Enjoy weird fiction overall, sci-fi and “horror” (in a very general sense). I like some Lovecraft, VanderMeers, Ballard, China Miéville, Samanta Schweblin, late William Gibson, Mariana Enríquez… what recent books or writers caught your eye that may loosely fit the term or are similar to works of the above authors? Can be in English, Portuguese or Spanish.
Gideon the ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Escapeology by Ren Warom
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
👍
checked Hiron Ennes, @AbouBenAdhem seems really interesting!
Asking around gave me this shortlist of suggestions:
- Agustina Bazterrica (in Spanish)
- Suzan Palumbo’s short fiction collection Skin Thief
- Saoirse Ní Chiaragáin’s Wax & Wane
- Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad
- Kev Lambert’s You Will Love What You Have Killed
💚
Kelly Link’s short stories are weird
The first story is often not that weird, but she is fantastic at magical realism. They aren’t scary though. I recall for instance one story being about a cannon.
someone mentioned Kelly Link to me the other day as “essential” … i’ll surely be looking it.
The first story in magic for beginners (the one about the library, i think it’s the title story) is one of my favourite stories ever.
Since i mentioned short stories, If you like short stories get your hands on all the Ted Chiang you can (not anything like kelly link, but I think of him as the Chopin of short sci-fi.
Since i’m on a roll you may like “there is no antimemetics division” which is a little horror-sih may also be up your alley.
👍
deleted by creator
Ever read Blindsight by Peter Watts?
keep getting references to Watts’s book, but no
It’s a good read. It taught me about the actual real concept of blindsight., seeing without perceiving.
👍
Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson.
The story follows Hiro Protagonist—a pizza delivery driver in a fractured, hyper-capitalized future reality and an elite hacker/swordfighter in the virtual “Metaverse”.
If you like that, his other books are fantastic, especially Cryptonomicon, Anathem, and Diamond Age.
It’s a great novel but I wouldn’t call it “weird”?
👍
I read a lot of anthologies, one I read recently was Dark Fantasies, which was a collection of folk, domestic and urban horror, that was pretty strange and scary, worth picking up if you find it.
👍
Imajica by Clive Barker
Teleportasm by Joshua Millican
Air by Geoff Ryman
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan (go in blind and stick with it)
14 by Peter Clines
The Hike by Drew Magary
Break the Bodies, Haunting the Bones By Micah Dean Hicks
Where They Wait by Scott Carson
👍
deleted by creator
My all-time favorite novel is Blindness by Jose Saramago. I have only read it in English, but it was originally published in Portuguese as “Ensaio sobre a cegueira”.
From Wikipedia: “It centers on an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in a nonspecific city, and follows multiple unnamed characters as they navigate the social breakdown that swiftly follows.”
👍
Leguin - City of Illusions …and all her other books. Check out old school The Machine Stops E.M. Forster. And Ministry for the Future- Kim Stanley Robinson and all of his other books.
👍
I can only recommend the books of Nick Harkaway, very China Miéville-like. I started with the Gone Away world. In Spanish I recently read ‘te di ojos y miraste las tinieblas’ by Solà. ‘El último día de la vida anterior’ by Andrés Barba also gave me some Mariana Enríquez vibes. Finally, ‘the seven moons of Maali Almeida’ (this was nominated for the Booker prize iirc) was also a blast, made me think of Pedro Páramo at times.
💚 Andrés Barba, Nick Harkaway… so many new names! Thanks
Beyond the Aquila Rift.
Bunch of short stories 2 of which were made into the love death and robots series.
thanks!
House of leaves is my all time favourite mindfuck horror literature. I just recommend going hard copy over ebook as the formatting is super important. I can’t really describe it except to say I can see how Backrooms could be inspired by it.
sounds great!
For horror - Kathe Koja
I also think you would like How to Lose the Time War, not horror but trippy weird and so great.
👍
It’s well-known and well-studied, but also infamous as a book few people ever actually finish because it is so weird: Gravity’s Rainbow.
I finished it. I’m not sure what I gained by reading it, outside of having a better understanding of what an acid trip might feel like. Very weird.
Other mainstream but weird recommendations: Mexican Gothic (highly recommend this) and A Night in the Lonesome October
👍
