection comes right near the end. It's "The Key to your Heart Is Made of Brass" by John R. Fultz. The title is quite literal; the protagonist is a clockwork man desperate to find his stolen key before he winds down and dies. He's one of a creepy race of people who discarded their fleshly bodies (except their brains), exchanging them for exquisitely beautiful mechanical ones. This is weird fiction operating at its highest level.

[Bogdan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first read of this year wasn`t quite what I was expecting.

I liked :

Swim wants to know if it`s as bad as Swim thinks – Paul Tremblay. Some kind of gigantic creatures from the Sea are upon us.

The Year of the rat – Chen Qiufan and translated by Ken Liu – This was one of the most beautiful and strange story of this Anthology. In an Asian country there is a problem with genetic modified rats.To fight them the Government has build the Rodent –Control Force…and I will stop here .Very well written.

The girl in the blue coat – Anna Taborska – A story set in the second World War with small elements of weirdness, if you consider that a phantom could be in this kind of category. But, still, good writing.

In limbo – Jeffrey Thomas – Some kind of darkness it`s terrorizing the tenants of a building. Good characterization and the story flows well toward a creepy end.

Eyes Excange Bank – Scott Nicolay- Not so great story, kind of long, but in the end it has some strange things lurking in there.

Like feather, like bone – Kristi DeMeester – A story about loosing a child converted in some kind of fantasy text…

Moonstruck – Karin Tidbeck – was the only story that I read it before this Anthology. A short and good one about the bad influence of the Moon on some of the people of the Earth.

The Key to your hart is made of brass – John R. Fultz – An excellent steampunk story about love and what our future could look like.

From the total of 22 stories I kinda liked only 8 of them. But the real problem was that I was expecting real weird texts not some fantastic or ghost stories.

Who are they kidding here?

[Marco Simeoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Working progress per i pensieri sui racconti

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories display a variety of weird fiction styles, but they're all "approachable" and surprisingly consistent in terms of quality. Most are at least above average, more than a few are exceptional and leave a lasting impression. I would say for any weird fiction anthology this is all you can ask.

For me this collection was a good way to discover new authors, and read others I've been curious about for some time. I was expecting to find some selections with a similar style or mood of Laird Barron's work since he was the editor, but I don't feel that came through at all. There's a good variety here, a full spectrum of what constitutes weird fiction today.

The Nineteenth Step — Simon Strantzas - A great story, generates a lot of suspense for it's brief length and has a pretty innovative idea at it's core. I like how it cut off at the end. A couple move into a house they plan to fix up and flip, they discover the stairs seem to have a different number depending when they looked at them.

Swim Wants to Know If It’s As Bad As Swim Thinks — Paul Tremblay - This is such an affecting story, very sad. It's got that "decaying America" feel. The weird element is mostly in the way it's told, with some very strange touches around the edges. A mother wants to save her daughter from monsters, but might be a monster herself.

Dr. Blood and the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron — A.C. Wise - This sort of weird fiction isn't my sort of thing typically (and hey, I'm gay myself) but it is a pretty fun little bizarro piece. A *~*~fabulous~*~* set of drag queens head to Mars, to save Earth from destruction, yet again.

Year of the Rat — Chen Qiufan - This was wonderful, the best in the book without a doubt. It's extremely entertaining and engaging, yet also deep, moving and yes, very weird. A story that would be worth re-reading. A group of college students in China join a platoon to help fight a scourge of rats plaguing the countryside, but find themselves pawns of a bigger game.

Olimpia’s Ghost — Sofia Samatar - I've been meaning to read Hoffmann's "The Sandman" for years, and I suspect this story would make more sense if I had, but it's still a great story. It has a really nice mood and was one of my favorites. A young woman corresponds with a man about her increasingly surreal dreams relating to The Sandman.

Furnace — Livia Llewellyn - I've read this story twice already, so I skipped it, but here's my previous review: This was a re-read for me, I read this one about a year ago in the "Grimscribe's Puppets" Ligotti tribute anthology. This is a great story, I think it makes more sense after reading the stories in this collection than it did the first time around. A young girl describes her decaying town where time seems to repeat itself in a constant morphing of forms, sometimes in horrific ways.

Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us? — Damien Angelica Walters - A very touching, gentler weird story. Very short, but an effective story of loss. A man starts finding photos of his dead wife, each one turning up closer to his bedside.

Bor Urus — John Langan - Langan impresses as usual. This is a somewhat more straight-forward story, with a theme of piercing the thin veil between dimensions, with some wild action at the end. A man becomes fascinated by thunderstorms, and obsessed after he is convinced that in the midst of one something is revealed to him.

A Quest of Dream — W.H. Pugmire - Another of those authors I've been meaning to read for years, this certainly impressed me. I could see how it might not be to everyone's taste, but I certainly like this dream-like sort of writing as I've read more weird fiction. I admire the imaginative touches and nocturnal atmosphere. An inhabitant of Sesqua Valley searches for an entry point into the world of dreams.

The Krakatoan — Maria Dahvana Headley - Yet another great story, very imaginative, I loved the setting. I read in an interview with the author about this story where she mentions that her favorite horror writer is Robert Aickman, I can see a bit of that here. A girl's diligent astronomer father keeps running off his wives, and she discovers that a neighbor who is convinced one should look into volcanoes for true discovery.

The Girl in the Blue Coat — Anna Taborska - This was an impressive story in a more traditional ghost story vein. I liked the story within a story, within a story format. This author was entirely unknown to me, but this was one of my personal favorites. A dying reporter tells of his intense interview with a Polish WW2 survivor and the ghost of a little girl.

(he) Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror — Joseph S. Pulver Sr. - A very brief sort of prose poem on the writing of Lovecraftian fiction. I imagine some of the references will be lost on people, but it's enjoyable. (Words! Words!)

In Limbo — Jeffrey Thomas - This is a very tense, grim cosmic horror tale, quite effective with a fairly wild theme. Parts reminded me of that old Lights Out radio drama "The Dark," and H. G. Wells' The Red Room. A man wakes up to discover his electronics full of static and his building is isolated from the outside world.

A Cavern of Redbrick — Richard Gavin - This is probably the scariest story in the book, as with Anna Taborska's story this as a more traditional ghost story feel to it. Very good stuff with a little touch of Bradbury-esque innocence. I expected a good one after reading Gavin's wonderful collection "At Fear's Altar." A boy spending the summer with his grandparents believes a local gravel pit is haunted.

Eyes Exchange Bank — Scott Nicolay - I read this story when it was originally anthologized in "The Grimscribe Puppets" anthology. Here's my previous review: Wow, very scary story, reminds me of "The Last Feast of Harlequin" at times, it certainly has the spirit of it. Wonderful atmosphere of a decayed town, and a decrepit mall makes a good setting for the horror. What most shines though are the two main characters. One of the more realistic stories in the collection. A man trying to recover from his recent breakup travels to see an old friend, but finds him in a state of peculiar lassitude like the town itself.

Fox into Lady — Anne-Sylvie Salzman - This type of weird fiction (and it certainly is WEIRD!) isn't to my personal taste, but I can certainly respect it and the imagination behind it. A woman gives birth to something which disgusts and haunts her.

Like Feather, Like Bone — Kristi DeMeester - Wow, very brief but effective. A woman mourning over the loss of a child, finds a bizarre hope from another.

A Terror — Jeffrey Ford - This story really showed me another side of Ford. Until now I'd only read the two stories by him which appear in the Vandermeer's anthology "The Weird" and those are borderline bizarro pieces. Those weren't to my taste, but this certainly was with it's Gothic flair. It's quite eerie and grotesque at times. If someone told me the concept of this story I probably wouldn't expect it to work, but this was one of my favorites. Emily Dickinson makes a deal with Death himself to gain another quarter century of life.

Success — Michael Blumlein - By far the longest story in the book, with a heavy sci-fi bent. There's a lot of themes running through this story, evolution, multiple selves, obsession. Aside from the weird/sci-fi themes it's a good story about relationships with intelligent, subtle inner-dialogue. On the other hand after reading 18,000 words I would have liked to see a few plot-holes filled in, instead many times in the story it felt like, "...and then that just happened..." A brilliant but eccentric scientist becomes obsessed with discovering what he calls the "perigene" which will reveal what steers all of life, but his fixation drives him to extremes.

Moonstruck — Karin Tidbeck - A thoroughly enjoyable, solid story built around a simple concept, maybe not as impactful as the best here, but still a good read. A girl is convinced that she is the cause of an impending lunar catastrophe.

The Key to Your Heart Is Made of Brass — John R. Fultz - This was an excellent steampunk/dystopian themed story with some bizarro elements. It reminded me a bit of Michael Cisco. It overflows with imagination, this is an author I'd like to investigate further. In a world where people have donned clockwork bodies, one man wakes up after an attack in an alley and realizes he has lost the key he uses to wind himself.

No Breather in the World But Thee — Jeff VanderMeer - Might as well go out with a bang, right? This is a hell of a story, so crazy, violent and unpredictable. A mansion is assaulted by a barrage of horrific, supernatural activity.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is "weird" fiction? The short and easy answer is H.P. Lovecraft and works inspired by him. But that isn't nearly large enough. The longer answer is, any story where a key element of the narrative is that something is off. Something is strange. And this offness and strangeness is unsettling and possibly hints at our entire reality being a lie.

Why read something so upsetting? Because it appeals to the skeptic in all of us. Deep down, a lot of us feel like we're not getting the whole picture. That we're being scammed. That we're one alien encounter away from being flushed down the Universe's toilet. That other dimensions exist and they don't like us and that's bad news for us.

This book was mostly wonderful (with a few spectacular duds). I cannot wait to pick up the next volume.

[Earwen · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were very few stories I enjoyed in this.

my favorites

year of the rat - chen qiufan
bor urus - john langan
moonstruck - karin tidbeck
no breather in the world but thee - jeff vandermeer

[H.L. Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I found this first volume of "weird" stories thoroughly enjoyable. Laird Barron has managed to pull together a nice variety of modern day tales of madness and woe (as someone who's reviewing Lovecraft or Poe might pen). I was pleased to see some of my very favorite storytellers in here. Also, the list of other notable stories at the end is an excellent touch. Be forewarned, this volume is best read under a full moon or by candlelight. :)

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic start to the series! The first of five (unfortunately that's all, but I'm glad of what we received), this volume was edited by Laird Barron and the series editor, Michael Kelly. They put together a truly great collection, with some incredibly varied stories. My favorites were:

John Langan - Bor Urus
Simon Strantzas - The Nineteenth Step
Richard Gavin - A Cavern of Redbrick
Damien Angelica Walters - Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us?
Livia Llewellyn - Furnace
Michael Blumlein - Success

Though this group of stories really stuck out to me, the rest were a great bunch as well. I appreciate the fact that there's a good mix of authors I already know and love (Langan, Strantzas, Vandermeer, Thomas, Ford, Pulver, Pugmire, etc) with a lot I didn't yet know (Gavin, Walters, Llewellyn, and Blumlein in particular are on my list to dig into). I'm definitely looking forward to reading the rest of the series, and I expect they'll be equally fantastic, if somewhat different.

[Mir]

Favorites:
"Olimpia's Ghost" Sofia Samatar
"The Krakatoan" Maria Dahvana Headley
"A Terror" Jeffrey Ford (I'd read this one via Tor.com already, but it was worth a reread)

[Adriano Barone]

Premesse.
Sono un anziano.
Ho 40 anni mentre scrivo queste righe.
Il che vuol dire che i miei gusti da lettore si sono formati in un'epoca storica talmente diversa che dire "venticinque anni fa" è come parlare di un'altra era.
Soprattutto mi sono formato, come lettore (ma quell'imprinting è rimasto anche nell'attività di scrittore) con la fantascienza. Ecco, io, all'epoca, imparai (e i libri e i racconti erano lì a dimostrarlo) che la fantascienza era letteratura di idee.
Per qualche strano motivo, estesi questa mia convinzione a tutti i generi del fantastico, e a tutti i media.
Pertanto, quando poi in quest'epoca di postmoderno terminale viene detto che "non esistono idee originali"/"non importa il cosa, ma il come", posso anche essere d'accordo, ma quella parte "arcaica" del mio cervello continua a dirmi: IDEE.
Ecco, mi pare che la cosiddetta "speculative fiction" abbia totalmente derogato a questo aspetto. Sicuramente gran parte della fantascienza.
Forse il campo di esplorazione più interessante, nel momento in cui scrivo, resta lo urban fantasy. Non il fantasy classico, non l'horror.
La Bizzarro Fiction è rimasta quello che era: un esperimento divertente che non ha portato da nessuna parte.
E il Weird? Dopo l'esplosione (la bolla?) del New Weird, il termine è tornato in auge. Forse in questo crocevia tra horror, gotico, fantascienza e fantastico tout court, avrei trovato quel tipo di racconti che soddisfano quella parte di me che chiede IDEE.

Niente da fare.
Su 22 racconti, 4 o 5 riservano davvero qualcosa di interessante, di inedito, o almeno piccole varianti su temi conosciuti che le rendono degne di lettura.
Il resto è esercizio di stile, a volte buono, a volte no, e molto spesso, quel desiderio di essere indefinito nella narrazione che non è inquietante o pauroso, ma è solo barare col lettore. O sai che che cosa mi stai raccontando o no. Se giochi a "vedo/non vedo" e poi non mi dici di cosa si parla, stai facendo esercizio di stile. E non mi interessa.
Insomma, meno di un quinto di quello che ho letto qui mi ha soddisfatto.

Detto questo: complimenti a Edizioni Hypnos. Ci vuole un editore coraggoso per pubblicare speculative fiction in Italia (finora Hypnos ha tradotto anche un romanzo di Barron, un autore criminalmente ignorato da noi, e una raccolta di racconti di Strantzas).

Soprattutto: a lettori meno meno anziani di me, e/o con convinzioni molto meno radicali e specifiche su cosa debba essere la speculative fiction, sono convinto che il libro piacerà.
Quindi, davvero, leggetelo.

[House Hendry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last year saw two major publishing events in the field of Weird Fiction. The first, and the one that garnered the most mainstream column inches, was the publication of Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy -Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance, which saw The Weird being thrust into the mainstream as it never has before. The second major event was the publishing of Michael Kelly and Laird Barron’s ‘The Year’s Best Weird Fiction’. This is the first, to my knowledge, explicitly Weird Fiction anthology* to be released since the Vandermeer’s tome ‘The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories’ was released in 2011 (following on from their 2008 anthology ‘The New Weird’). The reason that this release is so important is that it pushes the literary experimentation with the weird to the forefront without focussing on the work of any particular author. We have seen a glut of anthologies of work based on the Cthulhu mythos over the last 10 years or so, with their number increasing seemingly exponentially as time goes on, and anthologies based on the work of weird writers R.W. Chambers, Arthur Machen, Thomas Ligotti, Laird Barorn, and a forthcoming collection based on the work of Robert Aickman. All of which is utterly fantastic but can not expose the reader to the wild experimental creativity that defines(?) the weird. This anthology does just that and it does it brilliantly. Another reason that this publication is so important is that a book that contains a wide variety of works, some of which are at the very edges of the weird, has sold enough copies within but a few short months of release that volume two has already been put together. Viva la weird!

*There is of course the wonderful ‘Women Writing the Weird’ anthology from Deb Hoag, also released in 2011, but that -as the name implies, only featured female authors and therefore couldn’t represent all of the best weird writing of that year.

Full review here

[Chris Cangiano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever since the advent of Jeff and Ann VanderMeer's massive anthology The Weird, it's a good time to be a fan of Weird Fiction and the new Year's Best Weird Fiction collection is just another indication of that happy fact. Kudos to Series Editor Michael Kelly for getting this project off the ground! What could be better than a yearly round-up of all the best Weird Fiction on display and the idea of having different editors for each proposed yearly Volume is also an interesting concept. Laird Barron was obviously an excellent choice for this first volume and he has come up with a solid line up of tales - some by recognizable names and others by less recognizable ones and on the whole the collection is a great success. Personal favorites for me were The Nineteenth Step by Simon Stranzas (A couple discover that one of the staircases in their new home sometimes has an extra step), Swim Wants to Know . . . (Think The Mist with a meth addict as the narrator) by Paul Tremblay, Olimpia's Ghost by Sofia Samatar (a riff of The Sandman and Freud's Uncanny), Dr. Blood and the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron by A.C. Wise (A Burroughsian (William S. not Edgar Rice) tale of gender bending space agents); In Limbo by Jeffrey Thomas (Narrator trapped by encroaching darkness); Eyes Exchange Bank by Scott Nicolay (Grad student trapped in a truly weird Pennsylvania town), and No Breather in the World But Thee (A tale of collapsing realities and surreal changes). Looking forward to next year's offering!

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

***The Nineteenth Step by Simon Strantzas: The ending was too vague, the horror was too ridiculous to be legitimately horrifying (an extra step in the staircase? Really?), and I just didn't get the ending. Not to mention the poor editing that made reading difficult:

He grabbed her wrist too tightly and dragged her around that corner she had no desire breech.

Anything but stay as the were, her watching helplessly as he climbed the stairs to the unknown.

****SWIM Wants to Know if It's as Bad as SWIM Thinks by Paul Tremblay: Could be a little too vague at points, but otherwise a good apocalyptic premise.

*****Dr. Blood and the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron by A.C. Wise: A delightful celebration of all things camp! Sure, it wasn't horror, but I have exactly zero fucks to give on that point. My personal favorite scene:

There are two female guards in the whole sprawling expanse of the base, both wearing bikinis, chests heaving before they've even thought to pick a fight.

"Oh, how progressive!" Starlight claps her hands in mock rapture. "I suppose there's a mud pit just behind that door?"

The girls in bikinis exchange glasses; this is outside of their training.

"Look, honey. Honeys. Let me explain something to you. Super-villains pay crap. And there's no such thing as an Evil League of Evil healthcare plan."

One of the women takes a questioning step forward. Starlight holds up a hand.

"I won't make some grandiose speech about the fate of the world, or doing it for the children you'll probably never have, but I will say this—killing bad guys is a heck of a lot more fun. And we pay overtime."

And the forces of might and justice and looking damned fine in knee-high heels swells to fifteen.

*****The Year of the Rat by Chen Qiufan: An excellent creepy story that's really all about exploring the horror within ourselves. The use of the rats was excellent, especially when some of the squad started questioning "They're not doing anything wrong, they're only trying to survive just like we are, yet we're out here slaughtering them."

In order to rescue a child who was not directly related to them, the rats were willing to sacrifice themselves. Yet we exploited this to get them.

That, and the revelation at the end that rats and humans alike were nothing but pawns in someone or something else's larger plan... chilling.

****Olimpia's Ghost by Sofia Samatar: This one had some really nice atmosphere. I especially liked that the narrator's slow immersion in the dream world was not necessarily a bad thing.

*****Furnace by Livia Llewellyn: I already read this one in a previous anthology. It's still good, especially with the images of slowly creeping decay.

****Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us? by Damien Angelica Walters: A compelling picture of grief and of being unable to let go, even to the point where holding on is unhealthy.

*****Bor Urus by John Langan: I love the portrayal of a parallel universe that sometimes touches ours when the circumstances are right, laid alongside the slow personal decay of the narrator's life and relationships. There were a couple of editing issues, though:

"What?" she said. Her brown (???) was level, her mouth straight, her cheeks pale.

As the crown flies, it was three and a half, four miles from our front door to Prin's parents.

Its blackness was no a trick of the light; nor was the water full of dirt.

****A Quest of Dream by W.H. Pugmire: Good atmosphere, but I would have liked a little more explanation.

***The Krakatoan by Maria Dahvana Headley: A little too confusing in places.

****The Girl in the Blue Coat by Anna Taborska: Once again, very good mixture of the supernatural with an all too human horror.

**(He) Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror... by Joseph S. Pulver Sr.: Seems more like a stream of consciousness than anything else, but it's way too disjointed, nonsensical, and confusing.

****In Limbo by Jeffrey Thomas: This is a nice way to do an apocalypse. No pestilence, no explosions, no monsters, just an incessant creeping darkness that swallows everything it touches.

****A Cavern of Redbrick by Richard Gavin: Nice use of the mystery murder trope, with just a touch of the supernatural.

*****Eyes Exchange Bank by Scott Nicolay: Another one I've already read, with excellent use of classic horror tropes.

***Fox into Lady by Anne-Sylvie Salzman: Had some really squicky Body Horror, but in the end I just didn't get it.

***Like Feather, Like Bone by Kristi DeMeester: A lot less horrifying than it is just gross.

****A Terror by Jeffrey Ford: Pretty sure I've read this one in a previous anthology. I always did like the personification of Death.

***Success by Michael Blumlein: While it was a good picture of a marriage falling apart, it was also very long and drawn-out, and the ending was confusing.

****Moonstruck by Karin Tidbeck: An incredibly unique idea, even if most of the science did make me cringe.

*****The Key to Your Heart Is Made of Brass by John R. Fultz: Excellent worldbuilding. I always did love post-human post-apocalypses.

***No Breather in the World but Thee by Jeff VanderMeer: I spent most of my time reading this story thinking 'Wait, what?' There's a fine line between something being horrifying and just confusing.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Laird's writing so I was intrigued to see what he chose for this volume. Well, its certainly an esoteric collection and hard to rate. I gave it five stars despite not wanting to finish couple of stories. Highlights for me were the works by Paul Tremblay, Chen Quifan, Livia Llewellyn, John Langan, Maria Headley, Anna Taborska, Jeffrey Thomas, Karin Tidbeck and John R Fultz. All of whom I will definitely be reading further.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a literary smorgasbord of the bizarre this book is! Within these pages you will find science fiction, urban fantasy, horror, magical realism and some stories that defy genre. There is not one weak story in this collection.

[Tess]

Llewellyn, Headley, Blumlein, Qiufan, Vandermeer, Samatar

[Laine · Rating 3 out of 5]

not as good as vandermeer's collection of the new weird, but still quite enjoyably weird.

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have spoken for many years about parthenogenesis in literature, and late-labelling and nemonymity, but I see now I should have been talking about perigenesis. From epigene to perigene. This man — in synergy with his wife, she with him, then variously out of such synergy, till a new particle into his Large Hard-On Collider comes into play at the novella’s end — represents the apotheosis of the Jeffrey Thomas syndrome in the help (or love and care) coming unexpectedly from what he sees in the mirror, or does he become divided against self in this story, an equivalent Internet flamer or troll perhaps now become altruist and prophet? My own real-time reviewing of fiction books as a seeking out of the literary perigene as a preternatural gestalt, now called dreamcatching — if I may be my own version of this novella’s flaming dichotomy of a protagonist and slightly pretentious to boot — is equivalent to what he builds in the garden, never higher than the fence till it is indeed higher than the fence. Like the Langan story in this book, this novella is of genuine driving power, with no glance to either side, except to both sides of the Proustian self, and to its ultimate goal within a portrait of marital relations. I have been married to the same woman for, so far, 45 years. This novella simply is. Arising from manic Socratic dialogue and Lamarckian ambition, whither it takes you, I know not exactly where. It is not a Classic of Weird Fiction, not Weird Fiction at all, so why featured in this book, other than to co-create the book’s gestalt? It is a Classic of the Unweird for me, and if it were not for my overweening interest in ‘Weird Fiction’ and thus in this book, I would never have had the privilege to read it.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started listing each story individually but once I got to the fifth, or tenth?, I just gave up. I might say I expected better, with Barron as editor, but then I recalled he has been hugely a hit or miss for me, so I calmed myself before starting. I like weird stories, but as everyone will tell you, weird is subjective, right? I should also say I haven’t read a short story collection for several years, so I am "out of practice" somewhat. Still, I can say without any bad feelings whatsoever that none of these stories resonated with me. Critically, I think there are two levels to any genre, however loosely defined that genre may be. Simply, the first level is great (novels, short stories) while the second level is not-so-great (novels, short stories). Compounding this is the nature of the short story itself, which is a difficult thing to write, and extremely difficult to write well. So… While some of these authors have written great novels elsewhere, most of them have only written not-so-great novels elsewhere (I am quite sure I am no fan at all of what are, in my opinion, not-so-great novels, having read a few too many in my life), which should have been a warning sign for me. Unsurprisingly?, this book is full to bloated with not-so-great short stories, which is not overly unsurprising, I guess, as few authors can write great short stories, let alone not-so-great ones. This is not to say an author can’t write great short stories while stinking it up with not-so-great novels, as some authors are masters at the what I see as more difficult short story segment but are atrociously not-so-great with novels. And I must say I find that fascinating. Lest one get confused by this wordy review, suffice it to say I disliked this entire book and am worried about delving into Volume 2, 3, 4, or 5. But, weird is subjective, right?

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag. I liked

The Girl in the Blue Coat by Anna Taborska

Fox into Lady by Anne-Sylvie Salzman

Success by Michael Blumlein. This was the best story in the book.

I skipped a few.

[Chiara (booksandtravels_clem) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stelle e mezzo.

È difficile giudicare una raccolta di racconti (specie se così eterogenea come quelle dedicate al weird). Alcuni racconti mi sono piaciuti, qualcuno mi è piaciuto molto, altri invece non mi sono arrivati.

Tutto sommato è una bella raccolta, molto varia, che abbraccia vari aspetti e tematiche del weird.

Una nota di merito ai racconti: Il diciannovesimo gradino, Dovrei sussurrarti del chiaro di luna..?, Nel Limbo.
Ma anche altri mi sono piaciuti parecchio!

Voto: 7 e mezzo

[C. McKenzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Of the 23 stories, two deserved four stars or more. The Kakatoan and The Girl in the Blue Coat were great. In the first one, I ached for the MC on the one hand and yet had some laugh out loud moments in the brilliant dialog. The latter was just plain gripping.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This genre is really not for me. I hated most of these stories, and was often left confused and wondering why I wasted my time with it. I only enjoyed 5 of the 22 stories - Strantzas, Walters, Taborksa, Thomas and DeMeester. The rest were … for me … truly terrible.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty cool. I especially enjoyed Moonstruck by Karin Tidbeck and In Limbo by Jeffrey Thomas. I will read this volume again in the future.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a truly excellent collection with many fantastic stories. For me, some particular favourites were the stories by Damien Angelica Walters, Kristi DeMeester, and Livia Llewellyn.