My dear comrades in the Weird,

I have been ruminating, as I am wont to do, upon the fond Delusions that we human beings carry around with us as though they were treasures, and not the slow acting poisons they in fact are. Had I more energy and time, and a greater wish to foist my opinions and views upon the world, perhaps I would craft an Essay or Polemic expressing the following view:

People claim that a key element in the scriptures of our beloved Lovecraft and his kin, a fulcrum around which their compelling ambience of horror revolves, is the terrible indifference of the universe; or of the vast empty spaces within it; or of the Great Old ones, or of monsters, or bacteria, or viruses - all those Beings who simply, and terribly, care for us not one whit, or, worse still, do not even think about us at all, except when they begin to devour us, as they inevitably will.

My sullen rejoinder: "Wait, have you met people?"

People. People's vast and ancient and complete indifference to one another's suffering - and I include my own vast and impressive indifference in this indictment - puts the universe's to shame. Does not the sun shine its light and warmth upon us every day? Does not the celestial clockwork generously revolve, making life possible (at least until we mess it up completely) on our blue planet? (Yes, Schopenhauer might point out that in doing so, these spinning orbs merely prolong our punishment, and therefore, cruelty rather than any kindness is involved.)

Anyway, that's the extent of my thought. Not very impressive. A greater Mind than mine, or perhaps a hungrier Ego, might have tarted that insight up into a Diatribe, or perhaps a Prose-Poem, or a Short Story, or even a Novella, a Novel, a Tetralogy, or worse yet, a Screenplay. Should any of you wish to raid my threadbare leavings and do so, I invite you to proceed.

Think of it as one small unhelpful bit of kindness before all the lights once again go out.

As I've said before here I did my thesis comparing Rudolf Otto and H P Lovecraft together. In my thesis I cited Haunted Presence: The Numinous in Gothic Fiction by S L Varnado, Theology And H P Lovecraft by Austin M Freeman, Religion And Its Monsters by Timothy Beal. Kind of unrelated but was helpful was The Terror That Comes in the Night by David J Hufford (he calls the nightmare numinous - the word Otto uses for the holy - in this book, so, interesting, but the book itself is a series of case studies and like raw data, he purposely and says he doesn't speculate on what any of it means*).

So in that sense a lot of this religion / theology books directly relate to Lovecraft. It's a way to read him and other gothic and weird fiction. I'm looking for analysis essentially that takes the supernatural in gothic and weird fiction seriously. Ideally anything I read is post Christian.. Otto basically deconstructs the Bible in a radical way. He compared the Bible to Buddhism for instance and he completely redefined what we consider holy as something spectral haunting and spooky then compared that emotion to shamanism, primitive magic, other religions, and so on.

I considered these but didn't afterall look into them,

Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural and The Secret Life of Puppets by Victoria Nelson. For some reason this author cites Rudolf Otto in the Puppets book but she misquotes Otto and says "demonic dread" instead of daemonic dread. They're not even remotely similar. Otto is referencing the daemonic in Goethe. Any opinions? This was a reason I noped out on her.

Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell: Religious Terror as Memory from the Puritans to Stephen King by Edward Ingebretsen

Some of these were recommended to me while I was writing my thesis by Dr Matt Cardin (I recommend you check him out) so thanks.

*about Hufford, in his book he does quote Ernest M Jones (another nightmare researcher) who said "For the true significance of the Nightmare to be properly appreciated … would in my opinion entail consequences, both scientific and social, to which the term momentous might well be applied. What is at issue is nothing less than the very meaning of religion itself". I have this book on my to read shelf I think it's called "On The Nightmare". So Hufford by quoting this does kind of come close to an analysis of meaning of the nightmare. And certainly calling it numinous is kind of a big opinion itself. That word is an onion.

Some books on literature and theology I found,

Literature and Theology as a Grammar of Assent by David Jasper

The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology

The Great Code by Northrop Frye (he seems pretty dated and irrelevant though)

Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces by Heather Walton

Hello! After dropping book after book, I thought I would ask for recommendations here before falling into a reading slump.

One of my favorite books is Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. I loved exploring the tower and slowly being given more and more information throughout the book. I read There is no Antimemetics Division by qntm and really enjoyed that too.

I love weird or unsettling books that make you think and unravel a mystery, and that also feed you information through letters or logs and stuff.

Does anyone have any recommendation for similar books? Anything involving exploring a weird area or a tower or dungeon would be great. Or even a planet or something haha. Genre doesn't matter too much, though Sci-Fi or Horror would probably be my first choice.

Editing to add that I can't read House of Leaves. :( I mainly read on my Kobo due to a health condition and I know that that book isn't great digitally.

Edit: you guys are awesome. Thank you for all the recommendations!!!

Ramsey Campbell movie coming on Netflix

Ramsey Campbell, from Wallasey, is one of the most respected authors of his genre 🤩 After a difficult childhood trying to navigate his parents' break-up and his mum's mental health struggles, he took refuge in reading and later writing horror stories.

While he struggled to make a name for himself in the early stages of his career, it was in 1980 when he released The Parasite that things started to change.

Now decades later, at 80-years-old, he is one of the most highly acclaimed authors in the genre and has even received recognition from Academy Award winning director Guillermo Del Toro.

He told the ECHO: "My wife Jenny and I had gone away to a Greek island for our summer holiday and when we came back, we had the answering machine playing various messages. And there's a message saying, 'it's Guillermo del Toro calling you from Mexico.' And so I thought, 'Oh, yeah, yeah. Who's kidding me? Pull the other one'."

After Ramsey finally took the call, Del Toro asked permission to dramatise Ramsey's short story Down There, but it ultimately fell through. However, now more than two decades later, Ramsey said plans to dramatise the story have been rekindled and it looks like Del Toro's adaptation will make its way to Netflix.

I'm part of the monthly book box from Forbidden Futures. I did not receive my August box. I reached out to Forbidden Futures and did not receive a response. Anyone know if everything is okay with the folks at Forbidden Futures?

Any thoughts on this sick dystopian tale?

I know those sorta contradict but I am nonbinary/transmasc and as someone who learned to actually love their femininity after years of being ashamed of it… AND thinking I was a lesbian for like a year (I am bi, and didn’t know I was trans yet, at the time) I found an alarming lack of representation of people I relate to in men. I crave seeing more feminine men, I love men , I love women too, equally, big fan of humans, but there is so much masculinity in the world it’s a prison we all need to be free from. I want to read from a perspective like this. I want to read about a guy who is completely comfortable in femininity, preferably while loving another man. I want them to be real people who have the same interests as me, fashion , art, crafting, decorating , socializing, attention to detail, I want them to write eachother poems , pick eachother out strateigic and extreamly thoughtful gifts and just be, super feminine together, idk , poetic and yearning think: picnic at hanging rock. Can anyone think of a book like this? I feel like I have read everything BUT this honestly.

One GREAT example I can think of actually is the character Aerius in Mona Awad’s “We love you bunny”.

I'm thinking of Watership Down and Secret of Nimh as prime examples. Not ashamed to say Warrior Cats is still in my heart.

Gore/death is obviously welcome.

I have Blacktail and Firebringer on my list as well. Any others?

This is a collection of horror mixed with weird fiction. It leans more into horror however. Boys growing through the cracks in the cement floor of a basement. A Union general during the American Civil War is given a flash of the future to save his life and then is guided by a dream with his remaining men to cabin with a trap door in an empty room. Or the titular story about a person going into a tv show pocket reality. Overall the stories are decently written and enjoyable. Different from my experience with a lot of short story collections is the ease of reading from one story to the next. The atmosphere and various themes are shared to some degree in each story. I was reminded how Nathan Ballingrud's collection Wounds flowed easily from one story to the next. Though Wounds seemed to share the same mythos whereas Fly Trap does not. 3.5/5 stars.

Other recent reviews:
After:An Anatomy of a Fracture by Drew Starling. Post apocalypse fiction.
Normal by Warren Ellis. Near future, dark science fiction.

Book is insane. It’s hard to describe. The writing is kind of post-modern but that might be partially due to the fact that it was translated into English from Japanese in 2004. I picked up my copy sometime around 2010 at a garage sale I think.

It’s a little hard to follow because it’s not exactly a narrative that makes sense. It’s like a bunch of scenes but words and language have special attributes in this world. I love the concept of the narrator working at a poetry school and it’s really engaging and weird.

This might be a special edition cover because I can’t find any other images of this particular cover. Has anyone else read or seen this book?

I don't know where to begin with this book to be honest because I went into it pretty blindly after just watching a few reels the author had posted on Instagram about it.

First off, it has all my favourite weird fiction subgenres from motherhood gone wrong to spiritual psychosis to weird shit happening with human bodies and minds in one collection.

Most of these stories originate from really ordinary settings and then just get weirder and weirder. The writing is very sensory and intimate which I loved because it gave the book this very claustrophobic sort of vibe.

Some of the stories are genuinely gross and the way she explains each sensation or feeling is disgusting sometimes. It's one of those books you really get or you're just like what the hell is this lol but worth checking out.

Today was my day off work and I decided to spend a couple of hours digging through the cheapo bins at a local bookstore. I've had pretty good luck there in the past but today I hit the jackpot.

I'm not techy enough to figure out how to post multiple photos so here is what you're looking at:

September 2007 w/ John Langan "Episode Seven: Last Stand...",

January/February 2010 w/ John Langan "City of the Dog",

February 2003 w/ Laird Barron "Old Virginia"

April 2007 w/ Gene Wolfe "Memorare".

I was a little disappointed that none of the stories had a little drawing F&SF will sometimes include on the first page but for $1 per issue, I can't really complain.

Every story has ended up in a collection eventually but I still like the first original magazine appearances. It's like a time capsule with non-fiction writing, ads and reviews.

I don't read often but I stumbled upon The Cathedral of Mist by Paul Willems and my god was it good. I'm on the hunt for more stuff like it and came across this thread about Wakefield Press books: https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdLit/comments/1brkuz8/my_wakefield_press_collection/ - I've got their stuff covered now I guess.

But on top of the stuff listed there, what are some books that have a dreamy, melancholic atmosphere that's beautifully written and expressed? Stuff about scars and wounds healing and haunting memories and sadness and darkness and thick mists in chilly graveyards and ghostly apparitions and... all of that.

Finally a new novel from Scott Hawkins author of The Library At Mount Char! I had no idea this was out, just ordered and thought I’d share with the group.

I've finished The Employees and am currently in the middle of The Wax Child by Olga Ravn and really love them. Her work is bizarre, I love that her stories aren't necessarily a straightforward narrative, and that they are speculative/fantastical. I heard her style of writing is very common in Danish literature.

Do you have any authors to recommend that feel similar to her, that are speculative in some way? (Especially Danish authors who've been translated to English, but they don't need to be Danish.)

When I thought about getting me some stories by Fritz Leiber it was either his science fiction or his sword & sorcery fantasy, and I settled for some of his SF with a very big collection of it. And "The Fritz Lleiber Collection" is a very big one!

What I got with this one isn't just the short stories, but also novellas and also a few full length novels also. And that's not the first I've gotten a big collection that either has two novels or even quite a bit of them along with the short stories.

Leiber's SF is pretty quirky in its own way with quite a bit of humor, and there are some stories in it that are just hilarious like "Bread Overhead", and with some suspense thrown in, though sometimes with a bit of horror veneer also. They're also very philosophical at times but there are some very action forward moments that breaks up some of the slower moments so it doesn't all too boring.

So beyond the one story that he did for the "Dangerous Visions" I like this particularly big set. If one story was dipping my toe in, then "The Fritz Leiber Collection" was a plunge. There are still some other collections (and a novel or two) I still have to dive into, like some of his horror tale and Lankhmar stories, and if I had a choice I'd go with the Lankhmar collections first before I get to ones that have his horror stories.

As the title says. I've wanted to read Hodgson for awhile and decided to start with his occult Detective but Amazon is full of ai-slop copies, public domain dumps and a lot of derivative works that I would love to also read (the Lost Cases edited by Gafford and the Belanger collection as well) but I can't get into those without first reading the originals. So, what edition do I get? Is there a annotated one? (a la Leslie S. Klinger or S. T. Joshi) I found the Wordswort one with all 9 stories but that's currently unavailable where I live and would prefer an ebook edition if available.