H. P. Lovecraft: ‘The Dunwich Horror’ by H. P. Lovecraft. Originally published in Weird Tales, April 1929.
George R. R. Martin: ‘Sandkings’ by George R. R. Martin, copyright © 1979. Originally published in OMNI, August 1979. Reprinted by permission of the author.
A. Merritt: ‘The People of the Pit’ by A. Merritt. Originally published in All-Story Weekly, 1918.
Gustav Meyrink: ‘The Man in the Bottle’ by Gustav Meyrink. Originally published in English translation in The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations, Vol 3, 1912, edited by Julian Hawthorne.
China Miéville: ‘Details’ by China Miéville, copyright © 2002. Originally published in Children of Cthulhu, edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams. Reprinted by permission of Pan Macmillan and Random House.
Premendra Mitra: ‘The Discovery of Telenapota’ by Premendra Mitra, copyright © 1984. Originally published in The Illustrated Weekly of India. Translation by Pritish Nandy, copyright © 1984. Reprinted by permission of the translator.
Augusto Monterroso: ‘Mr. Taylor’ by Augusto Monterrosa, copyright © 1954. Originally published in El Siglo, Chile 1954, and in Mexico in 1959 as part of the collection Obras Completas. This new translation by Larry Nolen, copyright © 2011. Published by permission of the author’s estate and the translator.
Micaela Morrissette: ‘The Familiars’ by Micaela Morrissette, copyright © 2009. Originally published in Conjunctions 52: Betwixt the Between. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Haruki Murakami: ‘The Ice Man’ by Haruki Murakami, copyright © 2006, translated by Philip Gabriel. Originally published in Murakami Haruki Book, an extra edition of Bungakukai, published by Bungei Shunju in April 1991. First English translation in The New Yorker, 2003, later published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty-Four Stories by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel & Jay Rubin, translation copyright © 2006. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and the author’s agent, ICM.
Reza Negarestani: ‘The Dust Enforcer’ by Reza Negarestani, copyright © 2008. Originally published as part of the novel Cyclonopedia. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Joyce Carol Oates: ‘Family’ by Joyce Carol Oates, copyright © 1989. Originally published in OMNI. Reprinted by permission of John Hawkins and Associates, Inc.
Ben Okri: ‘Worlds That Flourish’ by Ben Okri, copyright © 1988. From Stars of the New Curfew by Ben Okri, published by Secker & Warburg. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd and Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Craig Padawer: ‘The Meat Garden’ by Craig Padawer, copyright © 1996. Originally published in Conjunctions 26: Sticks and Stones. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Mervyn Peake: ‘Same Time, Same Place’ by Mervyn Peake, copyright © 1963. Originally published in Science Fantasy, 1963, Vol. 20 # 60. Reprinted by permission of PFD (www.pfd.co.uk) on behalf of the Estate of Mervyn Peake.
Jean Ray: ‘The Mainz Psalter’ by Jean Ray. Originally published as ‘Le Psautier de Mayence’ in Le Bien Public, 6 May, 1930. From Ghouls In My Grave, translated by Lowell Bair, copyright © 1965 by the Berkeley Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Berkeley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Jean Ray: ‘The Shadowy Street’ by Jean Ray. Originally published as ‘La Ruelle Ténébreuse’ in La Croisière des Ombres, 1931. From Ghouls In My Grave, translated by Lowell Bair, copyright © 1965 by the Berkeley Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Berkeley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Mercè Rodoreda: ‘The Salamander’ by Mercè Rodoreda, copyright © 1967. Originally published as part of the collection La meva Cristina i alters contes, Barcelona: Edicions 62. Translation by Martha Tennent, copyright © 2008 from The Review of Contemporary Fiction: New Catalan Fiction, Spring 2008, Vol. XXCVIII, No. 1: 15-22. Copyright © Institut d.Estudis Catalans. Reprinted by permission of the translator and the author’s estate.
Joanna Russ: ‘The Little Dirty Girl’ by Joanna Russ, copyright © 1982. Originally published in Elsewhere, Volume 2, ed. Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold, Ace, 1982. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent.
Saki: ‘Sredna Vashtar’ by Saki. Originally published in The Chronicles of Clovis, 1910.
Hagiwara Sakutar: ‘The Town of Cats’ by Hagiwara Sakutar, copyright © 2008 University of Hawai’i Press. Originally published in Japanese (Nekomachi), 1935. Published in English in Modanizumu, 2008. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. Reprinted by permission of the University of Hawai’i Press.
Mark Samuels: ‘The White Hands’ by Mark Samuels, copyright © 2003. Originally published in The White Hands and Other Weird Tales. Reprinted by permission of the author.
William Sansom: ‘The Long Sheet’ by William Sansom, copyright © 1944. Originally published in Something Terrible, Something Lovely. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
William Sansom: ‘A Woman Seldom Found’ by William Sansom, copyright © 1956. Originally published in A Contest of Ladies. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
Bruno Schulz: ‘The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’ by Bruno Schulz, copyright © 1967. Originally published as part of the volume Sanatorium pod Klepsydra © 1937. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and Walker & Co.
Claude Seignolle: ‘The Ghoulbird’ by Claude Seignolle, copyright © 1967. Originally published as ‘Hupeur’ in the collection Les Chevaux de la nuit et autres récits cruels, published by Marabout–Gérard. This new translation by Gio Clairval, copyright © 2011. Reprinted by permission of the translator and the author.
Michael Shea: ‘The Autopsy’ by Michael Shea, copyright © 1979. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 1980. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Lucius Shepard: ‘Shades’ by Lucius Shepard, copyright © 1987. Originally published in In The Field Of Fire, edited by Jeanne Van Buren Dann and Jack Dann. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Martin Simpson: ‘Last Rites and Resurrections’ by Martin Simpson, copyright © 1994. Originally published in The Silver Web #11. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Clark Ashton Smith: ‘Genius Loci’ by Clark Ashton Smith. Originally published in Weird Tales, June 1933.
William Browning Spencer: ‘The Ocean and All Its Devices’ by William Browning Spencer, copyright © 1994. Originally published in Borderlands 4, edited by Thomas F. Monteleone and Elizabeth E. Monteleone. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Margaret St. Clair: ‘The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles’ by Margaret St. Clair, copyright © 1951, 1979. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1951. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
Francis Stevens: ‘Unseen – Unfeared’ by Gertrude Barrows Bennett. Originally published in People’s Favorite Magazine, 10 February, 1919.
Rabindranath Tagore: ‘The Hungry Stones’ by Rabindranath Tagore. From The Hungry Stones and Other Stories, 1916.
James Tiptree, Jr.: ‘The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats’ by James Tiptree, Jr., copyright © 1976, 2004. Originally published in New Dimensions 6, edited by Robert Silverberg. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and the estate’s agents, The Virginia Kidd Agency.
Lisa Tuttle: ‘Replacements’ by Lisa Tuttle, copyright © 1992. Originally published in Metahorror, edited by Dennis Etchison. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Amos Tutuola: Excerpt from The Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola, copyright © 1952. Originally published in The Palm Wine Drinkard, Faber and Faber. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber and the author’s estate.
Luigi Ugolini: ‘The Vegetable Man’ by Luigi Ugolini, copyright © 1917. Originally published in Giornale Illustrato dei Viaggi e delle Avventure di Terra e di Mare, Italy, 1 July, 1917. This first English translation copyright © 2011 by Brendan
and Anna Connell. Published by permission of the translators.
Steven Utley: ‘The Country Doctor’ by Steven Utley, copyright © 1993. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, October 1993. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Jeff VanderMeer: ‘The Cage’ by Jeff VanderMeer, copyright © 2002, radically revised 2011. Originally published in City Of Saints And Madmen, Prime Books, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Hugh Walpole: ‘The Tarn’ by Hugh Walpole, copyright © 1936. Originally published in The Silver Thorn. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
Liz Williams: ‘The Hide’ by Liz Williams, copyright © 2007. Originally published in Strange Horizons. Reprinted by permission of the author.
F. Paul Wilson: ‘Soft’ by F. Paul Wilson, copyright © 1984. Originally published in Masques: All New Works of Horror and the Supernatural, edited by J. N. Williamson. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Gahan Wilson: ‘The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be’ by Gahan Wilson, copyright © 1967. Originally published in Playboy. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Donald Wolheim: ‘Mimic’ by Donald Wolheim, copyright © 1942, renewed 1970 by Donald A.
Wolheim. Originally published in Astonishing Stories. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth R. Wolheim.
T. M. Wright: ‘The People on the Island’ by T. M. Wright, copyright © 2005. Originally published in The Brutarian (2005). Reprinted by permission of the author.
The editors have made a thorough effort to locate all persons having any rights or interests in the material presented in this book and to secure all necessary reprint permissions. Any oversights will be corrected in future editions of the book. If you have information of interest in this context, please contact the editors at [email protected]
THE WEIRD has been compiled and edited by Hugo Award-winner Ann VanderMeer and World Fantasy Award-winner Jeff VanderMeer. They have recently co-edited such anthologies as Best American Fantasy; Best American Fantasy 2; Steampunk; Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded; The New Weird; Last Drink Bird Head; Fast Ships, Black Sails; and The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. They are the co-authors of The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals: The Evil Monkey Dialogues. Jeff’s latest books include Finch, a World Fantasy and Nebula Award-finalist; the short story collection The Third Bear; the nonfiction collection Monstrous Creatures; the coffee table book The Steampunk Bible (co-authored with S. J. Chambers); and the writing guide Booklife. Ann is the editor-in-chief of Weird Tales magazine, the oldest fantasy magazine in the world, and is a regular contributor to the popular science fiction and fantasy website io9. Together, they have been profiled by National Public Radio and online at WIRED.com and the New York Times’s Arts Beat blog. Both active teachers, they have taught at the Clarion and Odyssey writing workshops and the teen summer camp Shared Worlds, where Jeff serves as the assistant director. They live in Tallahassee, Florida, with too many books and four cats. For more information visit www.jeffvandermeer.com.
E-book Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this collection are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
THE WEIRD
Copyright © 2011 by ANN AND JEFF VANDERMEER
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
The list of individual titles and respective copyrights to be found
constitutes an extension of this copyright page.
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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ISBN: 978-1-4668-0319-0
1 A three-faced Buddhist deity, great protector of virtue.
2 Very ample trousers with the appearance of a skirt, worn under the kimono.
3 The moment of reincarnation in one of the five categories: heavenly creatures, human beings, animals, human beings on the brink of death, damned souls – according to the good or evil deeds committed during the dead person’s life.
4 A long-nosed goblin, synonym of a conceited person.
5 Infernal torturers with human bodies and heads of bulls or horses.
1 Here appears a name that we shall not reveal, in order not to rekindle the sorrow of a great and noble reigning family. Jellewyn bore a heavy weight of guilt, but his death brilliantly redeemed him.
1 I do, however, recall these lines from a satire in which he lashed out vehemently against bad poets:
This one fits the poem with a coat of mail
Of erudition; that one, with gala pomps and circumstance.
Both flail their absurd pennons to no avail,
Neglecting poor wretches, the factor sublime – its LOVELINESS!
It was only out of concern that he might create an army of implacable and powerful enemies, he told me, that he did not fearlessly publish the poem.
2 I received your mournful congratulations,’ he wrote me. ‘You scoff, my lamentable friend, in envy, but you shall confess – though the words stick in your throat! – that this time I have crowned my cap with the most scarlet of plumes; my turban, with the most caliphal of rubies.’
Table of Contents
Foreweird by Michael Moorcock
Introduction by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
“The Other Side” (excerpt), 1908, Alfred Kubin
“The Screaming Skull,” 1908, F. Marion Crawford
“The Willows,” 1907, Algernon Blackwood
“Sredni Vashtar,” 1910, Saki
“Casting the Runes,” 1911, M.R. James
“How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles,” 1912, Lord Dunsany
“The Man in the Bottle,” 1912, Gustav Meyrink
“The Dissection,” 1913, Georg Heym
“The Spider,” 1915, Hanns Heinz Ewers
“The Hungry Stones,” 1916, Rabindranath Tagore
“The Vegetable Man,” 1917, Luigi Ugolini
“The People of the Pit,” 1918, A. Merritt
“The Hell Screen,” 1918, Ryunosuke Akutagawa
“Unseen—Unfeared,” 1919, Francis Stevens
“In the Penal Colony,” 1919, Franz Kafka
“The White Wyrak,” 1921, Stefan Grabinski
“The Night Wire,” 1926, H.F. Arnold
“The Dunwich Horror,” 1929, H.P. Lovecraft
“The Book,” 1930, Margaret Irwin
“The Mainz Psalter ,” 1930, Jean Ray
“The Shadowy Street,” 1931, Jean Ray
“Genius Loci,” 1933, Clark Ashton Smith
“The Town of Cats,” 1935, Hagiwara Sakutar
“The Tarn,” 1936, Hugh Walpole
“Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass,” 1937, Bruno Schulz
“Far Below,” 1939, Robert Barbour Johnson
“Smoke Ghost,” 1941, Fritz Leiber
“White Rabbits,” 1941, Leonora Carrington
“Mimic,” 1942, Donald Wollheim
“The Crowd,” 1943, Ray Bradbury
“The Long Sheet,” 1944, William Sansom
“The Aleph,” 1945, Jorge Luis Borges
“A Child in the Bush of Ghosts,” 1949, Olympe Bhêly-Quénum
“The Summer People,” 1950, Shirley Jackson
“The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles,” 1951, Margaret St. Clair
“The Hungry House,” 1951, Robert Bloch
“The Complete Gentleman,” 1952, Amos Tutuola
“‘It’s a Good Life,’” 1953, Jerome Bixby
“Mister Taylor,” 1952, Augusto Monterroso
“Axolotl,” 1956, Julio Cortázar
“A Woman Seldom Found,” 1956, William Sansom
“The Howling Man,” 1959, Charles Beaumont
“Same Time, Same Place,”
1963, Mervyn Peake
“The Other Side of the Mountain,” 1967, Michel Bernanos
“The Salamander,” 1967, Mercè Rodoreda
“The Ghoulbird,” 1967, Claude Seignolle
“The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be,” 1967, Gahan Wilson
“Don’t Look Now,” 1971, Daphne Du Maurier
“The Hospice,” 1975, Robert Aickman
“It Only Comes Out at Night,” 1976, Dennis Etchison
“The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Terrible Things to Rats,” 1976, James Tiptree, Jr.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories Page 240