Weird Fiction discussion

For the month of January, 2020 we will be doing a Classic Weird read. This means the book needs to have been published before 1990 to qualify. Many good authors published great Weird during this time frame. Look at the thirteen from the group challenge if you're wondering who. Pull up some old Weird Tales and look at the authors there. The mind boggles.

Feel free to make your nomination any time from now through December 17. If you nominate a book now, but change your mind and want to nominate a different one by December 17, you can. Simply edit your original post. So may I suggest you go ahead and make your nomination, lest you forget in the meantime?

For pre-1990 Weird Fiction we went old last month, all the way back to 1880 to the person I consider the first Weird writer, Vernon Lee. What we haven't done is much from the 1945-1990 period. So this time I would like to nominate an R.A. Lafferty collection. Lafferty is often called an SF writer, but I think it would be more accurate to consider him as straight Weird. Any Lafferty collection has to include "Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas." Here's a good one for just 99 cents! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... These 18 stories were published between 1959 and 1962. What a narrow range of time!

Edit: Checked further--the narrow time range is because these are 18 of his first 19 short stories. ("Rainbird" is the one missing, a really odd, often anthologized time travel story.) He went on to write another 155 short stories by my count, starting in 1964 and continuing steadily for 27 more years.

I am taking nominations for January's read for ten more days closing out the proceedings to run the poll the night of December 17. It occurs to me that some people might be getting tired of story collections and prefer a novel. I want to have a poll. I just found out Gene Wolfe passed. So, all that leads me to make a second nomination: Peace.

People are all over the place on what genre it is. Some say SF; others say fantasy; even many say horror; while four others say slip stream. That all means it's probably Weird, but not recognized as such. I also expect it to be as challenging as our Zelazny Creatures of Light and Darkness read. Please be up for that kind of challenge if voting for this. Thanks.

I nominate for the classic weird read the novella The Other Side of the Mountain by Michel Bernanos.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

It was originally published in French. I read an English translation, published in late 1960s I think, at the public library.

Dead tree copies are available from Amazon.

The entire novella appears in the anthology The Weird edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer.

I classify the novella as science fiction and surreal weird.

Thanks Ronald. You come up with the most interesting choices!

Nominations are now officially closed for January's group read choices and the poll is up through Christmas Eve. I am opening up nominations for February's Modern Weird (published 1990 or later) read here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...