Weird Fiction discussion

So, who has suggestions for our April weird fiction read? Please feel free to offer up to two nominations. I'll close off nominations and run the poll sometime in mid-March.

I wish to nominate The Other Side by Alfred Kubin, an excellent novel. I will also nominate The First B.H.F. Book of Horror Stories edited by Christopher Wood. Half the stories in the latter book are simply horror, mostly of the gothic persuasion, but the other half cross genres into our domain of weird, I would say.

Five more days to nominate a book if anyone else would like to.

EDIT: I want to change my mind and make my second nomination unarguably weird fiction as well. So I am removing my BHF nomination and substituting The 8th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Frank Belknap Long by Frank Belknap Long, one of my favorite authors.

I finally got to the Dark Tower by King. That's top shelf stuff! And it seems plenty weird even though of course it is also a lot of other genres.I would nominate it or better yet #2 or 3 in those series because I already read the 1 one :)

I appreciate the nomination, especially because of late we are not getting that many nominations. (How is it that other groups get so many nominations they have to make all sorts of rules to limit them, require seconds, etc.?) However, I want to disallow The Gunslinger and, in fact, any work written by Stephen King. This is not because I dislike his work. Quite the opposite; I love his work, especially his earlier stuff, and in fact intend to start this year rereading it and already have begun with my recent reread of Carrie. It's not because his work is not at least in part in the realm of Weird Fiction. Weird Fiction Review lists him at #43 in the roster of 101 Weird writers: https://weirdfictionreview.com/2016/0....

I have no doubt that The Gunslinger, if placed in the poll, would easily win. Titles nominated that people recognize and have probably already read invariably win polls no matter what the intrinsic merits of the book, or how well it fits into the group's genre objectives. The group is stuck with having that name-recognized author, or title, headlining for that month, whether anyone in the group actually reads the book then or not.

I wish to exclude Stephen King's work from book of the month consideration because it is so popular and widely read already. The Gunslinger has had 168 GoodReads discussions in almost that many groups already. I see no benefit to be conferred to anyone in making us the 169th. Instead, I'd like to encourage people that wish to discuss the book to join one or ten of those 168 topics already under way. Over half a million people have rated it already here at GoodReads. There are so many other good, weird works that aren't being read that I would really rather profile them. I want our group to be one that considers books, good books, that other groups would not.

Yes, we have chosen some rather mainstream popular books in the past that also happened to be weird fiction. The two that are most in this vein were Annihilation and House of Leaves. But neither of these had more than 200,000 ratings at the time of their selection. Also, for both of these I would say their main genre was Weird, even if society might not because so many don't recognize the criteria that defines the genre. As for The Gunslinger's genre, I would say it is horror and western, #1 and #2, not sure of the order, fantasy and weird being a distant #3 and #4, again not sure of which order. I'd rather focus more on weird fiction. Most of the time we pick books that have fewer than 10,000 ratings total. That makes our group a good one to join for hearing about that great book few others know about.

That said, for those members who would really like to read this book and discuss it together here with fellow weird fiction lovers as a group activity, I have no objection to doing The Gunslinger as a buddy read. In fact, if one person proposes it, I would second it and agree to participate in the buddy read since I'm not averse to a re-read (I gave my initial reading of it only three stars). We would need only one more person to state an interest then and commit to reading it (buddy reads must have at least three committed participants to become a buddy read) to make it official. Buddy read nominations may be made by creating a topic in the Buddy Reads folder: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Going forward I wish to add a restriction to group read nominations for the book of the month that they have less than 200,000 ratings. I'm thrilled if they have less than 20,000, in fact, and even bubbling-over-giddy if they have less than 200, like How the West Was Weird does.

got it! let me try nominating something a bit on the weird side of weird. I definitely found it in English on amazon but do not see it here on goodreads, only the Russian edition: Empire V by Pelevin. There is much social satire there, but also a very bizarre vampire thing going on. Actually now I am not sure it's weird fiction.

I am traveling and using my phone and for the life of me can't figure out how to insert book reference!

Zina wrote: "I am traveling and using my phone and for the life of me can't figure out how to insert book reference!"

There is not an "add book/author" link available in the phone app? I wouldn't know as I only use my laptop to access GoodReads, but it would surprise me if it were omitted.

Zina wrote: "I definitely found it in English on amazon but do not see it here on goodreads, only the Russian edition: Empire V by Pelevin."

I find it most helpful in cases like that to search in GoodReads using the book's ISBN alone, which in this case is 978-1473213081.

Zina wrote: "There is much social satire there, but also a very bizarre vampire thing going on. Actually now I am not sure it's weird fiction."

Looking at the reviews, I am rather doubting this novel could be considered weird fiction. Weird fiction seldom (actually, I can't think of a single case) contains social satire.

If trying to decide if a work is weird fiction I find it most helpful to ask the following questions:
1) Does it feature elements of speculative fiction that include the genres of horror, science fiction, or fantasy; hopefully all three, but for sure at least two of them?
2) Does it seem likely editors of Weird Tales would buy this work on spec if it were submitted to them?
3) Are we in another world that resembles ours but has key differences in which events that are ambiguously supernatural are taking place? That amiguity, meaning the events might AND (not OR) might not be supernatural is important.
4) Is the actual craft of writing (its artistic expression through use of words and sentence and idea construction) being taken seriously (and hopefully innovatively) by this author?

It pretty much takes an answer of yes, with as few qualifications as possible, to all four of these questions for me to consider a work to be weird fiction. This list of four isn't meant to be comprehensive, but seems a good starting point. That said, I can see why you might want to nominate a book of Victor Pelevin's. I've never heard of this author before, but it looks like he writes very interesting material even if it's not weird fiction.

I will propose the following titles.

1. The Beetle, by Richard Marsh
Published at the same time as Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1897, it was at one time the more popular of the two, though not nearly as well-known today.

2. The Three Imposters, by Arthur Machen.
Plublished in 1895, these interwoven tales are regarded as some of Machen's best works.

Going Old School, are we? Thank you for the two excellent nominations, Kevin.

OK, I voted for the Beetle although I also really am up for the Other Side. So many exciting nominations!