#weird fiction

[figcatlists]

Contemporary weird fiction reading list

A chart of New Weird books and other bizarre, unsettling, and uncanny literature published in the last 30 years or so. This is a follow-up to my previous chart of classic weird fiction and another selection from my list of over 200 works of weird literature.

#book recs #book recommendations #book reccs #reading list #book list #literature #weird fiction #weird tales #weird books #the weird #new weird #jeff vandermeer #china mieville #haruki murakami #house of leaves #thomas ligotti #michael cisco #laird barron

[miskatonicaquarium]

The King in Yellow by Deimos-Remus

#the king in yellow #robert chambers #hastur #cosmic horror #weird fiction

[recklessfiction]

The Many Happenings within the Palace

The Queen has given birth to a wolf. Her screams had echoed through the halls, only to be joined, after a moment, by the high, pitiable cries of the animal. He is a good lad, named Roderick by his grandfather. You wonder at the father, who, indeed, it could be, as the king died many years prior and was, decidedly, not a wolf.

A lord from a neighboring kingdom visited in the winter. His manner was jolly and his behavior most cordial. Many a lady had their eye on him, and you could see, through his swagger, that he knew it too. His face did nothing to deter them, as you had perhaps thought a skull might, but the ladies saw no issue with his lack of flesh. Indeed, they seemed to find the empty pits of his eye sockets most appealing.

A witch has put a curse on the princess. She sings, night and day, for hours on end, standing at the window of her boudoir. At first it was pleasant, a sweet voice rising over the city. All would stop to listen, enraptured by the sound of her songs. Then the fighting broke out, among heroes and kings, their minds lost to her voice like she was a siren. War would have broken out had the Queen not stepped in. The princess still sings, but her voice has become a mere croak and painful to hear; you cannot imagine the pain she goes through. The physician says she has done such damage to her throat that she will soon lose the ability to speak entirely if the curse is not reversed. You are still looking for a knight brave enough to go after the witch.

You have been given a quest to gain the favour of a dragon. On paper, he is no king, not even an earl or a lord, however he has claimed much of the land to the West as his own and the people have made no move against it, rather they seem to have accepted their strange new ruler with open arms. The Queen has asked you go to him, present yourself as an emissary of this court and ingratiate yourself with him. It is expected that you will be gone for some time but you have yet to start packing.

As it so happens, the court's jester, Harriett, has just pronounced herself to be Bjorg, the great goddess of Death. She did so during the new wolf-prince's christening, bursting into flame during a comical rendition of Ave Maria. Her face after this was a struggle to look upon, but her quips, though spoken with the voice of a dying old man, still had the court in shambles.

Another man has been lost to the woods, an old farmer just down the road from the Monastery. You saw him standing at the treeline when you went to look into it, but you did not dare approach, not when he was looking at you in that way, and certainly not when you saw the child standing just behind him. You told yourself you would not fall for their tricks, their temptations, again. But their attacks are beginning to move dangerously close to the Abbey. You will need to mention it to the Queen and the Bishop before you leave.

The Lady Carolina has finally presented herself to the court! You had heard that she had arrived perhaps four months ago, a ward of the Queen but no one had seen her. She had arrived in the dead of night and had been hastily brought to her rooms. There has been no concrete word of why she had come, only gossip to which you pay no mind. A fortnight ago, she joined in the anniversary celebration of the King's death. She is just as you thought she might be; lovely and with eyes that, while bright and bewildered, were intelligent and watchful. The rumours of her bright blue feathers and fine golden talons were not amiss either and you found yourself watching her for much of the night. It is a shame you will be gone on your quest before you have another opportunity to be introduced but perhaps when you return, you might inquire as to her health.

#what to do #my writing #medieval #fantasy #romance #weird fiction

[whereserpentswalk]

Imagine in a world where humans have developed the technology to completely change aspects of our body at will how differently we'd think about ourselves. Like, how diffrent would society be if we just had character customization.

How certain jobs could exploit that. Like if you were poor enough to have to work the type of job that has a uniform, your hair, eye and skin color might have to also be corporate freindly. How being free to look like yourself might become a class privilege.

Or how people with the freedom to look how they want would take it. How people's appearances would completely be based on their internal desires.

There might be an old woman who decides to look exactly how she did when she was young, the spitting image of a twenty something from generations ago. Her wife however decided to age normally, so now most people think they have a massive age gap even though they were born the same year.

There's a guy who chose to look like a cute girl for the same reason he plays female characters in video games. He still uses male pronouns though, and despite being female in every other way he kept his old voice because that feels like part of his identity.

There's someone who pushed the technology to its limits, making themself look like something entirely alien to what we think of as human. Something with pure white skin, and black eyes, and fangs, and spikes all over their body, but they're still just a normal person, the same way someone convered in tattoos is just a normal person.

There's someone who decided to get rid of any secondary sexual characteristics (basically reversing puberty while staying an adult) because she wants to take a break from sex. But after awhile that just becomes part of who she is, and without her old hormones she doesn't really find sex appealing.

There's someone who changes his eye color every week for the same reason someone else might dye their hair new colors constantly. And he's never wanted to change in any other way despite not being conventionally attractive.

That's just how people are I think.

#196 #my thougts #worldbuilding #writing #my worldbuilding #my writing #anticapitalist #anticapitalism #cyberpunk #scifi #scifi worldbuilding #scifi writing #science fiction #near future #body modification #body neutrality #queer #queer theory #humanity #weird fiction #nonbinary #non binary #enby

[the-mistholme-museum]

Season 1: "The girl knew that killing her young sister- even though it had been undone in every way that mattered- could never be forgiven, and it haunted her to the end of her days."

Season 6: "God damn it the fucking toaster fucking rickrolled me again"

#It's called growth sweety #mistholme #the mistholme museum #audio drama #weird fiction

[theblackbookofarkera]

Gynlin Taylor

unnamed Tanogeni warrior

Woodcut

#low fantasy #conworld #worldbuilding #arkera #world building #a song of ice and fire #creative writing #dark fantasy #dune #fantasy world #high fantasy #historical fantasy #pulp fantasy #sword & sorcery #weird fiction #cosmic horror #game of thrones #lord of the rings #world of darkness #dragon age #fullmetal alchemist #the dark tower #malazan #conan #dungeons and dragons #role playing games #bloodborne #dark souls #warhammer 40k #warhammer fantasy

[charliejaneanders]

Fuck, I just found out that Terry Bisson passed away yesterday. He was an incredible writer with a sublimely weird sensibility. Just those short "future history" snippets he wrote for Locus were utterly magnificent. But all of his writing was mind-blowing, and he had an incisive mind and clever wit.

Terry was incredibly generous to me when I was starting out as a baby SFF writer, and welcomed so many new people into the field. I was privileged to publish a few of his short pieces in a magazine I worked on back in the day. SF won't be the same without him.

#books #writing #science fiction #terry bisson #weird fiction

[ibrithir-was-here]

Her Ascended Majesty Greets her Husband on the Lake of Hali

(Follow up to the previous picture I did here of the lady in "The Yellow Wallpaper" clawing her way into apotheosis in Carcosa)

#my art #the king in yellow #the yellow wallpaper #i just think she deserves nice (eldritch) things #carcosa #robert w chambers #charlotte perkins gilman #i also have an idea of what happens to the baby she had that got her locked up in the first place as well... #vintage horror #hastur #weird fiction #classic horror

[so-engery]

Oh no

#comics #controlled burn #sketchbook #marie enger #comic #zine #punk #weird fiction #weird #midwestern gothic #creepy #eldrich horror

[darklongbox]

The Twisted Worlds of Brian Lumley: Five Best Novels for Newbies

Greetings, horror hominids! Pull up a creaky old chair and let me regale you with the twisted tales and macabre musings of one Mr. Brian Lumley – a true master of the dark arts, a champion of cosmic chaos, and a veritable virtuoso of the visceral. Now, I know what you’re thinking – “I’ve never heard of this Lumley fellow. Is he some sort of pale imitation of H.P. Lovecraft?” By Yuggoth, no!…

View On WordPress

#Horror Fiction #Vampires #Weird Fiction

[figcatlists]

Books about exploring the unknown

Anomalous zones, alien structures, and doomed expeditions! This is an eclectic chart of sci-fi and horror books themed around exploration of strange and fascinating places. The titles were chosen from my list of over 60 books in the style of Annihilation, Roadside Picnic, and Rendezvous with Rama.

#book recs #book recommendations #book reccs #reading list #book list #weird fiction #science fiction #sci fi #horror literature #horror books #jeff vandermeer #annihilation #southern reach #roadside picnic #rendezvous with rama #lovecraft #exploratory

[sashasparrow]

listen to me. listen to me with your people ears and understand me with your so-smart brains that lie between them.

unfiction is fiction with meta- or extra-textual elements, frequently including puzzle solving or the pretense of communication with the story itself, but it does not require that the audience behaves as though the story is the reality in which they live.

an ARG is an Alternate Reality Game, a genre of unfiction that requires that the audience both participates with the story and behaves as though that story is their lived reality, and cannot acknowledge its own fiction. see also: TINAG/This Is Not A Game.

if your weird internet story does not have meta-textual/extra-textual elements and instead just requires the internet as a medium, it's internet fiction.

#unfiction #weird fiction #internet fiction #alternate reality games #don't even get me started on analog horror we'll be here all week

[the-insect-is-awake]

Not sure where I screenshot this interview with Thomas Ligotti. Will update with source later, if I remember.

#thomas ligotti #hell #pessimism #weird fiction #horror #writing inspiration #writing quotes #writing prompt #on writing #on writers

[peterkothe]

Inktober 2023 Day 12-DON’T WAKE CTHULHU

-“In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

-H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

#my art #artists on tumblr #art #inktober #illustration #micron pens #cthulhu #call of cthulhu #h.p. lovecraft #lovecraftian horror #classic horror #great old ones #giant monsters #cosmic horror #ancient #pen and ink #monster #weird fiction #pulp #ancient ruins #mysterious #master’s touch markers #pentel brush pen

[the-mistholme-museum]

Good things come to those who wait.

On an unrelated note, Season 6 of Mistholme begins on Patreon this week, next week on the free feed!

Thanks for your patience, I hope it was worth the wait. Here's a bit of a refresher to catch you up on things:

#mistholme #the mistholme museum #audio drama #weird fiction #fiction podcast #podcast #season 6

[masonhawth0rne]

Buy it here!

Lockdown. 2020. Hector was alone in his one-room flat, keeping himself occupied by studying a number of ancient occult texts. He discovered a secret that allowed him to escape into other worlds, to travel through vast deserts and to view alien stars. Hector was still alone out among the fungal groves and eternal twilights, but there is so much to see—and there’s something else, something that’s just on the tip of his tongue, like a tune that he can just about, almost remember… When restrictions ease, Hector is able to share this secret with his friends, who are at first awed, and then horrified by the things Hector has seen. The things he has done. But that’s nothing compared to what he will do next…

Earworm is a 10k standalone novelette.

Buy it here!

#my writing #self publishing #horror #weird fiction #occult fiction #lovecraftian horror #there's gays in this too don't worry your little head about that