The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is now available a a North American ebook from all major retailers, including Amazon.com
. The North American print version comes out in May. The publisher is Tor, and our editor there is Liz Gorinsky. The anthology, which is almost 1,200 pages and includes over 750,000 words of weird fiction, including a couple of short novels, is already being taught at several universities. Here's some of the UK praise for the antho....‘The definitive collection of weird fiction… its success lies in its ability to lend coherence to a great number of stories that are so remarkably different and yet share the same theme’?–?Times Literary Supplement‘Studded with literary gems, it’s a hefty, diligently assembled survey of a genre that manages to be at once unsettling, disorientating and bracing in its variety.’ - James Lovegrove, Financial Times‘It’s a tremendous experience to go through its 1,126 pages… there are so many delights in this that any reader will find something truly memorable’ – Scotland on Sunday‘Readers eager to explore a world beyond the ordinary need look no further’ - Time Out‘An anthology of writing so powerful it will leave your reality utterly shredded…Give yourself to the weird! Open the pages of the new gospel of The Weird.’ – Guardian.co.ukOur new site/magazine Weirdfictionreview.com is made possible by the research we did for The Weird, and you can find this antho-related content there, in addition to over 90 other posts about weird fiction, including lots of stories, essays, and interviews.Uncanny paragraphs from The WeirdA Century of First Lines from the stories in The WeirdThe Weird table of contents, also reproduced below the cut. Please note that for the North American e-book only the Buzzatti stories has been dropped and J. Robert Lennon's "Portal" (2010) added.****More than eighteen nationalities are represented and seven new translations were commissioned for the book, most notably definitive translations, by Gio Clairval, of Julio Cortazar’s “Axolotl” and Michel Bernanos’ short novel “The Other Side of the Mountain” (the first translations of these classics in over fifty years). The publishers believe this is the largest volume of weird fiction ever housed between the covers of one book.Strands of The Weird represented include classic US/UK weird tales, the Belgian School of the Weird, Japanese weird, Latin American weird, Nigerian weird, weird SF, Feminist weird, weird ritual, general international weird, and offshoots of the weird originating with Surrealism, Symbolism, and the Decadent movement.Although anchored in many familiar and iconic names?—?including Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavia Butler, Clive Barker and George R.R. Martin?—?The Weird also gave us an opportunity to showcase several great writers not as well known to readers of the weird. French master of weird fiction Claude Seignolle, for example, is represented herein with “Ghoulbird.” Readers will also be delighted to discover the work of the great Catalan writer Merce Rodoreda (with the phantasmagorical “Salamander”), grotesqueries by English surrealist Leonora Carrington, an excerpt from Kafka precursor Alfred Kubin’s cult classic The Other Side, and Hagiwara Sakutoro’s quintessential rumination on the boundary between reality and the weird, “The Town of Cats.”Other highlights include the short novels / long novellas “The Beak Doctor” by Eric Basso, “Tainaron” by Leena Krohn, and “The Brotherhood of Mutilation” by Brian Evenson.Table of ContentsForeweird by Michael MoorcockIntroduction by the EditorsAfterweird: China MievilleStory order is chronological except for a couple of exceptions transposed for thematic reasons. Stories translated into English are largely positioned by date of first publication in their original language. Authors are North American or from the United Kingdom unless otherwise indicated.Alfred Kubin, “The Other Side” (excerpt), 1908 (translation, Austria)F. Marion Crawford, “The Screaming Skull,” 1908Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows,” 1907Saki, “Sredni Vashtar,” 1910M.R. James, “Casting the Runes,” 1911Lord Dunsany, “How Nuth Would Have Practiced his Art,” 1912Gustav Meyrink, “The Man in the Bottle,” 1912 (translation, Austria)Georg Heym, “The Dissection,” 1913 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Germany)Hanns Heinz Ewers, “The Spider,” 1915 (translation, Germany)Rabindranath Tagore, “The Hungry Stones,” 1916 (India)Luigi Ugolini, “The Vegetable Man,” 1917 (new translation by Anna and Brendan Connell, Italy; first-ever translation into English)A. Merritt, “The People of the Pit,” 1918Ryunosuke Akutagawa, “The Hell Screen,” 1918 (new translation, Japan)Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett), “Unseen?—?Unfeared,” 1919Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony,” 1919 (translation, German/Czech)Stefan Grabinski, “The White Weyrak,” 1921 (translation, Poland)H.F. Arnold, “The Night Wire,” 1926H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror,” 1929Margaret Irwin, “The Book,” 1930Jean Ray, “The Mainz Psalter,” 1930 (translation, Belgium)Jean Ray, “The Shadowy Street,” 1931 (translation, Belgium)Clark Ashton Smith, “Genius Loci,” 1933Hagiwara Sakutaro, “The Town of Cats,” 1935 (translation, Japan)Hugh Walpole, “The Tarn,” 1936Bruno Schulz, “Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass,” 1937 (translation, Poland)Robert Barbour Johnson, “Far Below,” 1939Fritz Leiber, “Smoke Ghost,” 1941Leonora Carrington, “White Rabbits,” 1941Donald Wollheim, “Mimic,” 1942Ray Bradbury, “The Crowd,” 1943William Sansom, “The Long Sheet,” 1944Jorge Luis Borges, “The Aleph,” 1945 (translation, Argentina)Olympe Bhely-Quenum, “A Child in the Bush of Ghosts,” 1949 (Benin)Shirley Jackson, “The Summer People,” 1950Margaret St. Clair, “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles,” 1951Robert Bloch, “The Hungry House,” 1951Augusto Monterroso, “Mister Taylor,” 1952 (new translation by Larry Nolen, Guatemala)Amos Tutuola, “The Complete Gentleman,” 1952 (Nigeria)Jerome Bixby, “It’s a Good Life,” 1953Julio Cortazar, “Axolotl,” 1956 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Argentina)William Sansom, “A Woman Seldom Found,” 1956Charles Beaumont, “The Howling Man,” 1959Mervyn Peake, “Same Time, Same Place,” 1963Dino Buzzati, “The Colomber,” 1966 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Italy)Michel Bernanos, “The Other Side of the Mountain,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)Merce Rodoreda, “The Salamander,” 1967 (translation, Catalan)Claude Seignolle, “The Ghoulbird,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)Gahan Wilson, “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be,” 1967Daphne Du Maurier, “Don’t Look Now,” 1971Robert Aickman, “The Hospice,” 1975Dennis Etchison, “It Only Comes Out at Night,” 1976James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats,” 1976Eric Basso, “The Beak Doctor,” 1977Jamaica Kincaid, “Mother,” 1978 (Antigua and Barbuda/US)George R.R. Martin, “Sandkings,” 1979Bob Leman, “Window,” 1980Ramsey Campbell, “The Brood,” 1980Michael Shea, “The Autopsy,” 1980William Gibson/John Shirley, “The Belonging Kind,” 1981M. John Harrison, “Egnaro,” 1981Joanna Russ, “The Little Dirty Girl,” 1982M. John Harrison, “The New Rays,” 1982Premendra Mitra, “The Discovery of Telenapota,” 1984 (translation, India)F. Paul Wilson, “Soft,” 1984Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild,” 1984Clive Barker, “In the Hills, the Cities,” 1984Leena Krohn, “Tainaron,” 1985 (translation, Finland)Garry Kilworth, “Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands,” 1987Lucius Shepard, “Shades,” 1987Harlan Ellison, “The Function of Dream Sleep,” 1988Ben Okri, “Worlds That Flourish,” 1988 (Nigeria)Elizabeth Hand, “The Boy in the Tree,” 1989Joyce Carol Oates, “Family,” 1989Poppy Z Brite, “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood,” 1990Michal Ajvaz, “The End of the Garden,” 1991 (translation, Czech)Karen Joy Fowler, “The Dark,” 1991Kathe Koja, “Angels in Love,” 1991Haruki Murakami, “The Ice Man,” 1991 (translation, Japan)Lisa Tuttle, “Replacements,” 1992Marc Laidlaw, “The Diane Arbus Suicide Portfolio,” 1993Steven Utley, “The Country Doctor,” 1993William Browning Spenser, “The Ocean and All Its Devices,” 1994Jeffrey Ford, “The Delicate,” 1994Martin Simpson, "Last Rites and Resurrections," 1994Stephen King, “The Man in the Black Suit,” 1994Angela Carter, “The Snow Pavilion,” 1995Craig Padawer, “The Meat Garden,” 1996Stepan Chapman, “The Stiff and the Stile,” 1997Tanith Lee, “Yellow and Red,” 1998Kelly Link, “The Specialist’s Hat,” 1998Caitlin R. Kiernan, “A Redress for Andromeda,” 2000Michael Chabon, “The God of Dark Laughter,” 2001China Mieville, “Details,” 2002Michael Cisco, “The Genius of Assassins,” 2002Neil Gaiman, “Feeders and Eaters,” 2002Jeff VanderMeer, “The Cage,” 2002Jeffrey Ford, “The Beautiful Gelreesh,” 2003Thomas Ligotti, “The Town Manager,” 2003Brian Evenson, “The Brotherhood of Mutilation,” 2003Mark Samuels, “The White Hands,” 2003Daniel Abraham, “Flat Diana,” 2004Margo Lanagan, “Singing My Sister Down,” 2005 (Australia)T.M. Wright, “The People on the Island,” 2005Laird Barron, “The Forest,” 2007Liz Williams, “The Hide,” 2007Reza Negarestani, “The Dust Enforcer,” 2008 (Iran)Micaela Morrissette, “The Familiars,” 2009Steve Duffy, “In the Lion’s Den,” 2009Stephen Graham Jones, “Little Lambs,” 2009K.J. Bishop, “Saving the Gleeful Horse,” 2010 (Australia)
