THE WEIRD was compiled and edited by Hugo Award-winner Ann VanderMeer and World Fantasy Award-winner Jeff VanderMeer. They have recently co-edited such anthologies as Best American Fantasy; Best American Fantasy 2; Steampunk; Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded; The New Weird; Last Drink Bird Head; Fast Ships, Black Sails; and The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. They are the co-authors of The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals: The Evil Monkey Dialogues. Jeff's latest books include Finch, a World Fantasy and Nebula Award-finalist; the short story collection The Third Bear; the non-fiction collection Monstrous Creatures; the coffee table book The Steampunk Bible (co-authored with S. J. Chambers); and the writing guide Booklife. Ann is the editor-in-chief of Weird Tales magazine, the oldest fantasy magazine in the world, and is a regular contributor to the popular science fiction and fantasy web-site io9. Together, they have been profiled by National Public Radio and online at WIRED. com and the New York Times's Arts Beat blog. Both active teachers, they have taught at the Clarion and Odyssey writing workshops and the teen summer camp Shared Worlds, where Jeff serves as the assistant director. They live in Tallahassee, Florida, with too many books and four cats.
"What is good about the majority of these stories is precisely that they leave you with many more questions than answers, the mark, in my view, of a superior kind of fiction... It does, in fact, what most of our best fiction does, irrespective of category." --Award-winning author Michael Moorcock, from his introduction "These texts, dead and/or not, burrow, and we cannot predict everything they will infect or eat their path through. But certainly your brain, and they will eat the books you read from today on, too. That is how the Weird recruits." --China Mi�ville, bestselling and award-winning author of Embassytown, from his afterword "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! Hurl your puny mortal body through the portal the VanderMeers have opened for you, join your lord the Mi�ville on the other side, give your heart and soul to the saints that stand at his feet, to the mad prophets that have prepared you for his coming. Open the pages of the new gospel of The Weird." --Guardian.co.uk "Unmissable!" --The Guardian "The definitive collection of weird fiction... its success lies in its ability to lend coherence to a great number of stories that are so remarkable different and yet share the same theme." --TLS
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.
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.
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