Book Lovers Series

Book Lovers: Episode 33

Episode 33: Weird Fiction

November 9, 2021


We live in a context where the boundaries of reality are constantly tested by scientific discoveries, new technologies, and attempts to describe our world. Weird fiction is a genre-spanning tendency with a long history that attests to this shifting sense of the real. On this episode, we survey weird fiction from Lovecraft and Kafka to the present, focusing on contemporary innovators and trends in speculative writing that keep our minds focused on the weird. Along the way, we consider talking animals, how cockroaches might inspire dancing, and the pervasive weirdness in TV, movies, and video games.




Titles discussed:

  • Weird Tales (periodical)
  • The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
  • The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
  • Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
  • The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  • Welcome to Night Vale (podcast)
  • Prairie Home Companion, hosted by Garrison Keillor
  • The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way
  • Bojack Horseman, created by Raphael Bob-Wacksberg
  • Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch
  • Stranger Things, created by the Duffer Brothers
  • Donnie Darko, directed by Richard Kelly
  • Blue Velvet, directed by David Lynch
  • Magnolia, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
  • The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
  • Providence by Alan Moore
  • In the Earth, directed by Ben Wheatley
  • Midsommar, directed by Ari Aster
  • Kill List, directed by Ben Wheatley
  • The Wicker Man, directed by Robin Hardy
  • Antlers, directed by Scott Cooper
  • The Other Lamb, directed by Małgorzata Szumowska
  • The Weigh Down, directed by Maria Zenovich
  • Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
  • The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor Lavalle
  • The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
  • The City and the City by China Miéville

 

Authors mentioned:

  • H. P. Lovecraft
  • Gabriel García Márquez
  • Jorge Luis Borges
  • Bruno Schultz
  • Franz Kafka
  • Neil Gaiman
  • Stanley Kubrick

 

Topics noted:

  • The “we live in a simulation” theory
  • Revisionist Westerns
  • Magical realism

 

Titles from the RA Corner:

  • Control (video game)
  • Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  • Vivarium, directed by Lorcan Finnegan
  • Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
  • The artwork of Andrew and Jamie Wyeth
  • “Emphasis on the Magic: A Wyeth Perspective” from Art in America
  • “Jamie Wyeth: Unsettled” by Brandywine Valley Museum of Art