Weird Fiction

I'm recently getting into the genre and hope to get some discussion and recommendations going.

>>1240 h.p. lovecraft, thomas ligotti, arthur machen, lord dunsay, t.e.d. klein, and ramsey campbell

>>1251

> Weird Fiction ...is a bit vague. Maybe you should list some examples you do know. Have you read any J.L. Borges?

>>1252

Well, apart from Howie Lovecraft, I'll pimp Algernon Blackwood, especially "The Willows", and William Hope Hodgson, especially "The House On The Borderland" and the Carnacki, The Ghost Finder stories, and Arthur Machen, especially The Novel Of The White Powder, and Robert W. Chambers' The King In Yellow.

Weird fiction is a bit vague, but i think bot Kafka and Murakami can fit the definition

>>1250 Ligotti is a grosly underated author in my opinion. I second this

>>1253 "Weird fiction" is a genre, HP Lovecraft is probably the most well-known weird fiction author. The term doesn't just mean unusual stories.

The Weird Tales writers were the kings of this. Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, C.L. Moore, and Clark Ashton Smith. But Edgar Allen Poe is still #1. More modern writers in the same vein are William S. Burroughs, Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite.

>>1250 >>1257 Yeah, I was going to recommend Ligotti as well. I would especially recommend checking out "Gas Station Carnivals" "The Bungalow House" and "In a Foriegn Town, in a Foriegn Land". Those are probably my top three... All of his stories are worth a read though.

"The White Hands and Other Weird Tales" by Mark Samuels (2003) One of the few contemporary weird fiction works I have read that felt good.

This seems like a good opportunity to bring up The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen Here's an analysis of the work https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7WksGtYQvWA And a HorrorBabble audio performance of it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GW2q07Z8qeo

>>1959 It's hard for me to see Burroughs and Barker 8n the weird fiction vein. Maybe I've been too influenced by the films, but Barker seems more straight-up horror with a bit of psychedelic fantasy and Burroughs was basically drug-indiced psychosis. Maybe there's some crossover, but they never quite felt like Weird Fiction to me.

Heinlein. Plenty of weird if you read all his books. Well its not weird to me but try to discuss the ideas in 'Stranger in a strange land' to a 'normal' and see how far you get. Its on many 'normal' reading lists but to actually talk to people about it....lol

>>2826 I don't know if people remember this, but years ago people tried to recruit college students into a free love society based on Stranger in a Strange Land. I remember walking by the local bulletin board in my building and seeing a manifesto pinned there. A classmate told me if he ever met the guy who put that manifesto there, the classmate would beat him. So much for free love, I guess...

What do people think about New Weird or New Weird writers like China Mieville? I feel like I always trend towards older works by the likes of Lovecraft and Machen rather than the newer work by newer writers.

>>2828 China Mieville is fuarrrking awesome.

>>2829 Any recommendations for someone new to his works?

What do people think of August Derleth's connection to Lovecraft's works? I ask because I've just read an article by S.T. Joshi, a Lovecraft scholar, denigrating a book that was meant to defend Derleth against critics that accuse him of riding on Lovecraft's coattails. Here's the link: http://stjoshi.org/review_haefele.html

>>2837 at first I thought you said Dirichlet and I was really confused

Can be Borges characterized as weird fiction? A somewhat common situation that ends in an intricate space-time maze.

>>2839 Borges was more of a straight-up surrealist, a direction brought about by his failing eyesight and subsequent compensation through imagination-based symbology and abstraction. Weird is more of hybrid of gothic horror mixed with science and a healthy dose of wtf-is-going-on-I-don't-understand

>>2831 The Bas Lag trilogy which, excluding some very minor references, can be read in any order you choose.

>>1254 mayhaps you would like grabinski's "the dark domain" or for a more post apocalyptic theme, "the slynx" which is similar in atmosphere to metro2033 or roadside picnic with radioactive mutants and was written by a relative of leo tolstoy, one of russias greatest authors