The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

by
4.35 of 5 stars 4.35  ·  rating details  ·  224 ratings  ·  47 reviews
A landmark, eclectic, leviathan-sized anthology of fiction's wilder, stranger, darker shores. From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird and amongst its practitioners number some of the greatest names in t...more
Paperback, 1152 pages
Published November 1st 2010 by Corvus
more details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
Angels Cried by Stephen L. WilsonDieselpunk ePulp Showcase by John PichaTidal Whispers by Jocelyn AdamsMake Believe by J.A. BelfieldInto The Unknown by Jocelyn Adams
unusual anthologies
7th out of 45 books — 30 voters
Read the End First by Suzanne RobbHorror for Good by Mark ScioneauxZippered Flesh by Weldon BurgeDark Tales of Lost Civilizations by Eric J. GuignardThe Endlands by Vincent Hobbes
Best Horror Anthologies
147th out of 161 books — 288 voters


More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,496)
filter  |  sort: default (?)  |  rating details
Zach
Watching the number of characters I can fit into this textbox dwindle away as I review each story is creating a feeling of anxiety entirely appropriate to this book. Thanks, goodreads.

Alfred Kubin, “The Other Side” (excerpt), 1908 (translation, Austria)
Set somewhere on Earth in the fictional city of Pearl, this story featured an interesting juxtaposition of a straight-forward, almost newsprint-esque voice addressing the successive plagues of sleeping sickness, animal infestation, and non-organi...more
Greg
Don't vote for this, it's a review in progress

This book is gigantic. It's like a thousand pages long, but each page has at least two of a normal books amount of words on it. So this is really like a two thousand page book. It's going to take awhile to get through. Some of the stories in this collection are actually novellas, and some of them are available on their own. When they are I'm going to review them on their own and just link to them. That way I'll save space in this review, and get to i...more
Alice M.
Every story I've read so far hits that sweet spot in the middle of experimental, magical realist, fantasy, horror, and literary that I love so much.

A brilliant collection.

Kat  Hooper
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

I haven’t actually read every page of The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, yet I’m giving it my highest recommendation. Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Master and Mistress of Weird, The Weird is 1126 pages long and should really be considered a textbook of weird fiction. It contains 110 carefully chosen stories spanning more than 100 years of weird fiction. Here’s what you can expect to find in this massive volume:

A “Forweird” by Michael...more
Krista (CubicleBlindness Reviews)
List of Contents (link) from Vandermeer's website http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/08...

Very in depth book with over 1109 pages. Each story ~8 pages long 2 columns per page/per side. Very short forward and introduction pages in the front and back.

I highly recommend this book to anybody that like stories about the unusual and strange. With the massive size of around 1192 pages it will keep you reading for days. I have seen varying prices around the web varying from $40-$22. In which this book i...more
Brian
This anthology is an overview of "weird fiction", and it is quite the tome. It was my 2012 selection for something to read during October. I neglected to take into account its sheer size. As with most anthologies, there were stories that I took to and those that I didn't care for. Most of the works fall squarely into the horror realm, though not all of them. It contains stories from the famous masters, from King to Lovecraft, and to its credit several authors from countries outside the usual Ame...more
James Everington
I don’t know if you've ever seen the Man Vs. Food TV program (if not, basically some idiot attempts to eat an 40oz steak or 3ft pizza or something…) but I've just finished reading The Weird, a vast (100+ stories, 750000 words) anthology of weird fiction put together by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer.

“The publishers believe this is the largest volume of weird fiction ever housed between the covers of one book” the blurb says, as if there’s any doubt…


Just the physical size of the book is somewhat imposin...more
Ronald
I've resolved that, if I'm interested in a big book, I would get it for my ereader. Such is the case here.

However, I discovered that my ebook version is missing the story "The Colomber" by Dino Buzzati. I informed amazon, and they replied that they are working with the publisher on the problem, and they will not be selling the ebook until the problem is solved.

This book is a collection of weird stories that were published in over the past 100 years , written by authors world-wide. Weird fiction...more
Liviu
May 13, 2012 Liviu is currently reading it
Thoughts on the stories as I read them:

Sandkings by GRRM (read a few times, first in the 80's under the communist regime in Romania and one of the seminal stories that made me a huge sf fan) - should be on any all time best sf stories

Aleph by JL Borges (read a long time ago also, but mostly forgotten as Borges never acquired that "must" quality for me)

The Hell Screen by Ryunosuke Akutagawa - very Japanese and excellent

Mister Taylor by Augusto Monterroso (translated by Larry of the Of Blog) - exc...more
Alisa Hedden
When I first saw the box containing this book, I got excited. Then I opened the box, saw the cover with the Lovecraftian cover and some of the contributors and gave a squee of excitement. Then I read the index. My first response was “I am in love!” This is not just another anthology, with representative samples form 1908-2010 the VanderMeer’s managed to give us a sense of the evolution of the horror/thriller genres. If you read “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” by Lord Dunsany, you will be h...more
Mark
This is the most comprehensive and eclectic story collection of the sub-genre to date. Many will comment on this book’s size. It is over a thousand pages of fairly small text, usually in two columns per page (Weird Tales style), 750 000 words of weirdness from writers in over eighteen different countries. There are stories that are known, stories that are much less known and some stories translated into English for the first time.

A huge collection of stories and a variety of authors from all ov...more
Quis Ut
Jul 18, 2012 Quis Ut is currently reading it
"Weird" fiction has been defined as a transplanting of certain Gothic sensibilities onto traditional tales of supernatural horror, although in the late 20th century there was a shift toward dark science fiction / urban fantasy. While I've only read a few of the stories, so far they have been incredible. In the background, out of focus, essentially and necessarily ambiguous, dreadful atmospheres possess the stage upon which Poeian melancholy, an unbearable bleakness, and the unknown, treated with...more
Mike Rogers
I know the book is called "The Weird", so it is fitting that most of the stories involve the super-natural. There are other stories that relate more to the archaic derivation of the word "Wyrd" involving fate and destiny. But unfortunately it seems that too many of these stories are simply weird - as in "bizarre" and "uncanny". Now I can handle a good dose of the bizarre and uncanny if the story makes sense in any way or if it resolves to the point that I understand the reason for writing the st...more
Molly Ison
I appreciate the vision that the Vandermeers have for the weird and the new weird, as well as the range and exposure to stories in this very very long volume. However, I wish that given Jeff Vandermeer's desire to define "the weird", to discuss it, to have numerous editorials and essays on it; that he had been a little more selective and done more with his role as editor to shape the anthology rather than trying to make it all inclusive with every example of a story that could possibly be consid...more
Ann
I was surprised that there weren't more stories in here that I wanted to read ... in the end I only read a handful, and of those I only really liked Kelly Link's "The Specialist's Hat," Tanith Lee's "Yellow and Red," and Karen Joy Fowler's "The Dark". Those were all fantastic, but the book overall left me feeling kind of meh.

I think it would be great as two separate projects: one historical weird and one contemporary weird. Also, I was really looking for a bigger, more serious essay from the edi...more
Gevera Bert
I'm giving this book 5 stars for content and 2 stars for packaging.
The book is HUGE. It is 8x10 and about 3 inches thick (over 1000 pages), with small print and 2 columns per page. It's like an unabridged dictionary. It's awkward to hold, way too heavy and generally unwieldy. It really should have been a set of 3-4 paperbacks sold in a cardboard sleeve. If you want to read this, get an e-book version.
The content, however, is awesome. I only didn't finish one story out of over 100. I'd only read...more
Orrin Grey
I didn't actually read every word of The Weird. Some were stories I'd read before, others I just didn't get to. I hunted and pecked around, and this is ultimately a book that'll reward many returns, but I don't need to have read all of it to throw five stars its way. This is exactly what it aims to be, a pretty definitive compendium of a certain subgenre of fiction, and since that's a particular subgenre that's very near-and-dear to my own weird heart, I found this massive tome inspiring, and pr...more
Chris Cangiano
Brilliant! More of a textbook for some future class on the origins and history of the weird tale than a simple anthology. The VanderMeers have demonstrated significant skill and scholarship in putting together this massive tome, spanning multiple cultures to trace the origins and various streams that the weird tale has followed from the early 20th Century to today. All of the usual authors are represented (though not always by the tales you might expect) but there are plenty of new and obscure a...more
Rand
I Can't Believe It's Not the Necronomicon

More authors are included in this book then may be listed in this database but all of the first lines of each story are listed here.

One of my favorite stories, by relative-unknown Craig Padawer, is The Meat Garden. Read it here, carefully, as it is fairly representational of the wide range of tones which this tome holds. Then there are seemingly-normal tales of mystery like Margaret Irwin's The Book. Some of the stories are in the public domain but nearl...more
Kat
First published on Radiant Attack - Sci fi, fantasy, weird and big freakin' squid

Normally I’d wait to finish a whole book to write a review of it, but at 750,000 words and over 100 stories, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Fictions runs just short of the Bible. But even without reading the whole anthology, I can safely say The Weird is an excellent book.*

Edited by Ann and Jeff Vandemeer, The Weird is an essential anthology for anyone interested in the difficult to define genre of weir...more
Katrina
This book is a wonderful assortment of horror, fantasy, quirky and downright bizarre tales all neatly wrapped up in a bow of weirdness. It's also the probably the best anthology that I've come across years, nay, ever.

This gigantic, titan of a book has tales dating back from the nineteenth century to the present day. There are some classic tales in here such as 'The Willows' by Blackwood, 'The Dunwich Horror' by Lovecraft, the sublime 'Don't Look Now by Du Maurier and 'It's a Good Life' by Bixby...more
Claudia Piña
Wow.

Este libro es un monstruo, y no sólo en un sentido.

Es una colección de 110 historias escritas desde 1908 a 2010 y que abarcan el género conocido como weird. Historias extrañas (del lado oscuro de la palabra), inusuales, que pueden pertenecer a la ciencia ficción o fantasía, al estilo gótico, terror, suspenso, el surrealismo o ser incategorizables, pero que todas tienen algo en común: Son weird.

Creo que el índice habla por si mismo, pero si es necesario decir algo sobre la colección es que es...more
Kat
First published on Radiant Attack - Sci fi, fantasy, weird and big freakin' squid

Normally I’d wait to finish a whole book to write a review of it, but at 750,000 words and over 100 stories, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories runs just short of the Bible. But even without reading the whole anthology, I can safely say The Weird is an excellent book.*

Edited by Ann and Jeff Vandemeer, The Weird is an essential anthology for anyone interested in the difficult to define genre of weird...more
Jim
I would rank this at the same exalted level as Manguel's excellent BLACK WATER anthologies - not just another horror anthology, but a true tribute to weird literature throughout the world. By turns tender and terrifying, straight-faced and satirical, graceful and grotesque, awe-inspiring and devastating, the stories in this wide-ranging volume are capable of producing one dizzying revelation after another, as they explore the height, depth and breadth of the unfettered human imagination.
Rhoda
This is haunting, thought and discussion-provoking. There are extreme varieties of writing styles. I enjoy experiencing the evolution of what is considered weird in different cultures and modern periods. The Weird stories probe psychological, social, cultural and spiritual landscapes. My husband and I read this to each other on road trips and at bed time.
Seregil of Rhiminee
I read this anthology a while ago and I loved it very much, so I decided to write a short review about it.

In my opinion Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have managed to gather quite a lot of different stories from various authors into this anthology. This anthology is essential reading material for everybody who is a fan of weird fiction, because the stories range from basic weird fiction to Lovecraftian weird fiction, and there are a couple of rare stories, which are difficult to find elsewhere.

I highly...more
Lisa
Loving this, and I keep trying to get everything I know to read it. It's lovely; not your typical collection, it contains lesser-known works by famous authors. The stories are chronological, beginning in the early 1900s, so there are lots of stories by authors I hadn't heard of before and now want to get to know.
Stephanie
This was a great collection of weird stories, but the book itself was not very readerzfriendly. the book was a huge hardback that made mefeel like i was getting a good bicep workout everytime i picked it upb but overall i liked many of the stories and enjoyed learning about the authors of the stories a little bit.
Kelly
So far...and I've had it for awhile...it's massive and I'm skipping around, but thus far it's one of the best anthos I've ever read.

I think the curators were stretching a bit with the inclusion of so many authors. Whether intentional or not, however, they provided a very good marketing strategy to get a lot of writers some recognition who might have struggled otherwise. Despite the fact that VanderMeer is a preening, self-absorbed twat, he's an excellent anthologist, at least in this case. But t...more
Deborah
Jan 01, 2013 Deborah is currently reading it
Still reading - but totally enjoying. A very differnet group of horror - WEIRD - stories - chronogically arranged from the last 100 years. A great new years find - will get my heart rate up at the gym with less effort lol....
« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 49 50 next »
topics  posts  views  last activity   
Chaos Reading: The Weird: A Compendium.... (2012) 6 87 May 16, 2012 08:12pm  
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (Hardcover)
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (Paperback)
The Weird: A Compendium of Dark and Strange Fictions (Kindle Edition)
The Weird (Paperback)
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (ebook)

33919
Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer is an American writer, editor and publisher. He was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, but spent much of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps. This experience, and the resulting trip back to the United States through Asia, Africa, and Europe, deeply influenced him.

In 2003, VanderMeer married Ann Kennedy, then editor for the small B...more
More about Jeff VanderMeer...
City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris, #1) Finch (Ambergris, #3) Steampunk The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature Veniss Underground

Share This Book

Your website