The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease

by Sarah Eyre (Editor), Ra Page (Editor)

Performing a deft metaphorical evisceration of Sigmund Freud’s classic 1919 essay that delved deeply into the tradition of horror writing, this freshly contemporary collection of literary interpretations reintroduces to the world Freud’s compelling theory of das unheimliche —or, the uncanny. Specifically designed to challenge the creative boundaries of some of the most famed and respected horror writers working today—such as A. S. Byatt, Christopher Priest, Hanif Kureishi, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Matthew Holness, and the indomitable Ramsey Campbell—this anatomically precise experiment encapsulates what the uncanny represents in the 21st century. Masterfully narrated with the benefit of unique perspectives on what exactly it is that goes bump in the night, this chilling modern collective is not only an essential read for fans of horror but also an insightful and intriguing introduction to the greats of the genre at their gruesome best.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Anthologies, Weird Fiction, Fiction

226 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard for me to resist this, with the uncanny theme and the star-studded lineup. Am I setting myself up for disappointment?

I'm having a hard time with Ramsey Campbell these days, even with many of his old classics that I had good memories of. "Double Room" is minor Campbell, nice concept, but drab treatment, with an unnecessarily sappy ending that attempts to explain everything.

I love the glimpses of the puppet in Matthew Holness' Possum. (Ok, I have a weakness for puppets, but this had some deliciously creepy details.) He seems to be beating a dead horse (puppet) by the end though.

The Sara Maitland story is based on an unusual but well-known historical case of twinhood (well-known to me anyway, but I'm the guy who keeps a bookshelf of "curiosities"). Her treatment is old-fashioned and didactic, and offers little of interest in addition to the basic concept.

Christopher Priest's "The Sorting Out" feels very familiar from my experience with his novels. I like his smooth prose and his ideas, even though the latter do tend to outstay their welcome. The premise of this story is hilarious! Someone breaks into your house and reverse alphabetizes all your books, ha!! I'd be very disturbed, yes.

It's a bad sign when I can't get through Jane Rogers' 14-page story without skipping paragraphs. The rest includes forgettable pieces from A.S. Byatt and Hanif Kureishi, and some goofy gimmicky stories (I don't share the enthusiasm for Adam Marek's "Tamagotchi", sorry). I don't know what Etgar Keret's throwaway piece is doing here, and Alison MacLeod and Ian Duhig are not likely to get on my to-read list anytime soon.

I did enjoy Frank Boyce's "Continuous Manipulation". The disarming frame nudges into a mostly restrained (and chillingly funny) tale of uncanny technology application.

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag of creepy stories. My favourite was "Tamagotchi" about a toy that takes on a mind of its own. Some where too weird to be scary, and others didn't feel particularly well written.. I find more and more with these short story collections that they have one or 2 good stories and the others are really forgettable. I wonder what Sigmund Freud would've thought about these authors trying their hand at writing their own interpretations of the uncanny.

[Ross Jeffery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right, straight off the bat – this collection is insanely fucking good!

Now I have got that off my chest…to showcase the type of brilliance you will be getting here lets take a small interlude of Ra Page’s introduction to The New Uncanny.

In his famous essay of 1919 – the reason we’re all here – Freud listed eight officially uncanny tropes, that is to say eight irrational causes of fear deployed in literature: (i) inanimate objects mistaken as animate (dolls, waxworks, automata, severed limbs, etc.) (ii) animate beings behaving as if inanimate or mechanical (trances, epileptic fits etc.), (iii) being blinded, (iv) the double (twins, doppelgängers, etc.), (v) coincidences or repetitions, (vi) being burned alive, (vii) some all-controlling evil genius, (viii) confusion between reality and imagination (waking dreams, etc.).
So Ra Page takes us on a little introduction into all things uncanny and with the collection slyly hinting at what we can expect from Comma Press’ New Uncanny – with a list that Page has so eloquently spoken about, you may have guessed it, all rules are off and the writers involved in this collection have outdone themselves with tales that are so creepy, eerie, evocative and incredibly haunting you will literally have trouble switching off at night, not the light but your imagination. I at one point read a quite brilliant story, scary as hell and moved me in ways I’ve not been moved before, so not being able to sleep I ridiculously thought ‘I’ll read the next one to help take my mind off that one…‘ big mistake, I seemed to set off a chain reaction that just wouldn’t let up!

This collection is so good that it has quite literally jumped into my top books I’ve ever read, each short story is wonderfully crafted and masterfully executed, each is unique and showcases the brilliance of each writer. It has been a long while since I’ve read an anthology (and here at STORGY we read a lot of anthologies and collections) and could recount to you each and every story just from the title – that is the heart stopping power that resides in the New Uncanny. Some anthologies however great they are, always have a weak link in there somewhere, it may be down to the readers preference of course – but sometimes you find a story that is a bit of a place holder, a bit of a filler – trust me with The New Uncanny it is all killer no filler!

Let’s not forget that this isn’t a new collection, it’s been around since 2008 and was reissued this year – how it has taken me so long to discover this anthology I will never know…but I will also never forget discovering it!
Sara Maitland – Seeing Double – for me was one of the best stories in the collection, it is
dark and brooding, multi faceted and multi layered and Maitland builds the tension within the piece with a masters touch all the way through to the conclusion of the piece. I was so gripped by the story that as soon as I’d finished it I needed to put the book in the freezer (like Joey out of Friends) well I didn’t put it in the actual freezer, but I did have to step away from the book for a little while. One reason was I was just blown away by the writing, it was phenomenal. Two I had to get over the story. And three I just needed to tell someone about it (so I bent my wife’s ear for a good hour about how amazing it was). With this story I also did something that I don’t think I’ve ever done before…I found Sara Maitland’s agent and sent her an email to pass on for me which detailed my praise for the story and how amazing she was as a writer (who doesn’t like to hear that!).

‘The mother had taken the child in her arms and smiled, though wearily; but she had made no apparent attempt to count its toes, fingers, eyes and mouths, and after a moment the midwife had turned away to her immediate duties. When she turned back the mother was dead; her face was frozen in a strange rictus, which might have been the consequence of a sudden sharp pain or might have been terror. The midwife, a woman of sturdy good sense and addicted to neither gin nor gossip, deftly massaged the mother’s face back into a more seemly expression and closed her large blue eyes forever.’
Adam Marek – Tamagotchi – This is another of the stand out stories for me. It was a little different from the rest and had oodles of black comedy sewn into its storytelling. We know Adam Marek well here at STORGY and have followed his career with great interest, so we were delighted to see his name listed in the list of contributors for The New Uncanny and we were not disappointed. His story had me in stitches but also there were some subtle dark undertones intersperse in the prose which make the reader uncomfortable (challenging prejudices etc.) and for me that is the gem of a story – making the reader laugh along with you, but they know they shouldn’t be, and to be also be horrified in equal measure. This story is the most lighthearted if you can call it that, but it packs a punch that will last long after you stop reading!

MY SON’S Tamagotchi HAD AIDS. The virtual pet was rendered on a little LCD screen with no more than 30 pixels, but the sickness was obvious. It had that AIDS look, you know? It was thinner than it had been. Some of its pixels were faded, and the pupils of its huge eyes were smaller, giving it an empty stare.
There are so many stories in this collection that I could talk about but I will have to stop, not because I dont want to talk about them, it’s just I believe that this collection is so good, that I urge you all to go out and buy it – there is also the short story by Matthew Holness called ‘Possum‘ which has also been made into a film recently – trust me it is going to terrify you if the source material is anything to go by

[Michael]

A theme anthology in which authors were all invited to read Freud's essay on 'Das Unheimliche' and respond through horror fiction. The stories are moderately successful; often funny and always weird. Good stuff. I teach this book now in several of my classes at Seton Hill U. http://fiction.setonhill.edu

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bunch of creepy stories by well known writers such as AS Byatt, Hanif Kureishi and Jane Rogers featuring dolls that come alive, tamogotchis with AIDS, and a boy with two faces. Mostly done by suggestion or with subtlety, not graphic description and all the better for it. Not sure why Ian Duhig's was uncanny, but it was a fantastic rant full of wordplay set in Bradford.

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Un(heim)lich(e)Man(oeuvre)
Ian Duhig

“I like the way Joyce writes ‘lookingglass’ as one word; it seems to goggle back at you, reflecting itself and on itself.”

I share chronic iritis with Joyce. I have had it sporadically since I was 23, and I am now 73.
Isn’t 23 in ILLUMINATUS!
And 73 is the 21st prime number. Its mirror, 37, is the 12th and its mirror, 21, is the product of multiplying 7 and 3, and in binary 73 is a palindrome, 1001001, which backwards is 1001001.
Well, enough of MY connections. This ‘story’ is a massive compulsive virus at variance with word disassociation. It is the first extended stream of consciousness that I have ever understood and fully appreciated. Spreading through the narrator’s lifetime, detached from his mother, pushed by his pyramid oculist if occultist or Masonic Dad, and the narrator became a spy controlled by someone called Tyr, dry-stone walling, too, and reading Melmoth with a fisheye, and he studied with the Bradford Five. Told you, I am master of my reviewing brief.
This was indeed a highly infectious read of clause-connecting claws. A genius stream. Almost as good as Tristram Shandy that I have real-time reviewed on this site, as I have also Finnegans Wake. Even Oliver Onions, one of my favourite more obscure writers, was picked from the work’s net of spread allusions. A forerunner of the Liar’s Dictionary. So many allusions that have eluded this review, just the tip of the iceberg of them being adumbrated here, but I think I actually got all of them into the sump of my mind, AND I got the gestalt of the plot, too, despite not being a good plot-getter normally. By the way, sorry about the plot spoiler I made earlier above!

“Why does Plague get such a bad press? Aren’t they just a life form like any other?”

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.

[Felix · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of this anthology was to find out what stories modern authors would come up with when asked to read Freud's famous essay "The Uncanny" and be inspired by it. The stories collected here are the result of this experiment and I must say, I'm a bit disappointed. There sure are some solid pieces, like Ian Duhig's challenging and experimental "The Un(heim)lich(e) Man(oeuvre", written in an almost lyrical, highly allusive style, that kind of gyrates around the old I/eye ambiguity. Or Frank Cottrell Boyce's "Continuous Manipulation", which uncannily plays with the loss of autonomy and the manipulative nature of relationships. Still, most of the stories are average at best, many verging on the uninspired. Ramsey Campbell's lame "Double Room" for example, or Jane Rogers' "Ped-o-Matique", which are variations of standard plots like the machine-gone-bad or unseen-person-in-the-room-next-door (I recommend Algernon Blackwood instead). A lot of beating the dead horse going on here...

[Shawn]

PLACEHOLDER REVIEW:

Matthew Holness' "Possum" (the originating story for the later, same-titled film of 2018) has a disgraced puppeteer return to his rundown hometown to confront the man who occupies his home and possibly destroy the specially built, grotesque puppet he uses to frighten children in his act. I found it hard to read this because I'd seen the movie fairly recently and so, while I had a background as to what (psychologically and historically) informs the scenario, that scenario had been opened up a bit for the film and here we're getting a reduced sketch (not in actuality, of course, but only in comparison). The story is just as sad and depressing as the film (which is to say, very) and Holness has a deft touch at describing the blasted, urban wasteland of the town and its rotting environs.

[Fhsanders54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fourteen short stories providing an updated 21st century approach to the subject of the "uncanny", basically tales of unease and disorientation. As the Introduction informs us, Sigmund Freud made the genre famous in an essay of 1919, identifying seven standard tropes. These include inanimate objects behaving as animate and the reverse (such as dolls or zombies), waking dreams and the confusion between reality and imagination, presence of doubles such as twins or doppelgangers, and all-controlling evil genius. Several of this current crop of stories relate to out-of-control electronically powered devices reflecting our highly technological age, but others still fit into the old categories. It seems whilst films have become gorier and more horrific by the year, literature still holds on well to the more imaginative model of the uncanny

[Risteárd Caomhánach · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's nothing particularly good in this collection other than Ian Duhig's difficult "The Un(heim)lich(e) Man(oeuvre", a Joycean-Flann O'Brien stream of consciousness story about potential terrorism in Bradford. The rest are surprisingly standard for a book about the uncanny and strange. Christopher Priest, Hanif Kureishi, Sara Maitland & Matthew Holness do put in good efforts though. I think the uncanny has become a victim of its own literary success, a bit too suffocated by that one Freud essay that comes up oh so often in these discussions. Turns out you have to be a very talented writer à la Thomas Ligotti to pull genuine unease from moving puppets or dolls in the 21st century. Lets see a sequel deal with the Weird and the Errie as described by Mark Fisher, I'm sure the results would be really disturbing.

[Rado · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book so bad. I was hooked right off the premise:14 short stories by different authors in an effort to explore 'The Uncanny': at once an answer to Freud's popular 1919 essay, and a modern XXI century take on the topic. The introduction alone promised a lot.
However, most of these stories felt a bit unoriginal and uninspired - it's almost as if the authors were given some tiresome homework and they reluctantly agreed to do it.

Highlights: 'Possum', 'The Underhouse', 'The Dummy' and 'The Un(heim)lich(e) Man(oeuvre)'.
The rest of the stories were unfortunately below average.

[Lene Kretschz · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Uneven anthology featuring some usually very fine authors working well below their customary standards. The only stand-outs for me were A.S. Byatt's "Doll's Eyes" (not so much for the story itself which is rather wan as for the writer's confident, crystalline prose) and Frank Cottrell Boyce's "Continuous Manipulation". The rest vary from interesting but flawed (Matthew Holness' "Possum", Sara Maitland's "The Double", Christopher Priest's "The Sorting Out") to instantly forgettable (Jane Rogers' "Ped-o-matique", Alison McLeod's "Family Motel", Nicholas Royle's "The Dummy", etc.) to finally downright dreadful (the less said, the better). Disappointing as a whole.

[Dan Coxon · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot to like in this anthology, but I found it more patchy than I'd hoped. Most of the strong stories are in the first half, but it trails off pretty quickly. It's noticeable that the best comes from authors like Matthew Holness and Ramsey Campbell, who already write Uncanny fiction - I can't help questioning the value of asking writers who don't usually write this type of fiction to try their hand at it, when there are already so many actual masters of the form. Still, a few gems that make the anthology worthwhile for fans of strange fictions.

[Stuart Page · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some very interesting stories here. I feel like sometimes the exploration of the uncanny doesn't go deep enough, though - maybe just because its so hard to get a grip on what the uncanny really is and really means, and how to apply it to the modern day. A couple of really enjoyable stories, some very striking scenes, a couple of uncomfortable moments... Probably won't come back to it again, though I'd be tempted to share a couple of the stories with my friends.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short stories exploring various angles on the uncanny valley concept. I picked this up just for the AS Byatt story, which turned out not to be the strongest story, though she does employ her skill to lay out a wonderfully demented ending. The strongest, most bizarre story is the first one, Possum. If it doesn't totally freak you out, you didn't pay attention. Loved it.

[Cazza · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mixed

I was left a bit disappointed by the collection as a whole. The stand out story really is Possum, I can see why it was made into such a successful film.

Many of the other stories feel either too basic and under developed or too obscure to really feel a connection with. There is some good, tense prose but it often feels a bit empty.

[Helen Magnusson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book for the short story "Possum" - which also is a great movie - quite unique actually.
I only read "Possum" and its a great little story about a strange man and his big scary hand puppet that looks like a mix between a spider and himself. There are really dark underthemes of sexual child abuse and even child murder. Horrible and scary, but so well put together.

[Larry · Rating 2 out of 5]

A limp dishrag of a horror anthology.

A lot of these stories just left me hanging. I think this is fashionable or something; don't spell out in details how it ends, let the reader's imagination work. Often, I have my suspicions what the writer is getting at, but I don't find this technique effective.

[Oscar Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) A really fun idea for a collection of short stories. Lots of them are suitably unsettling, there are a few that don't quite hit the mark and as a collection there's a lot that cover the same ideas of the uncanny, so some more variety would be good. Highlights include Doll's Eyes, Possum, Family Motel, The Sorting Out & Continuous Manipulation. Definitely worth it for fans of horror!!

[Lautaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una antología de relatos inquietantes de variable calidad. Aun así, "Possum" de Matthew Holness hace que valga la pena recomendarlo.

[Sarah-Jayne Windridge-France · Rating 4 out of 5]

Freud would have a field day with this antholody of bizarre, strange, dark, funny and downright mind-bending stories.

Definitely worth a read.

[Robert Welbourn · Rating 4 out of 5]

14 stories with varying quality - the good ones are brilliant and well worth reading the poor ones for.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it. Some stories I couldn’t make sense of, and I’m not sure whether that’s my reading comprehension.

[Things I have read · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Some spectacular stories make it worthwhile

[Sparrow Copeland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bar one that wasn't my taste, every single short story gripped me and kept me reading. I adored this collection!

[David Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of short stories, some a bit meh, some good and some really good twisted tales, my favourite, a Tomagachi that looked like it had aids.

[Chrystal Hays · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a couple of these didn't really do anything for me, the other 12 really worked well.
Tamagothchi by Adam Marek is especially pleasing.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Double Room ⭐️
Possum ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Seeing double ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Underhouse ⭐️
The Dummy ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Sorting Out ⭐️⭐️
Ped-o-matique ⭐️⭐️
Dolls’ Eyes ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tamagotchi ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Family Motel⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Un(heim)lich(e)Man(ouvre) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Long Ago Yesterday ⭐️⭐️
Continuous Manipulation ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Anette and I are fucking in hell ⭐️

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey - what?! There's a SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD????!!!! Some very good tales in here indeed, although it is quite a broader definition of uncanny than I'm quite used to - some stories are really over the top and pretty outrageously gothic, while others are more subtly unnerving, like one about a woman who finds her house broken into and somehow rearranged without clearly understanding how. For readers who enjoyed this particular title, I would suggest Michele Slung's "Stranger: Dark Tales of Eerie Encounters" and Joan Kessler's "Night Shadows: 20th Century Stories of the Uncanny." I found both of these to be excellent.

Now I need to pay attention to what else wins this Shirley Jackson award.

[Robert]

I liked about half of the stories in this book. I gave up on one or two of the tales before I'd gotten halfway, but the stories that I did enjoy were very good. Matthew Holness' tale of Possum was amazing - I'd love to read a full length novel by him at some point. There were also others that stuck to the more gothic elements of the uncanny that were equally creepy and well-written in good measure.