Most Read This Week In Weird Fiction

A “weird tale,” as defined by H.P. Lovecraft in his nonfiction writings and given early sanctuary within the pages of magazines like Weird Tales (est. 1923) is a story that has a supernatural element but does not fall into the category of traditional ghost story or Gothic tale, both popular in the 1800s. As Lovecraft wrote in 1927, the weird tale “has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains.” Instead, it represents the pursuit of some indefinable and perhaps maddeningly unreachable understanding of the world beyond the mundane — a ‘certain atmosphere A “weird tale,” as defined by H.P. Lovecraft in his nonfiction writings and given early sanctuary within the pages of magazines like Weird Tales (est. 1923) is a story that has a supernatural element but does not fall into the category of traditional ghost story or Gothic tale, both popular in the 1800s. As Lovecraft wrote in 1927, the weird tale “has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains.” Instead, it represents the pursuit of some indefinable and perhaps maddeningly unreachable understanding of the world beyond the mundane — a ‘certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread” or “malign and particular suspension or defeat of…fixed laws of Nature” — through fiction that comes from the more unsettling, shadowy side of the fantastical tradition.

Weird fiction - since its rise to prominence in the 1890s - has long been the generic depository for literature that seamlessly fits the definitions of several genres of speculative fiction. If it wasn't exactly horror or fantasy, quite possibly it could be termed weird. In fact, a basic definition of weird fiction could truthfully be a story that combines elements of fantasy and horror. A broader definition would be a story that includes and merges any number of plot devices, elements, sensibilities, and tropes of horror, science fiction, fantasy, the ghost story, supernatural fiction, mythology, mystery, or Gothic fiction. Literature that includes standards from more than one of these traditions might be considered weird.

Michael Kelly, editor of Weird Horror magazine, agrees that to properly define and categorize the term "weird fiction" could be a difficult task. He writes:
”[…] it can often be unclassifiable and hard to precisely define. […] In my view weird fiction is speculative, and often (but not always) works to explore and subvert the laws of nature, or the natural order. I like to think of it as an unceasing distortion and buckling of ambient space and time; where plot, theme, atmosphere and voice coalesce. Hence, the lens from which you view the world is askew and occluded. A feeling. A mood. A sense of dislocation. Weird fiction is a large umbrella, encompassing many modes of fiction. Before genre rules were established, weird fiction could be said to consist of the science fictional, the ghostly supernatural, the mythical, the cosmic, and the fantastic. An extensive mode of literature. In that regard it shares many properties with its Horror brethren. It’s why weird fiction is, I’d say, most commonly associated with horror fiction. [...] Weird fiction, perhaps more than any other mode, is fluid, adaptable, and ever-changing. I certainly take an expansive view of it, not constrained to the American-based strand (terror and awe) or the European-based (strange tale).”

This view finds further resonance in noted writer Simon Strantzas’ statement: “Instead, these sorts of stories exist in a liminal world of rationalities where things are not quite right. Slightly askew, their axes tilted, they are stories where the everyday is corrupted just enough that the strange can leak through.”
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Most Read This Week Tagged "Weird Fiction"

Crypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy, #1)

Cathedral of the Drowned (The Lunar Gothic Trilogy, #2)

If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (John Dies at the End, #4)

H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights (British Library Tales of the Weird)

Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick (Zoey Ashe, #2)

Gideon Falls, Book One: The Legend of the Black Barn

Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia (Zoey Ashe, #3)

Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Three (Tales from the Gas Station, #3)

Gideon Falls, Book Two: The Eater of All Things

Escape from Yokai Land (Laundry Files, #6.5)

Asa: The Girl Who Turned into a Pair of Chopsticks

A Peculiar Peril (The Misadventures of Jonathan Lambshead, #1)

How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster

The Worm and His Kings (The Worm and His Kings, #1)

Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Four (Tales from the Gas Station #4)

Ice Cream Man, Volume 5: Other Confections

Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites (British Library Tales of the Weird)

Weird Woods: Tales From the Haunted Forests of Britain (British Library Tales of the Weird)

The Weird Tales of Dorothy K. Haynes (British Library Tales of the Weird)

Into the Darkening Fog: Eerie Tales of the London Weird (British Library Tales of the Weird)

The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Volume 1

Our Haunted Shores: Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles (British Library Tales of the Weird)

The Tindalos Asset (Tinfoil Dossier, #3)

The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird (British Library Tales of the Weird)

In the Mad Mountains: Stories Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft

The Wind Began to Howl (Isaiah Coleridge, #3.5)

The Call of Cthulhu and Dagon: A Graphic Novel (Graphic Classics)

Celtic Weird: Tales of Wicked Folklore and Dark Mythology

The Haunted Trail: Classic Tales of the Rambling Weird (British Library Tales of the Weird)

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Quotes Tagged “Weird Fiction”

“ The line between ghost and glitch grows thinner every day. One is a whisper from the past, the other a whisper from the machine—both leave traces, and neither likes to be ignored. ”
― Tony Brooks

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“ I didn’t want to read it, but it was my strict policy never to disagree with people. Bitter experience had taught me that the minute you contradict someone, you instantly get sucked into their asinine private world. By avoiding arguments I wound up not talking to anyone. I lived utterly alone in my own asinine private world. Terribly alone and constantly crowded by idiots—that was my life. Rats gnaw off their feet with less provocation. ”
― Stepan Chapman, The Troika

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