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We are Happy, We are Doomed
We are Happy, We are Doomed collects fifteen stories of the strange and the terrifying and weaves them into a dark tapestry that magnifies and explores the collective madness of our world. In these pages you'll enter into cosmic blob-worshiping cults and "utopian" communities with dark secrets. You'll experience extra-dimensional coming-of-age rites and the disturbingly colorful end of the world. You'll stumble upon factories that manufacture living emptiness, comedy shows for the dying, and small towns where bizarre and menacing dogmas hold sway. And, all along the way, you'll hear the decaying heart of our civilization hammering out its violent pulse.
We are Happy, We are Doomed presents its readers with stories for a world on the precipice of annihilation. They are a warning for change. They are an illumination of the insanities of our age. They are, perhaps, glimpses into our always already doomed future.
We are Happy, We are Doomed presents its readers with stories for a world on the precipice of annihilation. They are a warning for change. They are an illumination of the insanities of our age. They are, perhaps, glimpses into our always already doomed future.
230 pages, Paperback
Published December 15, 2021
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224 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 31, 2022
I first discovered Kurt Fawver in the pages of Vastarien, where his story/play “The Gods in Their Seats, Unblinking,” left me feeling like I was in the presence of weird horror’s latest master. Here was a story that was Ligottian in all the most delicious ways—flexing its format to the breaking point while delivering legitimate existentialist chills. From there, it was no surprise that The Dissolution of Small Worlds became my new must-read. I had joined the cult of Fawver, and in my new devotion I proselytized his mastery to all of my weirdest friends.
Fawver’s work, for better or worse, is almost designed to resonate with me. It’s absurdist, dark, sometimes funny, and oftentimes unrelentingly bleak. It’s the sort of fiction that reminds me why horror became a lifelong passion. And now, with the release of We are Happy, We are Doomed, I am once again in awe of what Fawver brings to the Weird.
While We are Happy, We are Doomed is a short story collection, it feels unfair to directly compare it to The Dissolution of Small Worlds, because Fawver’s latest release is not quite as traditional of a short story collection. We are Happy... is hyper-focused on Fawver working in a particular mode—that of sociological horror. The stories here often focus on communities and are written almost as if they were non-fiction essays or snippets from a history book. If I were to describe this collection to anyone, I’d say it’s something like a meeting of Franz Kafka and Ken Burns. Many of the stories are told through a knowing eye-in-the-sky, describing the evolution of a community after coming in contact with some strange aberration. Absurdity lies at the heart of We are Happy, We are Doomed, and it’s this dissonant sense of oddity that teases out its horror.
Opener, “The Bleeding Maze: A Visitor’s Guide,” guides the reader through its titular distortion, but doesn’t merely linger on it as an oddity. In Fawver’s fiction, there’s always a progression of strangeness that goes further than one can imagine. The way Fawver introduces these scenarios, then spins them out naturally toward unnatural conclusions, makes for compelling fiction. While these stories could be newspaper clippings from another dimension, they never feel dull or dry. If there’s one lesson to be taken from We are Happy, We are Doomed, it’s that strangeness begets more strangeness.
While sometimes Fawver’s penchant for absurdity veers into the heavy-handed (see: “The Man in the Highchair”), oftentimes the stories straddle their sense of the uncanny with legitimate horror. “The Richview Massacre” is one that comes to mind, where despite the story unraveling from something as banal as pizza, there is still a real sense of the Weird at play. For me, Fawver’s writing is most impressive when it takes on silly topics and reshapes them into bleak visions of fractured communities. As many of us feel more and more divided and defined by our beliefs and locales, We are Happy, We are Doomed holds a mirror to our own connections, and forces us to consider not just the ones we have made, but the ones that may be demanded of us.
To say that the dominant voice of We are Happy... is that of a history book isn’t quite true though, as Fawver also plays with form to get at his finest results. Two of my favorite stories in this collection deviate in delicious ways from Fawver’s bird’s-eye view of communities grappling with the strange. In “Extinction in Green,” the story is told through a series of sparse diary entries, providing a peculiar escalation of one distortion on a small group of people. This story, juxtaposed with the others in the collection, feels acutely claustrophobic. It’s a reminder that the scope of Fawver’s interest isn’t only towns and cities, but people joined by circumstances—no matter how minute. Another story that utilizes a meta format to great aplomb, is “Rule and Regulations of White Pines, Vermont.” This is one of the best stories in the collection, and it’s a great reminder that there’s no better narrative device than a ticking clock—which this list of peculiar rules and lore provides. We are Happy, We are Doomed has enough diversity in storytelling, that even with a collection that’s this cohesive, it never suffers the effects of feeling samey. Each distortive event is so specific and strange, that even next to so many similarly themed stories, they each manage to stand on their own.
When we’re talking about modern weird horror, we can’t not talk about Kurt Fawver. His fiction is distinctive. It carries the torch of folks like Kafka, Ligotti, and Padgett, while expressing a singular obsession and perspective unique to the author. Fawver’s brand of absurdist horror is as bizarre as it is unsettling. It plumbs the depths of what makes us human, exploring the one thing about humanity that seems to define us—our relationships to each other. We are Happy, We are Doomed, in that respect, feels like an evolution of both Lovecraft’s and Ligotti’s cypher-like protagonists—the first person automatons that represent the individual as a speck in an infinite blackness. Fawver works in a similar manner, except the “I” becomes a “We.” In We are Happy, We are Doomed our collectivity is not enough to fight off the madness, it’s just more fuel for the fire.
Fawver’s work, for better or worse, is almost designed to resonate with me. It’s absurdist, dark, sometimes funny, and oftentimes unrelentingly bleak. It’s the sort of fiction that reminds me why horror became a lifelong passion. And now, with the release of We are Happy, We are Doomed, I am once again in awe of what Fawver brings to the Weird.
While We are Happy, We are Doomed is a short story collection, it feels unfair to directly compare it to The Dissolution of Small Worlds, because Fawver’s latest release is not quite as traditional of a short story collection. We are Happy... is hyper-focused on Fawver working in a particular mode—that of sociological horror. The stories here often focus on communities and are written almost as if they were non-fiction essays or snippets from a history book. If I were to describe this collection to anyone, I’d say it’s something like a meeting of Franz Kafka and Ken Burns. Many of the stories are told through a knowing eye-in-the-sky, describing the evolution of a community after coming in contact with some strange aberration. Absurdity lies at the heart of We are Happy, We are Doomed, and it’s this dissonant sense of oddity that teases out its horror.
Opener, “The Bleeding Maze: A Visitor’s Guide,” guides the reader through its titular distortion, but doesn’t merely linger on it as an oddity. In Fawver’s fiction, there’s always a progression of strangeness that goes further than one can imagine. The way Fawver introduces these scenarios, then spins them out naturally toward unnatural conclusions, makes for compelling fiction. While these stories could be newspaper clippings from another dimension, they never feel dull or dry. If there’s one lesson to be taken from We are Happy, We are Doomed, it’s that strangeness begets more strangeness.
While sometimes Fawver’s penchant for absurdity veers into the heavy-handed (see: “The Man in the Highchair”), oftentimes the stories straddle their sense of the uncanny with legitimate horror. “The Richview Massacre” is one that comes to mind, where despite the story unraveling from something as banal as pizza, there is still a real sense of the Weird at play. For me, Fawver’s writing is most impressive when it takes on silly topics and reshapes them into bleak visions of fractured communities. As many of us feel more and more divided and defined by our beliefs and locales, We are Happy, We are Doomed holds a mirror to our own connections, and forces us to consider not just the ones we have made, but the ones that may be demanded of us.
To say that the dominant voice of We are Happy... is that of a history book isn’t quite true though, as Fawver also plays with form to get at his finest results. Two of my favorite stories in this collection deviate in delicious ways from Fawver’s bird’s-eye view of communities grappling with the strange. In “Extinction in Green,” the story is told through a series of sparse diary entries, providing a peculiar escalation of one distortion on a small group of people. This story, juxtaposed with the others in the collection, feels acutely claustrophobic. It’s a reminder that the scope of Fawver’s interest isn’t only towns and cities, but people joined by circumstances—no matter how minute. Another story that utilizes a meta format to great aplomb, is “Rule and Regulations of White Pines, Vermont.” This is one of the best stories in the collection, and it’s a great reminder that there’s no better narrative device than a ticking clock—which this list of peculiar rules and lore provides. We are Happy, We are Doomed has enough diversity in storytelling, that even with a collection that’s this cohesive, it never suffers the effects of feeling samey. Each distortive event is so specific and strange, that even next to so many similarly themed stories, they each manage to stand on their own.
When we’re talking about modern weird horror, we can’t not talk about Kurt Fawver. His fiction is distinctive. It carries the torch of folks like Kafka, Ligotti, and Padgett, while expressing a singular obsession and perspective unique to the author. Fawver’s brand of absurdist horror is as bizarre as it is unsettling. It plumbs the depths of what makes us human, exploring the one thing about humanity that seems to define us—our relationships to each other. We are Happy, We are Doomed, in that respect, feels like an evolution of both Lovecraft’s and Ligotti’s cypher-like protagonists—the first person automatons that represent the individual as a speck in an infinite blackness. Fawver works in a similar manner, except the “I” becomes a “We.” In We are Happy, We are Doomed our collectivity is not enough to fight off the madness, it’s just more fuel for the fire.
May 4, 2022
This is great stuff. The way Fawver incorporates class consciousness into his writing certainly reveals a truth to those who say there are no classes in America.
December 29, 2021
Fawver does it again! After a solid first collection, and an astounding second collection, Kurt Fawver doesn't let up with this fantastic themed collection based on places, people, and the dooms that befall them.
One of the most intriguing stories that Fawver has written, The Convexity of Our Youth, focused not a single character or group of characters, but instead chose entire communities—towns, cities, states—to characterize, to show just how these places, as characters, chose to deal with a terrible sickness that affected their children. The approach is refreshingly novel, and gave that story a type of grand appeal that deepened the sense of the uncanny contained within it.
With this collection, Fawver uses this narrative device as a theme, and imagines several different types of apocalypses and how they affect the communities they doom.
I loved this collection (save one story which I DNF'd) and would highly recommend it to anyone out there who enjoys this type of strange approach to storytelling. Fawver continues to grow as a writer and the confidence he shows in these stories is both impressive and a little frightening to behold.
The only criticisms I have is that some of the stories did feel slightly "samey," and one of them was too obviously a political statement (though not one I necessarily disagreed with), but that didn't detract too much from the whole.
Favorites of mine were: The Richview Massacre, Etch the Unthinkable, Rules and Regulations for White Pines Vermont, Opus Manuum Artificis, and Pwdre Ser, along with what I felt was the best story in the collection: Preface to Mitchell D. Gatz's Revelation of the Unpetting Hand: The Apocalyptic Visions of Domesticated Canidae.
One of the most intriguing stories that Fawver has written, The Convexity of Our Youth, focused not a single character or group of characters, but instead chose entire communities—towns, cities, states—to characterize, to show just how these places, as characters, chose to deal with a terrible sickness that affected their children. The approach is refreshingly novel, and gave that story a type of grand appeal that deepened the sense of the uncanny contained within it.
With this collection, Fawver uses this narrative device as a theme, and imagines several different types of apocalypses and how they affect the communities they doom.
I loved this collection (save one story which I DNF'd) and would highly recommend it to anyone out there who enjoys this type of strange approach to storytelling. Fawver continues to grow as a writer and the confidence he shows in these stories is both impressive and a little frightening to behold.
The only criticisms I have is that some of the stories did feel slightly "samey," and one of them was too obviously a political statement (though not one I necessarily disagreed with), but that didn't detract too much from the whole.
Favorites of mine were: The Richview Massacre, Etch the Unthinkable, Rules and Regulations for White Pines Vermont, Opus Manuum Artificis, and Pwdre Ser, along with what I felt was the best story in the collection: Preface to Mitchell D. Gatz's Revelation of the Unpetting Hand: The Apocalyptic Visions of Domesticated Canidae.
December 25, 2021
I am always enthusiastic when I run across one of Kurt Fawver's stories in a journal or anthology, but I had not picked up one of his collections before. After reading We Are Happy, We Are Doomed, I'll definitely seek out his other collections. This particular collection contains fourteen stories, sharing timeliness and a philosophical outlook but varied in form. The only one here that I had read previously was "The Man in the High Chair," which was a Dim Shores chapbook.
Several of the stories are written from the perspective of a "we," a community or a town. The most memorable of these, to me, were "The Bleeding Maze, A Visitor's Guide," "Pwdre Ser," "Extinction in Green," and "Rules and Regulations of White Pines, Vermont." "The Bleeding Maze," in particular, is quite chilling and is one of my favorite stories here.
Two of the above and some of the other stories are written in the form of nonfiction (e.g. guidebook, legal document). Fawver's story in the form of an academic paper was my favorite of the collection: "Preface to Mitchell D. Gatz's Revelation of the Unpetting Hand: The Apocalyptic Visions of Domesticated Canidae" presents the history of a short-lived academic line of inquiry and leaves the reader with lingering dread of "the unpetting hand."
Several of the stories are written from the perspective of a "we," a community or a town. The most memorable of these, to me, were "The Bleeding Maze, A Visitor's Guide," "Pwdre Ser," "Extinction in Green," and "Rules and Regulations of White Pines, Vermont." "The Bleeding Maze," in particular, is quite chilling and is one of my favorite stories here.
Two of the above and some of the other stories are written in the form of nonfiction (e.g. guidebook, legal document). Fawver's story in the form of an academic paper was my favorite of the collection: "Preface to Mitchell D. Gatz's Revelation of the Unpetting Hand: The Apocalyptic Visions of Domesticated Canidae" presents the history of a short-lived academic line of inquiry and leaves the reader with lingering dread of "the unpetting hand."
October 18, 2023
My favorites from the collection: ‘Extinction in Green’, ‘Etch the Unthinkable’, ‘Rules and Regulations of White Pines, Vermont’, ‘Preface to Mitchell D. Gatz’s Revelation of the Unpetting Hand’, and ‘Opus Manuum Artificis’.
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April 16, 2022"While one hand pets, what does the other hand do?" page 143.
This is the first book I've read from Grimscribe. If this is an indication of the work they put out—sign me up! Fawver's collection shows remarkable range: We are treated to stories like world invasion written by way of status updates, a true crime investigation, complete with interviews and reports, of a massacre in a pizzeria, and a former truck driver calling into a radio station to share the strangest thing that has ever happened to him. I've never read anything by this author before and am now going to keep an eye out for his work. This is easily going to make my top reads of the year list.
I always prefer horror in the short form because I think it best captures an experience of fear. WE ARE HAPPY, WE ARE DOOMED collects many fears and in the most exciting ways. There is a creeping strangeness lurking to the side of everyone and everything. It is not hiding, just waiting for it to come in contact with you. These stories feel unsafe. These stories unsettled me.
The first story to me feels the most Ligottian (A Bleeding Maze) and the eleventh story (Preface to Mitchell D Gatz's...) feels quite like Lovecraft. I enjoy work from both of those authors so seeing their styles or sensibilities in a weird horror collection is a great thing for me.
My favorites were Extinction in Green, a green light mutates all that it touches tries to attack five people surviving in a basement; A Bleeding Maze: A Visitor's Guide, a brochure-like story that details the way that a particular town functions because of its maze; Etch the Unthinkable, a group of people view a once-in-a-lifetime performance by a clown who is not an ordinary clown; Preface to Mitchelle D. Gatz's Revelation of the Unpetting Hand: The Apocalyptic Visions of the Domesticated Canidae, a preface to a book that is analyzing the impact of the work of a doctor who used telepathic technology to read the minds of pet dogs and discovered a frightening vision; and lastly, Dermatology, Eschatology, a body horror story about a man with bumps over his arms and chest that seems to be bug larvae.
This is the first book I've read from Grimscribe. If this is an indication of the work they put out—sign me up! Fawver's collection shows remarkable range: We are treated to stories like world invasion written by way of status updates, a true crime investigation, complete with interviews and reports, of a massacre in a pizzeria, and a former truck driver calling into a radio station to share the strangest thing that has ever happened to him. I've never read anything by this author before and am now going to keep an eye out for his work. This is easily going to make my top reads of the year list.
I always prefer horror in the short form because I think it best captures an experience of fear. WE ARE HAPPY, WE ARE DOOMED collects many fears and in the most exciting ways. There is a creeping strangeness lurking to the side of everyone and everything. It is not hiding, just waiting for it to come in contact with you. These stories feel unsafe. These stories unsettled me.
The first story to me feels the most Ligottian (A Bleeding Maze) and the eleventh story (Preface to Mitchell D Gatz's...) feels quite like Lovecraft. I enjoy work from both of those authors so seeing their styles or sensibilities in a weird horror collection is a great thing for me.
My favorites were Extinction in Green, a green light mutates all that it touches tries to attack five people surviving in a basement; A Bleeding Maze: A Visitor's Guide, a brochure-like story that details the way that a particular town functions because of its maze; Etch the Unthinkable, a group of people view a once-in-a-lifetime performance by a clown who is not an ordinary clown; Preface to Mitchelle D. Gatz's Revelation of the Unpetting Hand: The Apocalyptic Visions of the Domesticated Canidae, a preface to a book that is analyzing the impact of the work of a doctor who used telepathic technology to read the minds of pet dogs and discovered a frightening vision; and lastly, Dermatology, Eschatology, a body horror story about a man with bumps over his arms and chest that seems to be bug larvae.
April 14, 2022
Another stellar collection from Kurt Fawver. He's become one of those authors who I will read new work from without hesitation or question.
I still think that Dissolution of Small Worlds is the stronger collection, but man if this guy doesn't know how to write a horror story. So many creepy towns and creepy rituals - two of my favorite things in a horror short.
My favorites, in the order they appeared:
- The Bleeding Maze (what a great way to open!)
- The Richview Massacre (pizza for dinner anyone?)
- Apocalypse, Ignored
- Dermatology, Eschatology
Highly recommend Fawver to anyone and everyone that wants to read some weird stuff!
I still think that Dissolution of Small Worlds is the stronger collection, but man if this guy doesn't know how to write a horror story. So many creepy towns and creepy rituals - two of my favorite things in a horror short.
My favorites, in the order they appeared:
- The Bleeding Maze (what a great way to open!)
- The Richview Massacre (pizza for dinner anyone?)
- Apocalypse, Ignored
- Dermatology, Eschatology
Highly recommend Fawver to anyone and everyone that wants to read some weird stuff!
March 16, 2022
Not as mind-blowing as his first two collections, but still miles above anything else being written today.
November 5, 2024
100% My Kind of Weird
Every once in a rare while, before you reach the end of the first page of the first story in the collection, you just know that you’ve hooked into something very, very good. Outrageously good, share with all your friends, and post an online review kind of good. I would say that “We are Happy. We are Doomed,” is such a book, only that would be downplaying it. It might just be the very best short fiction collection I’ve read in 2024.
I should mention I had a strong indication that I’d like this book – I first encountered Fawver’s writing in the Found anthology where his short tale “Accidents of a Sort” was the one story that haunted me the most.
So on to this collection – what made it so enjoyable for me? Well, I like my fiction dark, weird, and tough to pin down – either in-between or spanning multiple genres. If it forces me to dig deep for a description or comparator, that’s generally a good thing in terms of my taste. Add to that technical perfection, true lingual artistry, and a willingness to get experimental and playful with narration. The precision of Fawver’s style only enhances the beauty, wonder and not infrequently, the devastating emotional impact of his stories. This collection checked all the right boxes for me.
Those stories seem to return to a few key themes, including individuals, groups and communities isolated and destroyed (or at least radically reshaped), by some encounter with the incomprehensibly alien. Whether it’s a town with a bleeding, ever-evolving maze at its heart, a trucker calling in to a radio show about his experience at the “White Factory,” or a man’s suffering put on display under glass and repeated again and again for a very inhuman audience.
Fifteen stories – fifteen different polychromatic nuggets to break our minds against. Hard to even choose a favorite, although I thought the Preface to the Unpetting Hand was especially wonderful. Who hasn’t wondered what goes on in their pet’s minds. Surely no dark apocalyptic visions could lurk there, right? Etch the Unthinkable struck me as being the most Ligottiesque of these stories complete with clown/marionette/monster performing for an audience committed to their own demise. Extinction in Green felt like it could have been one of the journals left by explorers in VanderMeer’s Area X, demonstrating just how incomprehensible an experience being on the other end of terraforming might be. Post pandemic now, did you think you’d seen every possible permutation of virus or plague story? A Plague of the Most Beautiful Finery might make you reconsider.
By way of analogy, there isn’t a single, flawed track on the album. I’ve added his other two collections to my shopping cart, eager to see what other marvelous weirdness Fawver can conjure, and I do hope that you’ll join me on that ride.
Every once in a rare while, before you reach the end of the first page of the first story in the collection, you just know that you’ve hooked into something very, very good. Outrageously good, share with all your friends, and post an online review kind of good. I would say that “We are Happy. We are Doomed,” is such a book, only that would be downplaying it. It might just be the very best short fiction collection I’ve read in 2024.
I should mention I had a strong indication that I’d like this book – I first encountered Fawver’s writing in the Found anthology where his short tale “Accidents of a Sort” was the one story that haunted me the most.
So on to this collection – what made it so enjoyable for me? Well, I like my fiction dark, weird, and tough to pin down – either in-between or spanning multiple genres. If it forces me to dig deep for a description or comparator, that’s generally a good thing in terms of my taste. Add to that technical perfection, true lingual artistry, and a willingness to get experimental and playful with narration. The precision of Fawver’s style only enhances the beauty, wonder and not infrequently, the devastating emotional impact of his stories. This collection checked all the right boxes for me.
Those stories seem to return to a few key themes, including individuals, groups and communities isolated and destroyed (or at least radically reshaped), by some encounter with the incomprehensibly alien. Whether it’s a town with a bleeding, ever-evolving maze at its heart, a trucker calling in to a radio show about his experience at the “White Factory,” or a man’s suffering put on display under glass and repeated again and again for a very inhuman audience.
Fifteen stories – fifteen different polychromatic nuggets to break our minds against. Hard to even choose a favorite, although I thought the Preface to the Unpetting Hand was especially wonderful. Who hasn’t wondered what goes on in their pet’s minds. Surely no dark apocalyptic visions could lurk there, right? Etch the Unthinkable struck me as being the most Ligottiesque of these stories complete with clown/marionette/monster performing for an audience committed to their own demise. Extinction in Green felt like it could have been one of the journals left by explorers in VanderMeer’s Area X, demonstrating just how incomprehensible an experience being on the other end of terraforming might be. Post pandemic now, did you think you’d seen every possible permutation of virus or plague story? A Plague of the Most Beautiful Finery might make you reconsider.
By way of analogy, there isn’t a single, flawed track on the album. I’ve added his other two collections to my shopping cart, eager to see what other marvelous weirdness Fawver can conjure, and I do hope that you’ll join me on that ride.
July 1, 2022
Fawver is a master of the strange. This collection was so unique and the stories stick with the reader, not only due to their odd and abstract natures, but also because of the tight, careful writing, which is consistent throughout the book, yet plays with different styles from story to story.
Some of the stories are almost too odd to be "horror", some of them walk a fine line, and some of them truly creeped me out. I enjoyed most of the stories, but some of the stand-outs were "Extinction in Green", "The Bleeding Maze", "Apocolypse, Ignored", and "A Plague of the Most Beautiful Finery". "The Man in the High Chair" was a super silly story, but I couldn't help but think it was the "origin story" of how Trump rose to power in the US. "PWDRE SER" was truly creepy - something about the descriptive imagery in this story had me on edge while I was reading it.
Overall, this was a really fun collection and I already have the next one in queue to read :)
Some of the stories are almost too odd to be "horror", some of them walk a fine line, and some of them truly creeped me out. I enjoyed most of the stories, but some of the stand-outs were "Extinction in Green", "The Bleeding Maze", "Apocolypse, Ignored", and "A Plague of the Most Beautiful Finery". "The Man in the High Chair" was a super silly story, but I couldn't help but think it was the "origin story" of how Trump rose to power in the US. "PWDRE SER" was truly creepy - something about the descriptive imagery in this story had me on edge while I was reading it.
Overall, this was a really fun collection and I already have the next one in queue to read :)
June 1, 2023
First time reading Kurt Fawver, it won't be the last. This collection does indeed contain stories about communities in strange circumstances but it also ranges from the post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, and the weird. Something that Fawver excels in during some of his stories is the hint of the ridiculous and bizarre amongst a very horrifying or strange ordeal, almost like a reflection of how humans will process and recover from the most surreal and cruel circumstances. I had something to like about all the stories here but some of my personal favorites were The Bleeding Maze: A Visitor's Guide, The Richview Massacre, Apocalypse Ignored, Shale Creek, Rules And Regulations Of White Pines, Vermont, Preface To Mitchell D. Gatz's Revelation Of The Unpetting Hand: The Apocalyptic Visions Of Domesticated Canidae, and A Plague Of The Most Beautiful Finery.
April 13, 2022
A dryly funny, deeply horrific travelogue of a monstrous America only slightly less monstrous than the one we live in.
August 19, 2022
I loved it. A more symbolic, more cosmic, weirder version of Ligotti. Visionary, creepy, weird, haunting, existential. Definitely my jam.
November 12, 2023
A collection of short stories that covers a wide range of styles: weird, cosmic horror, body horror, etc., united by the overall settling feeling each story leaves with the reader.
December 18, 2021
I was introduced to Kurt Fawver’s work by Vastarien. His work tends towards nihilism and suburban and corporate horror, so if that appeals to you, grab this collection. I particularly enjoyed “Apocalypse, Ignored” with its cosmic horror oozing through the edges of the world and the desperate attempts to contain it. One could extract a metaphor for the crumbling of our society and the rot just underneath the fragile skin of propriety and decorum, but it’s also a fantastic monster story with creatures that cannot be defeated, only banished and kept at bay.
December 27, 2025
Solid collection. Whimsical in a way that can be a little 'wink wink nudge nudge', but it stays charming.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews