Weird Fiction discussion
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Thanks for the nice introduction :-)I'll buy a used one.
But first I would like to go a little further with The Women of Weird Tales.
have a good reads to all ^__^
My paperback copy of Web arrived and it's the edition I just linked to in this message. Man, was that NOT what I was expecting. It's a Penguin Readers Level 5 book. I worked as the school's librarian/media specialist for one semester in Delaware (at Kirk Middle School--always loved that name for some reason). We had a reader program then (1999) for the kids and this could easily have been one of the books in it with a blue dot on its cover to mark its level.It's as thin as can be, just 61 pages, and not all of that is text. Some is illustrations. They're black and white pencil drawings, but pretty cool nonetheless. There are exercises at the back. Want to improve your vocabulary? "Steep", "climb", and "waves" refers to what? Why "cliffs" of course! See it you can get the next one. "Explode, dust, rocks, and smoke." Then there's the comprehension questions. 1. "Why was the writer so enthusiastic about Lord Foxfield's project?"
I think this novella still has potential, children's book format or not. I'll keep you posted.
Arrgghh. I just noticed. This is a simplified edition. To get the one we're reading I am going to have to order again. Guess I better be real specific regarding the ISBN. 9780140053388 is the one we want to read. Not the one I have, which is different. Okay, reordered it. Guess I can't start the adult one until next week when it arrives.
I hope you have better luck with the next book, Dan. I have an old Penguin copy that I've had for years. It's quite the book, so I'll be joining in later this month,
Now that I have the correct version, I have started to read this short novel. It's a really odd story. Starts like, "Lost me wife and girl in a car wreck. Real bummer, so I quit the job. Maybe I hadn't ought to have done that. Now let me take the next ten pages to tell you absolutely nothing, yet start to tell you what I did next. You see, there's this Mr. Foxfield." That's the first bit recapped in a few sentences for you. I can't believe anyone can take so long to say so little. Lovecraft was obviously not the master at that we thought he was. He needs to move over and pay homage. At least, Wyndham's writing style is as fluid and easy to read as ever. Anything that looks this easy to write makes me wonder if it really is, or if Wyndham is just really adept at making it look easy.
I read the 1st chaper. So..(view spoiler)
I'm not looking for the translation of all the words, but the meaning is understood anyway.
I started the 2nd chapter and I'm reading about a long digression on the island.
Okay, we finally have it: a utopic community is to be constructed on some South Pacific desert isle.This is certainly a common setting in Weird fiction literature. I mean, from our group's bookshelf alone, we see it in Annihilation, The Other Side of the Mountain, and even Dagon. It's a common feature in Weird TV series (and films) as well, for instance the heavily panned Netflix series (I feel so guilty for liking) called The I-Land, and of course the famous Dharma Initiative from Lost.
What's truly odd about Wyndham's take on this is bringing the religion angle into it. Like controversy much? Wyndham's character, Fox, starts with the premise of God making man in his own image as reason to build this utopia and takes off from there. So much in Christian theology in its past did the same. Take Mormons believing in their perfectability resulting not in just an island, but their own planet. Mormons didn't get this from a vacuum either; milder versions of the same goal of the eventual perfectability of man and becoming Christ-like is in every other denomination's theology. What seems oddest to me in this claim is that man is so many more times in Christian theology recognized as unable possibly to ever be able to achieve anything like perfection. Everywhere else we read about what sinners we are and can't help ourselves from being.
And man's "failure" isn't just on the macro, societal level either. On the personal, micro, level we at our lives' ends, if they arise from old age, die typically unable to control our bowel movements, unable to walk, and often unable to remember who we are, much less who our loved ones ever were. We lose virtually every aspect of what made us human. How much farther from perfect could we pale, wrinkled, arthritic shadows of our former selves be?
Anyway, Wyndham gives us food for thought, no dobt. Where can this society, premised on such faulty ground, be headed? Let's sail for Tanakuatua and find out.
9 degrees north 170 degrees west is Wyndham's location for Tanakuatua. That's 518 miles (833 km) from the nearest land, which looks like Oahu to the northeast.
I just finished the adult version of the novel. What a disturbing yet plausible read! I would classify the book as 85% horror, 10% science fiction, and 5% weird. But I liked it. My review tomorrow will give the book four stars.My review won't contain anything about the book's weirdness or lack thereof. So I'll say why I feel that way here. At first, I thought the book might be weird fiction. There was some mysterious force operating behind the man-eating spiders, which along with island cannibals were the antagonists. But by the end everything is explained, tied up in a pretty bow ribbon as it were, and there was nothing really alien, nothing supernatural, nothing mysterious going on after all. Weird fiction to be weird has to have some element of that.
In any event, it was close enough to be of interest to the group, I think, and I'm glad we read it. It's a worthy addition to Wyndham's ouvre for sure and I'm so grateful to his estate for bringing it forth and for the group member who nominated it last month for us to read.
Upon further reflection, I discovered I like this novel even more than I thought I did. My review, if you're interested: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I'm in chapter two now (way behind) and my goodness it really front-loads the exposition.... that's it, that's the entire thought.
Thom wrote: "I'm in chapter two now (way behind) and my goodness it really front-loads the exposition.... that's it, that's the entire thought."
You're not the only one who thought so. In the child's reader version they greatly condensed chapter 2 and put it near the end of the story. Most editors would probably try to get Mr. Wyndham to do the same if he were around to work with. To take that step unilaterally with him already passed would be criminal IMO. I agree with leaving it alone. Chapter 2 grew on me later.
I finished it last night, and I really think getting the backstory from the natives as the narrator got it would have made it that much more eerie. As it was, I was sure I was going to have dreams of mist-like webs over my neighborhood or something, but no. It was a perfect set-up, and I wish it were longer. (view spoiler)
I forget where I was, but I was really getting into it, man vs nature and all that, when I checked the page count and found myself near the end. I think this would be great on the big screen, but it feels like too many movies have already mined this idea for it to be as impactful as it should be.
As an author myself, I like to steal only from the best, and the thing with the spiders here is ripe for the plucking. Expect to see it in future works, ha. I think I even have a title, World Wide Web DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE
Weird Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
Annihilation (other topics)The Other Side of the Mountain (other topics)
Dagon (other topics)
Web (other topics)
Web (other topics)
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It's not that I don't like John Wyndham. I, in fact, emphatically do enjoy his work. I have read three to completion and started two others which I plan to return to when I can do them justice. Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos is if not in my top ten of all time favorite novels certainly in my top twenty. But we aren't reading straight science fiction here with Web.
So, why are we reading this? The simple answer is because when I researched the book, which I never before heard of, I discovered it's not actually just science fiction. Yes, 90 GoodReaders classify it as such. But then, Wyndham is thought of as an SF writer. Seven readers consider it horror. Three others, fantasy. Crossing genres is a characteristic of weird fiction.
Also, Wyndham's SF is soft SF, at best, seldom hard, and when it is hard, it fails, even as SF. The Midwich Cuckoos, for example, has a lot of elements of weird in it. The invading aliens are never fully explained. We don't know the full scope of their powers. There is a lot of weird elements in even Wyndham's straightest SF. And this book does not look like an attempt at straight SF.
From the Wikipedia article on the book, I gather that Wyndham is playing around with making a statement on British colonialism, a statement that doesn't work for some reason. The book thus was therefore never published in his lifetime. His estate put it out in 1979, some ten years after his 1969 death.
Apparently the charm of the book lies in something other than a Wyndham heavy-handed, post-colonial critique of his country's exploitations. The plot also discusses an attempt to create a utopia on some now deserted island that became the site of nuclear explosion tests. There's a bunch of mutant spiders running around the island? I've read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time. Is this like a precursor or influence for that novel? Color me curious to find out what's going on here.
Let's begin reading it June 1, if you can get your hands on a copy. It's easier to find used copies in Britain (using bookfinder.com) than America. But plenty exist in both countries for under $10, tax and postage included. That's less expensive than the $12 Kindle version not set to be released until mid-July of this year. So don't wait. Buy used and join us instead.