Posts Tagged ‘New Weird’
The New Weird
Friday, November 12th, 2010
Finch
HP Lovecraft is a writer of horror and supernatural stories. His style of writing from the 1930s is known as ‘weird tales’.
He said ‘The true weird tale has something more than secret murder… A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint…of that most terrible conception of the human brain — a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space’.
Well, now there’s ‘The New Weird’. Jeff VanderMeer is an author of numerous new weird fantasy tales. His latest novel Finch follows on from his earlier book City of Saints and Madmen. Finch is set in a city run by fungal men and the main character, Finch, is in the service of these mushroom people.
Book Show reviewer Simon Keck is not afraid of the new weird and is our guide through this city of fungus.
Whenever I’ve read science fiction, I’ve had a hard time convincing my more bookish friends to ditch their preconceptions and give it a try. They’re often reluctant to dip their toes into what they perceive to be a pool filled with neck-bearded weirdos endlessly debating whether Kirk could beat Picard in a rugged manly fistfight. (more…)
