Category Archives: Weird Fiction

Swan River Press Craft an Object of Physical Beauty with “The Scarlet Soul: Stories for Dorian Gray”

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THE SCARLET SOUL is a testament to the love and dedication Swan River Press put into their craft and they should be applauded for the physical allure alone. This is a book one can see becoming an heirloom object. My advice would be to snap up a copy of The Scarlet Soul while they are still available and keep an eye out for future releases by Swan River Press, while their price range is affordable their books are imminently collectible.

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Vastarien: A Literary Journal – “Nightmare Made Normal”

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VASTARIEN is a source of critical study and creative response to the corpus of Thomas Ligotti as well as associated authors and ideas. The inaugural issue is going to be something unusually special, filled with in-depth essays, interviews, original visual art pieces, weird fiction, terrific poetry, and fascinating hybrid pieces. An interview with Thomas Ligotti and an introduction by him, neither of which have ever been presented in English, are included.

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Mark E. Smith, Post-Punk Icon and Lifelong Acolyte of Weird Fiction

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It is often a shopworn and tired cliché to say in the wake of one’s passing, “there will never be another like him,” yet in the case of Mark E. Smith there is indeed a perilous chance this statement will bear true. In this milieu it is not hard to imagine the loss of yet another long-standing English tradition.

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Hippocampus Press Fills A Void with “William Hope Hodgson: Voices From Beyond the Borderland”

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With WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON: VOICES FROM THE BORDERLAND Hippocampus Press once again proves why they hold such an esteemed position within the world of weird fiction. As I continue through their Library of Criticism I am continuously impressed with the rigorous standards of scholarship, craft and dedication evident within each volume.

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Sam Gafford Delivers Otherworldly Terror and Suspense in “Whitechapel”

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I recently had a conversation with a friend where we discussed the idea that terror is the emotion one feels preceding an event and horror is the emotion one feels witnessing the effects of that event. Gafford employs both to devastating effect within Whitechapel, building a foreboding sense of malaise and then, most importantly, delivering when called upon.

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Take a Fascinating Journey with “Eyes of the God: The Weird Fiction and Poetry of R.H. Barlow”

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The pleasure of watching both a stylistic and an intellectual force emerge and take shape provides its own enjoyment. However the jouissance one derives from reading Barlow’s later tales, where he mastered the alchemical marriage of fascination and dread in such exquisite proportions that a single tale keeps his name alive…

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Jon Padgett Unleashes Philosophical Horror with “The Secret of Ventriloquism”

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I’m sure you can call to mind dozens of times within horror fiction the protagonist reacting “with dawning realization”. Padgett has managed to capture that feeling and evoke it in such a way that you the reader, not one of the characters within a fictional story, experiences this dawning realization.

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An Exciting and Distinctive Voice Crawls Forth with A(W) Baader’s “Hinterland” and “We are the Makers of Maps”

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Baader is elegant in evoking the strange in simple, unadorned lines. It’s this simplicity that disarms. His characters are instantly believable with just enough detail provided for the reader to identify with yet not so overloaded it hampers the imagination. He trusts his reader’s intelligence instead of pandering to them.

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