Last week we discussed scary reading from the horror genre. Another popular genre, especially for this spooky time of year, is weird fiction. Do you wonder what sets weird fiction apart from horror and other genres? Read on, then roll for sanity at the end of the blog!

A Refresher: Genre Fiction, Tropes, and Speculative Stories

Genre refers to certain characteristics common to a group of stories. Many genres elicit a specific emotional, sometimes even visceral, reaction from readers. And all genres conform to established tropes unique to each genre. 

Genre is a marketing term used in book, film, theater, and music promotion. Most successful pieces could fall into more than one genre. Weird fiction is part of a much broader category, speculative fiction, and is often considered a subcategory of horror. Speculative fiction speculates (hence the name) about “what if [insert something impossible here] really happened?” 

Weird Expectations

As horror author Lucy A. Snyder shared at the August 2019 Gen Con Writers Symposium, what sets weird fiction apart from horror is the reader’s expectation of the uncanny. According to the dictionary, uncanny means eerie and mysterious, but uncanny as an element of weird fiction connotes a lot more. The sense of uncanny involves the feeling of something both strange and familiar at the same time. The context is often unsettling or even taboo. An example cited by Lucy Snyder is the uncanny valley phenomenon, in which psychological experiments chart humans’ reaction to near-lifelike robots. A robot that is almost lifelike, but not quite, elicits an extreme negative emotional response from humans, almost as disturbing as a zombie. (Click for super interesting graph. I believed I’ve mentioned I’m a statistics nerd.)

While a weird story will bring on the dread and fear required of horror, it is a special kind of dread and fear that plays up the anxiety provoked by the uncanny. The uncanny experience in a weird piece often starts with small, hardly noticeable deviations in the daily life experience of the protagonist. Then these inconsistencies build into huge cracks in the foundation of reality. 

Weird History 

Weird fiction was popularized in the early 1900s, although elements of the weird have probably always been a feature of fiction aimed at scaring the audience. H.P. Lovecraft receives much credit for the existence of the weird genre, although he cited the influence of earlier books on his work, such as Lord Dunsany’s 1910 A Dreamer’s Tales. Robert Chambers’s The King in Yellow (1895)  is much in the weird style. Lovecraft and a group of like-minded writer friends published stories in pulp magazines in the 1920s and 30s, achieving little financial or critical success at the time. How things have changed. 

Approaches

A few examples of approaches storytellers in the weird genre take are:

• Tapping the dream world, a potent source for the surreal and uncanny when it is brought into every day, real life. (Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was inspired by a dream. Many stories by China Mieville are distinctly dreamlike.)
• Emphasizing the symbolic function of the supernatural elements on the internal conflict of the protagonist (according to Lucy Snyder, in a discussion of Lovecraftian scholar S.T. Joshi). (Coraline by Neil Gaiman.)
• Unfolding the weird horror in an amoral cosmos. The antagonist force is often not a morally evil one, simply an intelligence so vast and alien that humanity and its standards are not even a consideration. This is a common approach in early twentieth-century weird fiction, yet we still see it in The Expanse (novels and television series) by James S. A. Corey.
• Combining weird elements with another genre. Almost any genre or even literary fiction can successfully accommodate weird elements. We see weird work well with horror, science fiction, noir mystery, and many others. (Maplecroft by Cherie Priest. Nightjar by Paul Jameson.)

Tropes

Like any consumers of any genre, the reader or viewer expects certain tropes to be fulfilled:

• Settings can vary from countryside to town or even outer space, but general are isolated and lonely. Examples include the film, The Thing, or the Lovecraft story, “The Dunwich Horror.”
• Unseemly object. Object, particularly books, to be avoided at risk of one’s sanity are a weird fiction staple. In addition to books, ancient fetish sculptures loom large. Several Lovecraftian tales involve a cursed grimoire, the Necronomicon. 
• Abandoned (apparently) ancient alien civilization. Generally discovered in the aforementioned lonely, isolated setting. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness is a prime example.
• Insanity. The uncanny eventually gets to be too much for many characters, and they retire to the local asylum. James Lovegrove’s Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities, a modern take on both the Holmes and Cthulhu canons, involves such a person.

Writing and Reading The Weird

Weird genre fiction, particularly nineteenth and early-twentieth century pieces, are not always character, are even plot, driven.  A weird story can succeed based on the descriptions of uncanny settings, intricate world building, and the visceral thrill of the protagonist barely escaping with their life and a tiny shred of sanity. (Looking at you, At The Mountains of Madness.)

Lovecraft looms large over the weird fiction world. Writers of color from all over the world and of all gender identifications now dialogue with his well-documented racial, ethnic, and gender intolerance. They utilize old approaches and tropes in innovative ways as well as strike out in new, yet still uncanny, directions.  

 I find that artists who produce new weird stories address modern audiences’ tastes, so that the story character’s motivations and goals are supremely important. The protagonist’s needs and wants in conflict with the antagonist’s needs and wants drive the plot. The resolution organically rises out of the story events toward an earned ending. Victor LaValle’s novella Ballad of Black Tom is an outstanding example. [following edit: 10/24/2019] One of my favorite books, Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, will soon be an HBO series. A great thirst for well-crafted uncanniness obviously exists.

What are your favorite weird tales? I’m eager to learn more about this genre. Let me know in the comments section. Click the blog title and a comments box will open at the bottom of the page. 

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