If you’ve been needing more weirdness in your life, then you owe it to yourself to check out new story collections by Geoff Ryman, Caitlín R. Kiernan and Tim Powers. The New York Times has published a terrific review roundup of new collections by these three present-day masters of the “creeps that keep on creeping.” (See also the Washington Post article from a couple years ago, celebrating the small presses that keep fiction weird and scary.)
https://gizmodo.com/the-it-list-of-small-presses-publishing-scary-stuff-5116097
My favorite bit from the Times story:
In the foreword to the new Penguin Classics edition of the Welsh writer Arthur Machen’s “White People and Other Weird Stories,” the director Guillermo del Toro, whose films include “Hellboy” and “Pan’s Labyrinth,” writes, “It is a rare breed of fabulist who transcribes and records – rather than invents – a reality invisible to us.” Mr. del Toro is referring to Machen, but it’s also an apt description of Geoff Ryman, Caitlín R. Kiernan and Tim Powers.
That’s one of those quotes that says a lot, about writing but also about reality. [New York Times]
