Friday, November 11, 2011

New Online Source for Weird: Weird Fiction Review


In celebration of the UK publication of the huge - and I mean huge at 116 (!) stories and over 750,000 words - anthology The Weird : A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, the new site Weird Fiction Review has been launched recently with a lot of goodies you can explore by clicking on the link above.

For example you can find the opening lines for all 116 stories in the anthology HERE - so incidentally its table of contents too. We wish Weird Fiction Review a long and fruitful life!

In the US, The Weird : A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories will be published next year in May as an 1152 page trade paperback and ebook by Tor and while I do not have yet an Amazon link, there is one in the leaked Spring-Summer 2012 Tor catalog. Warning: the link goes to a big pdf file so it may take a while to open, but you can download the pdf by right clicking and using "save link as". The anthology is a must for me and I plan to get it on publication, most likely as an ebook but maybe in both print and electronic formats.

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In the meantime you can get a taste of weird from the recent anthology ODD? edited also by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer which is available for now in ebook form from Amazon or even better - less expensive and drm-free - from the independent ebook retailer Weigthless Books where I got my epub copy recently. While it has only (only!) 19 stories, it gives a great taste of both contemporary and classic weird fiction.

I browsed all the opening lines and read and greatly enjoyed the first four stories including The Bloat Toad by Leopoldo Lugones which has been translated from Spanish by Larry Nolen who blogs at the interesting The Of Blog. Look for a full review of Odd? on Fantasy Book Critic, most likely next Sunday, November 20th.