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Weird Horror, Issue 4, Spring 2022
July 2025 Group Read 1
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Weird Horror, Issue 4, Spring 2022
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I am sure glad I ordered the paper version of this periodical. It's sort of like having a graphic novel. The size and quality production are equivalent. The cover is really cool viewed in 7 x 9.75-inch size. It's fairly thin, just 88 pages thick, but the text is double columned, just like Weird Tales itself was.The volume starts with the essay, "Next Wave Horror," by Simon Strantzas. He makes some good observations that had not previously occurred to me in these two pages. The most substantial one was that horror as a genre began in the 1970s. Horror was written before then, of course, but not as a genre-specific enterprise designed to go into the horror section in a bookstore. That did indeed begin in the 1970s with The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, Stephen King's first four novels, Ghost Story, The Rats, etc. It was a Golden Age for horror that's never been matched in my opinion, not even close.
But after this, my agreement with Strantzas' points ends. He identifies a phase two of horror that began in 2000, struggles to name a few unconvincing characteristics not worth repeating (mainly because I didn't bother to remember them) of that second wave to distinguish it from the 1970s burst.
Then, as if that were not bad enough, he claims we're entering a third phase of genre horror now, one that's distinguished by having characters that are LGBTQ and gender fluid. Really! That's all Strantzas thinks defines current horror as a genre, non-binary folks who don't solely enjoy being with the opposite gender. Yeah, gender fluidity is trendy, but definitional? I think not!
Anyway, Strantzas writes of fun things to ponder. This entire issue looks like it will be truly enjoyable. On to Orrin Grey's three-page essay and then the first story.
Ah, finally this won the poll! I can finally read my own physical copy that's been adorning my TV stand for years, haha! :)Looking forward to it! It's always looked like a professionally made magazine, and I especially love their cover art.
Orrin Grey's essay was about how horror could in some circumstances go well with horror, thus winning my "Master of the Obvious" award. Has he never heard of Tim Burton?The Floating House by J.F. Gleeson ★½ This is a story of a child being brought by her father to a haunted house for reasons never made clear. We get the story from the child's perspective; therefore, we have a classic unreliable narrator tale. That can work as long as the story is made clear to the reader even if the child can't process all the parameters. But in an odd failure, the story and the stakes are never made clear to the reader either, at least not to this reader, and I carefully reread this story several times to try to dig it out. Very frustrating.
At IMDB, J. F. Gleeson has two published works listed. He had another story appear in another magazine a year prior to this story: "The Age of Swirling Mist" in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #345. Issue #345! Really? How have I never heard of this magazine? What kind of name for a magazine is this?
In another oddity, one can go to Gleeson's blog (https://deadlostbeaches.blog/) and read perhaps eight or ten more of his stories that were published in listed places too obscure for even IMDB to note. If I read another Gleeson story, it will be "The Age of Swirling Mist." The story is not expensive to obtain and I'd like to read the other story that appeared in that magazine anyway.
Gleeson impressed me in this story as an author who can write, but perhaps he overwrote on this occasion. I think he may have been too subtle.
Okay, I've read more than half of the entries so far and as one would expect (but not wish), it's a bit of a mixed bag. Let's start with the opening essays.The first essay by Simon Strantzas is very short, and perhaps a bit too short given the subject matter: the development of horror as a literary genre from the 1970s. It's an ambitious undertaking, and it quickly becomes apparent that more space is needed to flesh out what he considers waves of writers and horror stories.
Dan wrote: "But after this, my agreement with Strantzas' points ends. He identifies a phase two of horror that began in 2000, struggles to name a few unconvincing characteristics not worth repeating (mainly because I didn't bother to remember them) of that second wave to distinguish it from the 1970s burst.
Then, as if that were not bad enough, he claims we're entering a third phase of genre horror now, one that's distinguished by having characters that are LGBTQ and gender fluid. Really! That's all Strantzas thinks defines current horror as a genre, non-binary folks who don't solely enjoy being with the opposite gender. Yeah, gender fluidity is trendy, but definitional? I think not!"
The first wave is covered in more detail and, in my opinion, more clearly defined. I agree with you, Dan, that he fails to come up with examples of Second Wave Horror, which he thinks started at "around the turn of the millennium". He does point out that this new wave of writers grew up in a different world, and in a world where "horror was a major marketing category", subsequently having more horror fiction in general to contend with, wich naturally makes sense.
Unfortunately, Strantzas only makes the claim that "the most successful of these Second Wave writers found inspiration in the cosmicism of Lovecraft, the oneiricism of Aickman, the pessimism of Ligotti" without giving us a single name or work from that second wave.
I do think he may be on to something in his understanding of this Third Wave of Horror, if one can ever manifest itself. He makes a good point that "Things move faster now [...] we're left with a world where there may not even be waves anymore but instead just a steady and constant onslaught of new writers and new kinds of work. A state of constant flux and noise, on that will be impossible to parse because it's so overwhelming. A world where everything that can exist will exist and all at once", which has it's upsides and downsides, of course. Arguably, that might make it even harder to talk about horror as a genre.
In any case, I think you might have misconstrued his argument a little. He suspects that we're about to see the end of the "default straight white male narrative" and what the next wave will "reject the nation that Horror needs to be viewed through a solely Western lens. Just as second Wave Horror writers redefined what Horror stories could be about; Third Wave Horror writers will redefine who they can be about."
While I understand why you came to that conclusion, he doesn't say non-binary people and gender fluidity specifically. Although that's one of several possibilites outside of the "straight white male narrative", but so are straight white females or any non-white person etc., and his second argument is about a Western lens. So there are two thing to consider. I do wish he had been more clear about what he meant about this new development, elaborated more on these topics and justified his observations with some examples (like, what's "Western", anyway?), but I guess that's what he was able to fit in to the two pages alloted to him.
I liked Orrin Grey's essay on the relationship between humor and horror. Although I disagree that "we're as likely to laugh as scream when something startles us" and that humor and horror are "practically two sides of the same coin" in absolutely all instances, I do see how one can amplify the other. I also hadn't thought about how something cool is more likely to be the opposite of scary rather than something silly.
One questions comes to mind, though: Is there a meaningful difference between silly, goofy and funny in this context?
J.F. Gleeson - The Floating House - ★★★★★
The narrator recalls visiting a house with floating people as a child. These memories, and one particularly traumatic experience that happen, were so terrifying and unnerving that they still haunt and affect the narrator even in adulthood. Who wouldn’t be when confronted with a scene such as this?
“The people who floated about the house did so without purpose and without direction, and drifted, not noticeably moving apart from their drift, moving as, if something in our universe must be compared to it, corpses might in space.” (9)
Ah, goose bumps!
Memory is a delicate thing. Sometimes, what actually happened is secondary to how we perceive it now and how it feels when we replay things in our mind. And as is normal when it comes to childhood memories, your perspective at the time was different and likely skewed by your limited experience and knowledge. By naiveté, if you like. Because of that, your fears can become all the more intense. As the reader might attest, frightful things from our childhood have the power to change us or, if we let them, control us.
“Through fear of this I may well become very detached from everything, and float off the floor myself.” (13)
Gleeson writes from a grown-up’s perspective, but with a child’s intensity of feeling, and I think this story shows that in a very good way. It makes sense to leave out the who, the why and the how and focus on the imagery. Memories can also change, can become warped, as we grow older, and I see this story as an effective, atmospheric depiction of that sentiment. It also ties in very nicely with Orrin’s essay about how the silliness of threatening floating balloons becomes, by its goofiness, grotesque in the extreme and all the more horrifying.
Linda Niehoff – Fever Girls - ★★
I’m not too sure about this one. It opens with “Fevers brought the dead and the girls knew it” and therefore “they did everything they could to catch a fever”. (14) It seems like contacting the dead is a normal thing, and that you’re able to contact them only when you become sick. A girl named Claire is lucky enough to catch a fever and falls in love with a boy. A wedding is planned and then something happens. There’s also a secret society involved somehow. That part wasn’t quite clear to me. Most things about this story weren’t clear, and I think I need to read it several more times to get to the bottom of what the author was trying to tell me.
I generally don’t like this style of writing. One where there’s an omniscient narrator, but the story is told from an objective point of view. The subjects are many and often referred to in a more general sense, like “the girls”, “they”, “the newspapers”, “some said” etc.. And in stories like that, and this one, you tend to jump from one event to the next in quick succession, never taking the time to feel or think or experience anything at all. The writing becomes repetitive, stale, dispassionate, deadpan … you name it. That makes me indifferent to what happens and detached from the people involved, so I dislike it very much indeed.
“His hair was the color of mossy green, of one who’s been in the grave too long. His eyes were the dying sun.” (16)
Daniel David Froid – Camera’s Eye - ★★★★
This story is about a mysterious four minute long video with three people who “might be in a lonely desert somewhere on earth, but they are, supposedly, in hell.” After a rundown of what might have happened to those people and the sister of the woman who made the video, we, both as viewers and as readers, follow a man in his investigations. Froid makes an interesting comment with this story about what happens to videos once they’re uploaded to the internet. There will be debates and disagreements and conspiracy theories on social media, and over time it will become more and more difficult to put all the pieces together. There will probably be a community dedicated, even devout, to this mystery as well.
“They thrill at the mystery, and they will, as is the habit of their kind, begin to ferret out whatever pieces of the puzzle they can find. They will find likeminded others in whom they will feel that thrill or thrum mirrored back to them, who will share it. These few feel – and they are correct – that they have glimpsed a secret, something dredged up from the bottom of the world. It is this private intensity they are after. It is like inhaling some heady, sweet, and rich fume, such as gasoline. It changes them because they allow it to do so and because they want it to do so.” (20/21)
It’s borderline voyeuristic at times, our collective obsession with public scandals or murder or gruesome pictures and videos. I am very much reminded of Paul Tremblay’s “Horror Movie” here (review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). It taps into that same vein and draws the same parallels.
In any case, I really liked it. I love the mystery of the video, and I kept following the man’s investigations with bated breath at the edge of my seat.
“It is impossible not to feel, at this point, a shiver of dread. That he is getting closer to it feels palpable, unmistakable. A feeling of trepidation that is very much like desire begins to take root within us.” (23)
I am about 3/4 the way through the anthology now and am finding the stories to range from 1.5 to 3 stars. Rather than make a lot of negative comments about the stories individually, I will just summarize at the end in a review, write mostly about the couple 3-star stories. It's mostly the writing quality I'm not appreciating. The subject matter is fine.
Sarina Dorie – Arachnids In Your Bed: An Interactive Bedtime Story for Children – And Adults ★★
I’ve never come across an interactive story like this before. What a fun exercise! Sadly, it wasn’t much of a story and more like a questionnaire, and the various answers became a bit too similar towards the end. I laughed several times, though, so I guess it was alright.
Annika Barranti Klein – Milk Teeth - ★★
A fairy tale about a young girl. Her mother is dead, and her father goes away every now and then – but oddly enough just before wolves appear outside. She also lives with her grandmother. The title refers to the teeth that grandmother is hiding in her drawer. The story was fairly uneventful, unoriginal, simply written and predictable.
Dan wrote: "I am about 3/4 the way through the anthology now and am finding the stories to range from 1.5 to 3 stars. Rather than make a lot of negative comments about the stories individually, I will just sum..."Aww, it's a shame you didn't like most of them very much up until this point. I hope you can find some redeeming qualities once you're finished reading the whole thing.
It's a mixed bag for me in the short story department, with some disappointments here and there (especially puzzling to me is that some of these stories clearly aren't horror nor weird fiction), but I think my overall impression is that it's a good issue, albeit just shy of being mediocre.
My review, such as it is: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Well, short as it may be, it's a longer review than the other seven combined, lol.
Oh no, two stars is unexpectedly bad. I think I would've rated this issue three stars if I had based my rating on the stories alone, but I'm adding one extra star for the same reasons you layed out here:"The cover art was fine; the production values were high. Even the non-fiction material in it was a delight. The essays were thought-provoking even if I didn't agree with their authors' points. The book and film reviews at the end were great. I appreciated the synopses telling us about the authors too. Even the advertisements for other books and magazines related to this subject matter were interesting."
Despite having read plenty of books on the subject and taken various classes on a university level, I still think I have much to learn when it comes to literary theory and creative writing. Reading other people's reviews helps me see what I've missed, what I've needed a reminder of or teaches me something new. Your review is one such learning moment, and I have some thoughts and questions.
You mentioned that we only “get informed indirectly how the protagonist feels about the weird event”. I didn’t think about that initially when I rated the stories, but it makes perfect sense in weird fiction to focus on the conflict between individuals and whatever the weird element/event happens to be. Or/and then an inner conflict caused by it. Naturally, what the narrator/protagonist feels, we as readers feel too. That was perhaps the main flaw of “Camera’s Eye” (where the story ended the moment the man seemingly encountered something in the basement, and we don’t get to know anything about how any of the other people involved felt) and “Fields and Scatter” and “Figments of the Night”.
I also appreciate weird stories more when the weird element is not just placed in the background, but rather a major aspect of the story. But stories like “Milk Teeth”, “Figments of the Night” and “Hurled Against Rocks” failed on that aspect.
I still think it’s possible to trigger emotional responses that are just as effective in readers by providing a clear sense of setting and atmosphere and mystery - without having the narrator/protagonist experience and react in a certain way or having a clear narrative structure. A balance is often needed, of course. Things can’t be too vague or confusing, but one can’t be too obvious either, so that nothing is left to our own imagination.
But may I ask what you mean by there being “only feelings about untold stories that get alluded to instead of told”? Are you talking about character development?
And what do you mean by this?
“There's also a certain lack of clarity in the telling of the plots as the story starts that creates a sense of disorientation, though the story usually gets partially clearer as it progresses. “
Is there a difference or a relationship between that lack of clarity and ambiguity, plot holes or lack of background or lack of a clear resolution?
In any case, I actually think I would agree with you on most of these stories. I also think where we differ mostly sometimes is that I can appreciate stories (or find sufficient) where the core aspect is just the very sense or idea of something in itself. That’s probably why I liked “The Floating House”, “Camera’s Eye”, “Sunder Island” and “Whenever It Comes” despite their flaws. They still capture that uncanny/eerie feeling or create a sense of the weird/mysterious quite well for me.
Steve Rasnic Tem – Whenever It Comes - ★★★★
A very short short story (three pages), but the author managed to convey a lot. The plot is a bit unclear, but I think it’s because of the unreliable narrator. He doesn’t come across that way at first, though. Some readers may notice that sooner, but I realized it later. I won’t say how. The narrator, a man, has been through a lot he tells us. He’s lost his job and is now staying at home with his family. In fact, he’s becoming paranoid about leaving. Something’s happening outside. I don’t know what, but I think society is breaking down. Either that or he is.
“I said ‘I thought we agree we wouldn’t be going outside anymore. Don’t tell me you’ve been going outside.” (41)
You know, at the end, I think I understand perfectly well what it’s all about, but at the same time I have no idea what’s going on. It’s all a little bit dystopian, paranoid, frenetic, dysfunctional. Overall, I think it’s ultimately conveying a sense of collapse. This story too is a bit misplaced here, and I don’t think it deserves my four stars in a magazine called “weird horror”, but the world building is fascinatingly dense, and I like the way the story made me think and feel, and I would like to credit the author for doing something a bit different.
“My father wanted to come too, but my father was dead. So I told him no.” (40)
Andrew Humphrey – Hurled Against Rocks - ★★
Another one of those stories that I refuse to call weird fiction or horror. It’s closer to magical realism. The narrator is a failed male writer who suddenly meets his ex-girlfriend in a library. We then get some flashbacks and stuff about their relationship and his brother while at the same time we see them trying to catch up. And insult each other. It was all very mundane and forgettable.
Ashley Stokes – Fields and Scatter - ★★★★
A man and a woman are “breaking the rules to take a shot at impossible romance”. The state of the world is otherwise a perilous one, with brain devouring spores spreading everywhere. I suspected early on that this had to be affecting both of them and read on with vigilance for any signs of deterioration or change. Unfortunately, we don’t get to know very much about the fungus organism and how it has changed society at large, but there’s an undercurrent of cognitive dissonance here that I found beautiful, and I really liked the delicate prose. It was like being led down an aisle of decomposing dreams.
The fungus/spores were mostly in the background here - at least when it comes to the main focus of the characters (which is each other) and whatever consequences it’s having on society, but I still think it had a meaningful effect on the main character’s experiences and consequently me as a reader.
But the ending took a completely different turn and didn’t make any sense to me.
“A mist of violet flickers hazed across him. He was not sure if they were real floating bits of leaf debris or seeds or spores, or just spangles in his eyes because he was in love again.” (56)
Derrick Boden - Sunder Island - ★★★★
Something called “The company” sends a female inspector, Ellen Rodrigues, to a remote island to locate a former inspector, Francis Turner. He was supposed to check in but never did. The story is told through her journal entries. She investigates and meets a man called Andre and a doctor Wells. We soon realize that something’s not quite right. Something’s off about the birds there, and inevitably something’s off about the men she meets as well.
“He said the people on this island, they’re not of this earth.” (63)
The isolation and loneliness force her to confront her past, and it may or may not be connected to Andre or the doctor. They’re very strange and intimidating. We don’t get any clear answers to what’s happening, and there’s not really any resolution at the end, so there’s a strong element of doubt here. Are any of the people involved going crazy? Do her experiences manifest because of drugs or lack of food? Or something supernatural? But there is a real threat here, not just vague insinuations and tricks of the light, which means we get both an inner and outer conflict. And it was a creepy read. Four stars.
“The island takes us apart.” (71)
Armel Dagorn – Figments of the Night - ★★
A woman called Oonagh is at a party when young men (?) in straw hats enter and demands all the attention that Oonagh doesn’t seem to want, despite being a newlywed. And that’s about it. People do party things, Oonagh is slightly uncomfortable and something half-surprising happens at the end. Nothing really happens, no conflict, no interesting characters, no weird stuff anywhere (subject to interpretation, I guess) and no atmosphere to speak of. I can’t find anything positive to say about this one, unfortunately.
I'm sorry to have to be so negative on this anthology. Like I said, I wanted to like it. I just found that impossible. For a while as I was close to finishing it I wondered if I was being too tough on the book, if my expectations were too high. I read a lot of Best Of anthologies. Science Fiction Hall of Fame, for example. Or greatest weird fiction stories by women through 1940. Is it really fair to compare or expect a run-of-the-mill anthology that is published by little-known writers twice per year to compete with that?Then I read that last story. I realized as I finished that there wasn't a single story in the anthology that I truly enjoyed. That's actually very rare for any anthology, and I like some real stinkers. There's a British film horror series written by complete amateurs that has a really fun story once every three or four. For me this anthology didn't even have that.
GoodReads criteria for its rating system is that three stars means a work was enjoyed. It might have nothing extra, but to get three stars one must be able to at least say that about the work as a starting minimum. I couldn't. Thus it gets two stars. I save my one-star rating for egregiously lacking stories. Pretentious writing, vastly over-rated writing (like The Sun Also Rises, Redshirts, We Have Always Lived in the Castle) or pure amateur hour writing replete with grammar errors, typos, and plots that are laughably lacking in sense get my one-star, and there's a surprisingly large amount of books like that, especially now that anyone with too large an ego can self-publish so easily. This anthology wasn't that. It was in the upper range of my two-star rating, but definitely could not get three--because I didn't like it and can't recommend it to anyone.
In terms of my saying that the stories started out lacking clarity and only gained some during their telling needs more explanation, you're right. Some stories, for example lots of experimental and new age fiction from the 1970s, much well-written New Weird fiction from around the turn of the last century, all start out being hard to understand and never really do make much sense even by the end. Most of the stories in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions are like this, as are many of the stories in VanderMeer's The New Weird. These stories take skill to write, are well-written, yet intentionally lack clarity. They're not my preference for reading, but I can respect them even if they too usually get my two-star rating.
That's not the case with this anthology. Their lack of clarity at the start I think is due to the authors' lack of writing skill. Let's take "Fields and Scatter" by Ashley Stokes as a test case. His first sentence is as follows: "First sight of the only off-screen, flesh-and-blood-woman for nearly a year tingled his stomach." First sentences of stories are extremely important. They're supposed to draw a reader in, pique their curiosity, make them want more so that they keep reading because they want to rather than feel obligated to. Does this sentence do that for you? It's barely even a sentence. What's the subject? "His?" The woman? The stomach? First sight? What in the world is meant by that? Flesh-and-blood-woman? As opposed to what? A robot? A dead woman being brought back to life? Lots of questions are raised. Not much information is imparted. But the next sentence should surely help, right?
Here it is: "He crossed the glistening forecourt." Okay... What's a forecourt? An area in front of another? Did we need to know it glistened? What did it glisten from? I'm sure we were told that because it was important. Right? Who is the "he" that's crossing. The one maybe with a tingling stomach due to having seen a woman? Okay, maybe the third sentence will help this start making sense.
"She was hiding behind a pillar." Sigh. Okay, more questions being introduced. No answers yet. If she's hiding how do we know she's flesh and blood? Why is that exceptional enough to note? Why is this guy crossing a court if the woman was hiding? Is she doing such a poor job of hiding that he saw her there and crossed the court? How does he know she's hiding? No indication is given how he could know.
I could go on, but that entire first paragraph fails to answer any question other than it's a rendezvous of a sort and that there is some reason to wonder about the reality of the woman. The second paragraph, long as it is, doesn't begin to answer any of the questions raised so far. Nor does it even give the reader a hint at what problem the story's protagonist is going to be involving himself with.
This just isn't a good way to start a story. And it barely improves from this poor start. I'm not really bringing to bear my B.A. degree in English, emphasis on Literary Criticism, or my M.A. in Creative Writing to assess what I am reading. I'm just reading the story slowly, carefully, and closely, asking questions of it I think any reader could and should. All or almost all the stories in this anthology start off as obscurely as this one. The writers don't know how to start a story! How can a writer not know this?
Weird Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
The Sun Also Rises (other topics)Redshirts (other topics)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (other topics)
Dangerous Visions (other topics)
The New Weird (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
J.F. Gleeson (other topics)Michael Kelly (other topics)
For this occasion, I ordered a paper copy of the book from the used book market. There are many available, and it only cost a dollar or two more. The periodical arrives Monday, June 30; therefore, I'll be ready to go. The entire series is easily available for not that much expense for e-readers. Hopefully curious folks will be joining in.
The magazine contains the following ten short stories and four essays:
Simon Strantzas on Horror: Next Wave Horror, essay by Simon Strantzas
Clowns at Midnight, essay by Orrin Grey
The Floating House, short story by J. F. Gleeson
Fever Girls, short story by Linda Niehoff
Camera's Eye, short story by Daniel David Froid
Arachnids in Your Bed: An Interactive Bedtime Story for Children—and Adults, short story by Sarina Dorie
Milk Teeth, short story by Annika Barranti Klein
Whenever It Comes, short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
Hurled Against Rocks, short story by Andrew Humphrey
Fields and Scatter, short story by Ashley Stokes
Sunder Island, short story by Derrick Boden
Figments of the Night, short story by Armel Dagorn
The Macabre Reader, essay by Lysette Stevenson
Aberrant Vision, essay by Tom Goldstein
The only two names I recognize in that list is Orrin Grey--his fungus anthology was a group read for us last year. And Steve Rasnic Tem--he publishes a story every month it seems, and is not too particular where. Nevertheless, he seldom disappoints.
Is anyone else familiar with any of these names of this series? In any event, this should be a fun July!