Weird Fiction Review, your “non-denominational source for the Weird,” is the brainchild of Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer. Ann has served as editor of Weird Tales and with Jeff co-edited such anthologies as The New Weird, the ebook antho series ODD?, and the just-released The Weird: A Compendium of Strange & Dark Stories (Atlantic/Corvus). Jeff is an award-winning writer of weird fiction whose last novel, Finch, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Nebula Award.
The site is meant to be “an ongoing exploration into all facets of the weird, in all of its many forms — a kind of non-denominational approach that appreciates Lovecraft but also Kafka, Angela Carter and Clark Ashton Smith, Shirley Jackson and Fritz Leiber — along with the next generation of weird writers and international weird. Its emphasis is on nonfiction on writers and particular books, but also runs features on weird art, music, and film, as well as occasional fiction. It exists in a symbiotic relationship with S.T. Joshi’s print journal The Weird Fiction Review, but does not share staff.”
Since the fall of 2011, when it debuted two short stories I translated
- “Kavar the Rat” by Thomas Owen
- “The Society Tiger” by Jean Ferry
I have been a regular contributor to what has become a twice-monthly column on all aspects of the Francophone fantastic — the Belgian School of the Strange; mid-century French fabulists, forgotten or fondly remembered; spooky comics; discussions of nomenclature; author retrospectives; individual novels and stories; works already translated or yet-to-be; incitements, praise, plea-bargains, exhortations, appreciations, investigations, examinations… This page on my blog is meant to be a running index of my articles at WFR, for your searching and clicking ease and convenience.
Here they are, in chronological order of appearance, oldest to newest:
- Michel Bernanos’ “The Other Side of the Mountain”: Sin, Destruction, and Forgiveness: A Short Overview of a Weird Classic
- The Weird Questionnaire: Sixty questions, sixty minutes
- Billy Fog and the Gift of Trouble Sight
- André Pieyre de Mandiargues: An Introduction to a Great Mid-Century Weird Fabulist
- Story to Comic: Pierre Mac Orlan’s “Roi Rose”: Undead Pirates! Secrets of the Deep!
- Mademoiselle B. by Maurice Pons
- Frederik Peeters’ Pachyderm: A Lynchian Switzerland
- Marcel Brion (1895-1984): Invitation to the Voyage, Part I
- A Gallery of Grotesques: Ludovic Debeurme’s Renée
- The Chimerical Brigade: Whatever Happened to the European Superhero?
- Histoires à dormir debout: Marcel Schneider (1913-2009)
- Marcel Schneider: Part II of II
- Echoes: Correspondences (Marcel Schneider and Kem Nunn)
- Two by Anne Richter
- “An Accounting” by Thomas Owen: Owen on Lovecraft
- Jehanne Jean-Charles
- Feeling Very Lonely in Beyond, Part I of II: Juggling Genres and the Weird
- Feeling Very Lonely in Beyond, Part II of II: The Last Days of an Immortal
- Echoes: Correspondences II (André Pieyre de Mandiargues and Richard Ford)
- The Water Spider: First of Two on Béalu
- Jean Ferry: A Figure of the French 20th Century
- Marguerite Cassan: Develop in Darkness
- Noel Devaulx: The Secret Master
- Pierrette Fleutiaux: A French Angela Carter?
- Devaulx Redux
- Serge Brussolo: The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome
- Echoes: Correspondences III, Making Love in a Fishbowl
- 65 Beginnings by Pierre Bettencourt
- Franz Hellens: A Belgian Master
- The Music of Jerome Noirez
WFR has also continued to print and reprint my translations of Francophone fantastical fiction, including:
- “Annie” by Jehanne Jean-Charles (never before in print)
- “Rara Avis” by Bernard Quiriny (first featured in Best European Fiction 2012 from Dalkey Archive)