He had wise blood like his daddy. Her way of seeing the world and the ability of her stories to mix comedy, tragedy, satire and horror, are similar in sensibility to the screenplays of the Coen Brothers. It was shot by the legendary director John Huston but not made until , long after her untimely death.
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She has the knack of crafting the extraordinary from the ordinary and can, to an extent, be seen as working in the Southern Gothic tradition. She also has the skill of creating a great title that makes you yearn to read the story: She is a beautifully drawn character. Aged thirty-two, overweight and with a Ph. D in philosophy, she has changed her name from Joy to Hulga to almost revel in her own ungainliness, as well as to spite her mother. When a young Bible salesman comes calling, Hulga is certain that she will be his seducer.
She only wants to use this traveller to finally experience sex and has no emotional feelings for him whatsoever. However, when the couple head for the hayloft, she has failed to consider that this man might harbour a concealed motive of his own. It is only when he has stolen away with her artificial leg, leaving her trapped in the hayloft, that she realises that it is after all she who has been seduced and tricked by the trophy hunter.
When all of him had passed but his head, he turned and regarded her with a look that no longer had any admiration in it. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born! I had this story in mind when I wrote my own short play Undone , in which a young woman recently cured of button phobia invites a man back to her place, but her desires are actually focused around his buttons rather than him. A man who has always used his tattoos to impress women ends up falling for and marrying the only woman unmoved by them.
Works by Jeff VanderMeer. Veniss Underground Shriek: City of Saints and Madmen Retrieved from " https: Weird fiction Tor Books books short story collections. Pages to import images to Wikidata. Views Read Edit View history. This page was last edited on 11 September , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. I Can't Believe It's Not the Necronomicon More authors are included in this book then may be listed in this database but all of the first lines of each story are listed here.
Read it here , carefully, as it is fairly representational of the wide range of tones which this tome holds. Then there are seemingly-normal tales of mystery like Margaret Irwin 's The Book. Some of the stories are in the public domain but near I Can't Believe It's Not the Necronomicon More authors are included in this book then may be listed in this database but all of the first lines of each story are listed here. Some of the stories are in the public domain but nearly all are accompanied by a brief note as to why they were selected.
Disturbing image to further convey the weirdness of this book, courtesy of PETA warning, clicking the spoiler will spoil yr appetite but not the book: All in all, it's a lot of fun but also rather serious. The editors did their homework here and it definitely shows. Not something you want to fall asleep reading as you may be injured by its heft. I have not read all the stories within this massive tome of awesome. I'm quite sure the VanderMeers have designed their book to be consumed in small doses, giving each of the tales time to fester and to inspire.
The greatest power this compendium wields is to bring to the reader's attention a myriad of lessor-known masters. Consider it a test bag handed to you by a drug dealer. Standouts thus far include: Jun 11, Greg marked it as to-read Shelves: Don't vote for this, it's a review in progress This book is gigantic. It's like a thousand pages long, but each page has at least two of a normal books amount of words on it. So this is really like a two thousand page book. It's going to take awhile to get through.
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Some of the stories in this collection are actually novellas, and some of them are available on their own. When they are I'm going to review them on their own and just link to them. That way I'll save space in this review, and get to i Don't vote for this, it's a review in progress This book is gigantic. That way I'll save space in this review, and get to inflate the number of books I've read and reviews I've written.
All but one of the people of a city fall asleep and when they wake up animals have begun to populate the town. Sounds like a great set up for a novel, right? I'm curious to read the rest of this, although Mariel described it as so boring that she could see the nerves on the back of her eyes so maybe I won't be trying to full novel anytime soon. Kubin ran in some of the same circles as Kafka and there are similarities, especially in say the tiger scene.
Or maybe it was all the rage in Eastern Europe at the time to have tigers stalking around inside of government buildings and churches. Marion Crawford - Screaming Skull 2 stars http: Algernon Blackwood - The Willows 3 stars http: Saki - Sredni Vashtar 4 stars The shortest of the stories so far in the collection and the most satisfying. Any story that features a polecat-ferret being worshipped as a god is good with me.
Plus there is no unspeakable horrors or overly psychological melodrama in this one. James - Casting the Runes 4 stars The story is fairly typical for the genre, but I could be just projecting from the benefit of reading this a hundred and one years after it was first published. I'm fairly sure that the basic structure was used in at least one of Joss Whedon's TV shows.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
I was happy with this story. Henry stories, but this is kind of what I'd expect him to write if he was going to write about a thief robbing emeralds from some of scary Fae in Ireland. If I were an English teacher I'd probably want to use this story to discuss the role of a narrator in a short-story, I'm not though, and I'm trying to keep these mini-reviews short, so I'll just make mention that the narrator is a peculiar choice for this story and the question of reliability can be brought up.
I think that a film adaptation of this story could be awesome, but as a story it left me really cold. There are some great gruesome images but I didn't quite see the point in turning it to a 'story' instead of keeping it as a poem. Georg Heym - The Spider 4 Stars I'd never read of Heym before, apparently he flirted with the Nazi's for a while in their initial rise to power and then broke ties with them over the Jewish Question and their opinions on homosexuals. The Nazi's banned his books as a result and ruined him.
Posterity then continued to ruin him by forever equating him with his brief affair with Hitler and company. I enjoyed this story even though it sort of runs the same trail as some of the earlier stories in this book that I didn't care for so much. The rational scientific man gets caught up with super-natural forces that he wants to have a physical explanation for but eventually realizes that they are beyond anything he can explain.
This story makes me think that I like the premises of this type of story but it's the writing style that is keeping me from really enjoying some of these writers. This was a good one. Maybe I'll go back and four stories I forgot to rate, and maybe even review these other stories I got distracted from writing about. Jean Ray - The Shadowy Street 2. It had some of the same features of other stories, the structure of the narrative being told as a 'found manuscript', some of the stylistic flourishes of the 'old school' horror writers.
I'm thinking that this book is going to get better for me soon as we move into the 's and soon leave behind the 19th century influences. What is scarier than this story? The four military people singing "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch of the fourth game of the World Series.
View all 18 comments. Sep 06, Orrin Grey rated it it was amazing. I didn't actually read every word of The Weird. Some were stories I'd read before, others I just didn't get to. I hunted and pecked around, and this is ultimately a book that'll reward many returns, but I don't need to have read all of it to throw five stars its way. This is exactly what it aims to be, a pretty definitive compendium of a certain subgenre of fiction, and since that's a particular subgenre that's very near-and-dear to my own weird heart, I found this massive tome inspiring, and pr I didn't actually read every word of The Weird.
This is exactly what it aims to be, a pretty definitive compendium of a certain subgenre of fiction, and since that's a particular subgenre that's very near-and-dear to my own weird heart, I found this massive tome inspiring, and probably also indispensable. Mar 30, The Literary Chick rated it it was amazing Shelves: Fantastic, all, from writers obscure and well known.
Every story is like falling into a dream. Rare for an anthology to be this consistently filled with gems. May 18, Alice M. Every story I've read so far hits that sweet spot in the middle of experimental, magical realist, fantasy, horror, and literary that I love so much. Mar 26, Andy rated it it was amazing. And this is easily one of the best horror anthologies I've ever read. It's both entertaining and informative to see how the "weird tale" has changed over time, it seems to me we are living in the best time for weird fiction in probably half a century.
It's true not everything here is a masterpiece, I didn't care for many of the non-western weird stories which seemed to go nowhere, nor for the far more bizarre stories which appear occasionally. But these are typically short. Many of these stories challenge the reader but I always looked forward to diving into whatever was next, and was consistently rewarded.
The Screaming Skull - F. Marion Crawford - Read this story years ago, very atmospheric, fireside type tale. A man tells how he is haunted by a skull which seems to move by itself, returns when thrown away, and has a wickedly malefic temprament. The Willows - Algernon Blackwood - Lovecraft considered it the best "weird tale" ever written, certainly it does subtly, yet effectively get at a very outre-ness.
Two men stranded on a small island in the Danube River find themselves dogged by an unseen, alien force. After three men hang themselves in an Parisian apartment, a doctor, trying to make a name for himself decides to stay there. At first nothing happens, but he becomes infatuated with a woman across the street who begins to have a psychic control over his will. A botanist tells how he discovers a rare species of plant in the jungle which has seemingly infected him with plant cells which are replacing his own.
The dark tales of the world’s most epic sleep-talker
It's a masterpiece of bizarre Kafka strangeness and social commentary. A group of men gather around a brutal torture machine which is made to punish those who don't even know their crime, but causes a religious epiphany in their final moments. One of the best very short stories in this collection. A group of chimneysweeps become concerned when some of their comrades go missing after cleaning a chimney in an old, closed brewery. The Night Wire - H. Arnold - This is a classic, a very weird story with an odd concept, but has a really good creepiness that I found quite effective. Two night wire operators start getting news of a small town where the people are being pursued and killed by a black fog which originated in a graveyard.
The Dunwich Horror - H. Lovecraft - Oh come on, who hasn't read this one a couple times already? In a small village an old wizard has a son who grows at an amazing rate and delves deeply into the occult. This reminds me of other such weird sea stories by Hodgson for example, but this one was surprisingly good for being lesser-known. A crew find themselves transported into another, menacing dimension after they agree to work for a strange schoolmaster.
This stuff has great mood and atmosphere, incredibly dream-like and surreal. The end felt a bit random, but I liked this one a lot. A man moves into the sanatorium where his father has been put up, in a town where time has been turned back, and they are running on useless, "worn out" time, it's grey and dark, people sleep constantly.
Far Below - Robert Barbour Johnson - This was a really good one, I thoroughly enjoyed it, it's pretty scary, although most of the horror is hinted at, and the implications of what little info we're given is what really makes the story so memorable. A man working in the New York subway system describes a cannibalistic primitive race of mankind who has burrowed there.
Smoke Ghost - Fritz Leiber - This is another classic, a story cited by Ramsey Campbell as being a big inspiration to him.
It's a very imaginative, unsettling story that brings the ghost story into a 20th century, urban setting. A man becomes haunted after seeing a dirty sack creep closer to him each day across a dingy series of rooftops. Soon the thing creeps out into the open, but for what purpose? It's a Good Life - Jerome Bixby - I really liked this one, it was definitely eerie, a sort of dystopian story, where there's an all-powerful figure and people cannot even think what they want.
Simple concept, but horrible implications. One of the better sci-fi type stories in the collection. Everyone fears little Anthony who can read minds, and do whatever he wants to people with it. Axolotl - Julio Cortazar - Another extremely short, but very original story. A man becomes obsessed with watching axolotl's in an aquarium zoo, believing they are a higher evolved life than we imagine.
It's got an extremely creepy feel to it, and was one of the biggest "page-turners. A couple vacationing in Venice after the death of their young daughter meet two old women who claim to have seen her spirit, and tell them to leave Venice to avert tragedy. The Hospice - Robert Aickman - I wouldn't consider this Aickman's best story, but it's a good example of the unsettling style of a very unappreciated writer. It's a very scary story, a mood of unease settles in quickly, and I could sorta tell where it was going, but I was hoping I was wrong!
A man and wife traveling across a desert stop in at a very strange rest area. The horror here comes from what the man discovers, but also from the efficient, clockwork modern world and it's willingness to be brutal to animals, and people. A man working in a lab tries to avoid doing painful experiments on his rats, but finds his reputation at risk. The Beak Doctor - Eric Basso - OK, warning, this was by far the most challenging piece in the book, and it will not be for all tastes. But I found it rewarding overall. This is a muted, avant-garde piece; moody, pure atmosphere.
It requires patience but does create a real sense of disorientation. I was bored for some stretches, then some semblance of plot, or conversation would bring us out of the dream-like state of it to the surface for a time. A doctor wanders through the foggy streets of a city which is plagued by a sleeping sickness.
Few people are still awake, and those who are attempt to continue with their lives. Sandkings - George R. Martin - This is a masterpiece of sci-fi with some creepy crawly horror, interesting beginning to end and well-written, just a good, fun story. A man acquires some insect-like creatures called Sandkings which build small castles inside a terrarium and feed an ugly "maw" which lives below the sand.
But soon the things get out, start to grow bigger and have an insatiable hunger. It starts out feeling predictable, but then it just takes a totally horrifying turn I didn't see coming at all. A scientist working with telekinesis is swallowed up during his experiments and a Victorian mansion with a family inside is left behind in place of his laboratory. A group of men try to understand this window into another world. A man notes a crazy, sinister old woman who wanders the street in front of his apartment and seems to be collecting animals and taking them into her dilapidated old house across the street.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories by Jeff VanderMeer
I really loved the set up here, lots of weird elements that I had no idea how they would come together, but in the end they did and far better than I would have predicted. After a man enters a mine with a bomb, killing several men, the mortician performing the autopsy discovers he was under the influence of an alien force. The end can be interpreted in a couple ways, I took it down a more disturbing path. A woman encounters a dirty little girl who she starts to feed and take care of, and becomes conscious that the girl must be a ghost, but a very material one. The Function of Dream Sleep - Harlan Ellison - I almost didn't include this in my selection of the BEST here, but this is a very emotional story, actually quite deeply touching for being also quite horrific at times.
A man who has experienced the death of many close friends feels this is tied with a vision he has of waking up to find a huge mouth in his side. The Boy in the Tree - Elizabeth Hand - Good story, but it took me some time to figure out what the heck was going on, we don't get a really full picture until at least half through. In a research lab where wires are hooked up to people's heads who have few emotions, they are able to erase or take on other people's traumatic memories. But one of these memories has a supernatural power which is too much even for the rather numb narrator.
Family - Joyce Carol Oates - This was a brutal, hard, amoral, dystopian story. Perhaps a commentary on the transitory nature of the American family today? A commentary on urbanization and how we have become unmoored from the past. Perhaps just a commentary on how nasty humans are generally -- or are they just trying to survive in a horrible reality?
A family tries to survive as the outside world disintegrates, they get a new father, new siblings, and forget the old ones even existed. I liked how the end was left a bit open-ended although we know everything, there's enough mystery to still wonder about. After a boy goes missing in the woods, an epidemic specialist suspects there's a connection between his disappearance and the sudden appearance of plague in the area.
I thought about this one for days. The characterization and storytelling generally are very involving. An old graveyard being excavated in a town about to be underwater from the building of a dam uncovers a very weird, creepy history. There's such a delicious sense of dread here and mounting suspense. It feels very much influenced by Aickman. A playboy philanderer get stranded in a strange, snowbound mansion full of dolls, and weird, unseen inhabitants.
A man inherits an old gloomy house from his uncle which has caused those who lived there to waste away -- after spilling a drink on some old photographs he discovers why.
Two twins living in a mansion with a dark past with their father get a babysitter who is, oddly enough, very well-acquainted with the house. It's still a great story, nice sense of place here, creepy details. Not sure if the influence is Lovecraft, Ligotti or both. The DA of a small town discovers that a clown horrible murdered in the woods may have been murdered by a mysterious cult. A boy is sent by his mother to see a Mrs Miller who he talks to through a door. She has opened a sort of window of perception, and is seeing patterns of horrors in the things of everyday life.
But most of all I loved the rainy, moldy mood of it. After mankind is besieged by a fungus-apocalypse, an antique dealer takes a risk in acquiring a strange old cage from a house recently taken over by the fungus. It's funny, pulpy and told in a purely matter-of-fact way which makes it even more bizarre and Kafka-esque in it's absurd bureaucratic craziness. A man who had his hand cut off, and cauterized the wound himself is brought to a compound where a cult of men celebrate the removal of body parts, and where he is told to investigate a murder.
Flat Diane - Daniel Abraham - This was an incredibly well-written, touching, page-turning story. Very original idea that comes across convincingly too. A single father traces around his daughter and sends the outline to relatives they can't afford to visit. What happens to the drawing seems to have an influence on the girl -- then the drawing falls into some very sinister hands. The Forest - Laird Barron - I think Barron has written some better work since this book was published, but this is certainly is a good one, and quite original.