The weird A compendium of strange and dark stories

Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* In the 1990s, a new kind of genre story seemed to have sprung up. It was frightening but seldom gory; either not quite as realistic as or less fantastic than it initially promised; very short on monsters no matter how monstrous it got; eerie but just about never ghostly (at least, no ghosts horned into the act); creepy even when it decided to be funny; and un-, far more than super-, natural. The VanderMeers, wife and husband editors of this doorstopper, were in the front rank of those fostering what Jeff explains in the introduction was actually a revival of a fictional manner with roots in the early twentieth century and grand masters who spent their lives ignored and unpublished while setting standards for the manner in America and Europe, respectively. Those two were, of course, H. P. Lovecraft and Franz Kafka, a classic by each of whom The Dunwich Horror and In the Penal Colony appears herein alongside other stellar performances by writers who have faded from top best-sellerdom into obscurity (F. Marion Crawford, Hugh Walpole); are literary stars of the highest magnitude (Rabindranath Tagore, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Jorge Luis Borges); live through only one unforgettable story; and who busily augment the worldwide catalog of weird stories as this is written (most of the contributors). No popular-fiction library should not have this treasure trove.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Ambitious in the extreme, the Vandermeers' latest genre-blurring endeavor (after Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded), which compiles 110 weird stories from the past century, is one of the most far-reaching and inclusive speculative anthologies to ever see print. Alongside familiar names-from Lovecraft and Kafka to Link and Kiernan-the Vandermeers unveil a menagerie of obscure authors and impressive stories from around the world. These short works and novel excerpts explore every definition of weird, including Borges's surreality ("The Aleph"), Shirley Jackson's slow descent into darkness ("The Summer People"), Octavia E. Butler's subtly horrific SF ("Bloodchild"), and Michael Chabon's ornate unease ("The God of Dark Laughter"). This standard-setting compilation is a deeply affectionate and respectful history of speculative fiction's blurry edges, and its stunning diversity, excellent quality, and extremely reasonable price point (even more so for the $29.99 trade paperback and $14.99 e-book) will entice a wide variety of readers-including those who think they don't like "weird." (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

From the slow-building creepiness of H.P. Lovecraft's classic "The Dunwich Horror" to eerie stories by lesser-known authors like Michel Bernanos ("The Other Side of the Mountain") and Michal Ajvaz ("The End of the Garden"), the 110 stories in this massive compendium illustrate a type of literature that is not wholly compatible with either the fantasy or horror labels but, instead, falls into a category best described as "the weird." Marked primarily by eeriness of atmosphere or strangeness of subject matter, these stories range from ghost stories (e.g., Olympe Bhely-Quenum's "A Child in the Bush of Ghosts") to the surrealism found in Kathe Koja's "Angels in Love." Fans of Stephen King, Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury, Jorge Luis Borges, Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Poppy Z. Brite, Joyce Carol Oates, and other past and contemporary authors will find selections to please them or to introduce them to a new aspect of their favorite author. Arranged in chronological order, from 1908 to 2010, each story features a biographical introduction and brief commentary. Verdict All in all, this is a solid anthology for aficionados of the altogether weird. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

THE WEIRD: TABLE OF CONTENTS   Alfred Kubin, "The Other Side" (excerpt), 1908 F. Marion Crawford, "The Screaming Skull," 1908 Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows," 1907 Saki, "Sredni Vashtar," 1910 M.R. James, "Casting the Runes," 1911 Lord Dunsany, "How Nuth Would Have Practiced his Art," 1912 Gustav Meyrink, "The Man in the Bottle," 1912 Georg Heym, "The Dissection," 1913 Hanns Heinz Ewers, "The Spider," 1915 Rabindranath Tagore, "The Hungry Stones," 1916 Luigi Ugolini, "The Vegetable Man," 1917 A. Merritt, "The People of the Pit," 1918 Ryunosuke Akutagawa, "The Hell Screen," 1918 Francis Stevens, "Unseen---Unfeared," 1919 Franz Kafka, "In the Penal Colony," 1919 Stefan Grabinski, "The White Weyrak," 1921 H.F. Arnold, "The Night Wire," 1926 H.P. Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror," 1929 Margaret Irwin, "The Book," 1930 Jean Ray, "The Mainz Psalter ," 1930 Jean Ray, "The Shadowy Street," 1931 Clark Ashton Smith, "Genius Loci," 1933 Hagiwara Sakutoro, "The Town of Cats," 1935 Hugh Walpole, "The Tarn," 1936 Bruno Schulz, "Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass," 1937 Robert Barbour Johnson, "Far Below," 1939 Fritz Leiber, "Smoke Ghost," 1941 Leonora Carrington, "White Rabbits," 1941 Donald Wollheim, "Mimic," 1942 Ray Bradbury, "The Crowd," 1943 William Sansom, "The Long Sheet," 1944 Jorge Luis Borges, "The Aleph," 1945 Olympe Bhely-Quenum, "A Child in the Bush of Ghosts," 1949 Shirley Jackson, "The Summer People," 1950 Margaret St. Clair, "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles," 1951 Robert Bloch, "The Hungry House," 1951 Augusto Monterroso, "Mister Taylor," 1952 Amos Tutuola, "The Complete Gentleman," 1952 Jerome Bixby, "It's a Good Life," 1953 Julio Cortazar, "Axolotl," 1956 William Sansom, "A Woman Seldom Found," 1956 Charles Beaumont, "The Howling Man," 1959 Mervyn Peake, "Same Time, Same Place," 1963 Dino Buzzati, "The Colomber," 1966 Michel Bernanos, "The Other Side of the Mountain," 1967 Merce Rodoreda, "The Salamander," 1967 Claude Seignolle, "The Ghoulbird," 1967 Gahan Wilson, "The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be," 1967 Daphne Du Maurier, "Don't Look Now," 1971 Robert Aickman, "The Hospice," 1975 Dennis Etchison, "It Only Comes Out at Night," 1976 James Tiptree Jr., "The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Terrible Things to Rats," 1976 Eric Basso, "The Beak Doctor," 1977 Jamaica Kincaid, "Mother," 1978 George R.R. Martin, "Sandkings," 1979 Bob Leman, "Window," 1980 Ramsey Campbell, "The Brood," 1980 Michael Shea, "The Autopsy," 1980 William Gibson/John Shirley, "The Belonging Kind," 1981 M. John Harrison, "Egnaro," 1981 Joanna Russ, "The Little Dirty Girl," 1982 M. John Harrison, "The New Rays," 1982 Premendra Mitra, "The Discovery of Telenapota," 1984 F. Paul Wilson, "Soft," 1984 Octavia Butler, "Bloodchild," 1984 Clive Barker, "In the Hills, the Cities," 1984 Leena Krohn, "Tainaron," 1985 Garry Kilworth, "Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands," 1987 Lucius Shepard, "Shades," 1987 Harlan Ellison, "The Function of Dream Sleep," 1988 Ben Okri, "Worlds That Flourish," 1988 Elizabeth Hand, "The Boy in the Tree," 1989 Joyce Carol Oates, "Family," 1989 Poppy Z Brite, "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood," 1990 Michal Ajvaz, "The End of the Garden," 1991 Karen Joy Fowler, "The Dark," 1991 Kathe Koja, "Angels in Love," 1991 Haruki Murakami, "The Ice Man," 1991 (translation, Japan) Lisa Tuttle, "Replacements," 1992 Marc Laidlaw, "The Diane Arbus Suicide Portfolio," 1993 Steven Utley, "The Country Doctor," 1993 William Browning Spenser, "The Ocean and All Its Devices," 1994 Jeffrey Ford, "The Delicate," 1994 Martin Simpson, "Last Rites and Resurrections," 1994 Stephen King, "The Man in the Black Suit," 1994 Angela Carter, "The Snow Pavilion," 1995 Craig Padawer, "The Meat Garden," 1996 Stepan Chapman, "The Stiff and the Stile," 1997 Tanith Lee, "Yellow and Red," 1998 Kelly Link, "The Specialist's Hat," 1998 Caitlin R. Kiernan, "A Redress for Andromeda," 2000 Michael Chabon, "The God of Dark Laughter," 2001 China Mieville, "Details," 2002 Michael Cisco, "The Genius of Assassins," 2002 Neil Gaiman, "Feeders and Eaters," 2002 Jeff VanderMeer, "The Cage," 2002 Jeffrey Ford, "The Beautiful Gelreesh," 2003 Thomas Ligotti, "The Town Manager," 2003 Brian Evenson, "The Brotherhood of Mutilation," 2003 Mark Samuels, "The White Hands," 2003 Daniel Abraham, "Flat Diana," 2004 Margo Lanagan, "Singing My Sister Down," 2005 T.M. Wright, "The People on the Island," 2005 Laird Barron, "The Forest," 2007 Liz Williams, "The Hide," 2007 Reza Negarestani, "The Dust Enforcer," 2008 Micaela Morrissette, "The Familiars," 2009 Steve Duffy, "In the Lion's Den," 2009 Stephen Graham Jones, "Little Lambs," 2009 J. Robert Lennon, "The Portal," 2010 K.J. Bishop, "Saving the Gleeful Horse," 2010 Excerpted from The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories by Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---