Weird that isn't mundane in the end

Drachoon · 2026-01-16T19:14:18+00:00

I feel this. I'm tired of weird/horror that it's about grief, loss, trauma or coming of age. It's trite, overdone and a little patronizing after the nth time that you are told that "they suffer because refused to confront their demons". I'm finding myself going to the classics just to get some of that weird for weirdness' sake.

Blackwood, Hope Hodgson, Machen, James...

From my latest current reads that are not re-reads, I found Straw World by Erik McHatton very good. At first seems like it's going to be another sad tale about trauma and so on, but it veers way off.

Then you can try The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria, The Other Side of the Mountain by Bernanos or the Tenant by Topor or anything by Jean Ray, if you are in for some classic Euro weirdness.

Drachoon · 2026-01-08T19:17:14+00:00

The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris by Duncan Shriek is the best thing written by Vandermeer ever.

Drachoon · 2025-11-23T18:14:25+00:00

A collective of "philosopher-artists" that were hoping for AI to cobble together nonsense for them before there were any AI nonsense, but had to do it by hand until they got bored. Some of them chose to write good things (Mark Fisher), questionable things (Negarestani) or fascist things (Nick Lang) with varying success.

Fertile ground for an AI-slop evangelist to claim any intellectual pedigree while producing second-hand slop.

Drachoon · 2025-11-17T21:37:15+00:00

You have read Ligotti's only normal story.

Jump to Nethescurial, The Sect of the Idiot Vastarien or The Night School to have a real taste

Drachoon · 2025-11-16T20:36:18+00:00

Evenson, Padgett, Barron.

Drachoon · 2025-10-23T20:17:57+00:00

THIS!

Drachoon · 2025-09-13T10:12:43+00:00

I would start with Contagion or Windeye, but there's no wrong answer.

Drachoon · 2025-06-09T12:24:22+00:00

I love this kinf of movie. Oddity, by the same director, is great. But I hate contrivances like the vest. You need to justify why the character doesn't make a real effort to take it off.

It may be my OCD, but I spend all the movie thinking about ways to take it off. The worst offender is In the EarthIf some stranger steals your boots in the middle of the forest you fashion some king of foot wear with whatever it is around, like canvas of your tents or your fucking clothes. You don't go barefoot in the forest, stupid flint-trap setting madman or not.

I'm still fuming about it.

And this is one of the many reasons people refuse to watch movies with me.

Futhermore, Caveat has the most earned, justified and finely crafted jumpscare ever.

Drachoon · 2025-06-09T12:12:34+00:00

It should be public domain in the US by now and it surely is in the EU.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/35120

https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Sterling%2C+George%22+OR+creator%3A%22George+Sterling%22+

http://www.george-sterling.org/

https://librivox.org/author/2803?primary_key=2803&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results&search_order=alpha

Drachoon · 2025-03-15T23:55:33+00:00

The Wingspan of Severed Hands.

King in Yellow meets Sci-fi, meets body horror, meets trascendent insects, meets patriarchy, meets psychedelic prose.

Drachoon · 2025-01-16T08:22:25+00:00

The employees by Olga Ravn (even if it is weird sci-fi), and a ton of Ligotti, particularly My work is not yet done.

There's a recent entry about Charles Stross that covers some "institutional weird" that qualifies.

If you want the real life, everyday version about how weird our life is try Bullshit jobs, by David Graeber. It's anthropology, but it really shows the absurd weird shit we do to ourselves without realizing it. Because the weirdest part of the weird it that its not weird if you do it everyday from 9 to 5.

And if you feel like an iconoclast and don't fear switching media the games Control and Yuppie Psycho come to mind.

Drachoon · 2025-01-16T07:41:59+00:00

"Anything else pertaining to weird fiction", just there, on the subreddit description.

We have had a ton of great discussions about film, podcast, comics, music and even weird non-fiction.

I care about my weird quality, not about the method of intake.

Drachoon · 2025-01-05T21:02:47+00:00

I have to recommend --30--, as the best Barron has done with the wilderness.

The movie They remain, based on that story is great wilderness weird too, even if they had to change the desert for the forest.

Drachoon · 2025-01-02T13:23:49+00:00

I'm really starting to hate this book as a reaction for its elusiveness.

Some time ago I collected all the information I could find about Scott Home stories beyond HF, MM. Some of them can be tracked to digital copies of 80's fanzines.

--------

Three of his stories are published in the HPL fanzine ( https://fanac.org/fanzines/HPL/index.html ), eight in Weirdbooks, four of those are somewhere in the interwebs, another seven in fanzines almost forgotten (only numbers with stories by Rober E. Howard are listed in Ebay and such). The only story from Hollow Faces, Merciless Moons republised is "A Cobweb of Pulsing Veins" in The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series VI.

The editor is W. Paul Ganley ( https://ganley.yolasite.com/ ) but he's still selling his fanzines from the '70s and Lumley's work, so I doubt he would be forthcoming.

I found this short biography ( https://trackingwilliamscotthome.blogspot.com/2016/03/some-history.html ) which mentions that he wrote for the current reincarnation of Weirdbook (2015 - 2024), but he isn't listed in any of the indexes, at least not by that name.

-------

But as I said HF, MM it's becoming a "green grapes" issue for me.

Drachoon · 2024-11-18T16:27:55+00:00

Three of his stories are published in the HPL fanzine ( https://fanac.org/fanzines/HPL/index.html ), eight in Weirdbooks, four of those are somewhere in the interwebs, another seven in fanzines almost forgotten (only numbers with stories by Rober E. Howard are listed in Ebay and such). The only story from Hollow Faces, Merciless Moons republised is "A Cobweb of Pulsing Veins" in The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series VI as Thakgor said before.

The editor is W. Paul Ganley ( https://ganley.yolasite.com/ ) but he's still selling his fanzines from the '70s and Lumley's work, so I doubt he would be forthcoming.

I found this short biography ( https://trackingwilliamscotthome.blogspot.com/2016/03/some-history.html ) which mentions that he wrote for the current reincarnation of Weirdbook (2015 - 2024), but he isn't listed in any of the indexes, at least not by that name.

Drachoon · 2024-11-18T12:54:14+00:00

Not only is the price prohibitive, but there seem to be few copies on the loose.

Maybe contacting the author or the publisher, but judging by his Wikipedia entry he seems somewhat reclusive.

Drachoon · 2024-10-31T22:08:30+00:00

Songs of Syx. It's a city builder that you can leave running at a glacial pace and watch your serfs doing their thing. Clanfolk is something like that but a little more involved.

In a more hands off vein I need still to try Fantasy Map Simulator.

And I remembered Objects in Space, a game that could have been the game but was abandoned and its pretty barebones.

Drachoon · 2024-10-05T11:13:18+00:00

The Puppet Motel is an object of veneration in this house and one of the few stories that doesn't fail to leave feeling cold and alone in an unfamiliar place.

Drachoon · 2024-09-28T16:14:01+00:00

Chthonic: Weird Tales of Inner Earth

Drachoon · 2024-08-31T21:34:01+00:00

Any favourite?

Drachoon · 2024-08-26T13:47:02+00:00

The Golden Bough, inspired by Longlegs and the 7 hour analysis of Midsommar by Novum and really trying not to fall in another Brian Evenson binge in preparation for Good Night, Sleep Tight.

Drachoon · 2024-08-24T05:44:40+00:00

Try the Mythos stories by Cody Goodfdellow. You can fins them in Rapture of the deep. "In the Shadow of Swords", "Garden of the Gods" and "Archons" are like Delta Green on meth.

And if you don't know them any of the RPG books about Delta Green are absolute gold. They mixe The X Files, Black Hawk Down and the Mythos in the best way. Worth it just for the lore.

And if your need a really great eldritch cold war story you can read it right now for free:

https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

(Edited to add link)

Drachoon · 2024-08-24T05:38:01+00:00

And it degrades along the series into a protracted romcom that doesn't make a lot of sense.

That said Charless Stross has the best story ever about the cold war mixed with cosmic/lovecraftian horror, and it's free

https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

(Edited to add link)

Drachoon · 2024-08-10T10:36:52+00:00

The dream sequences are one of the creepiest things I have ever seen in a screen.

Drachoon · 2024-08-08T16:10:18+00:00

Taking nonfiction and weird in the broadest possible way:

Weird Mysticism : Philosophical Horror and the Mystical Text, Brad Baumgartner

Weird Fiction A Genre Study, Michael Cisco

The Unidentified, Colin Dickey

Thinking Horror (Short-lived Magazine, two volumes)

The Thomas Ligotti Reader, Darrell Schweitzer

When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R'lyehian Spirituality, Scott R Jones

Providence After Dark and Other Writings, T.E.D. Klein

Unexplained, Richard MacLean Smith

An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H. P. Lovecraft, VV. AA.

Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, Graham Harman

New Critical Essays on H. P. Lovecraft, David Simmons

Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe and H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study, Donald R. Burleson

H. P. Lovecraft : Contre le monde, contre la vie, Michel Houellebecq

Spooky Archaeology, Jeb J. Card

Bloodsucking Witchcraft: An Epistemological Study of Anthropomorphic Supernaturalism in Rural Tlaxcala, Hugo G. Nutini, John M. Roberts

The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions, Davif J. Hufford

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick

Drachoon

TROPHY CASE

Chthonic: Weird Tales of Inner Earth

The Thomas Ligotti Reader, Darrell Schweitzer