Lovecraft said that a weird tale “has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains.” Whatever that something more is reflects art deeper than jump scares and shock gore. Instead, according to Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, editors of The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, Lovecraft said weird stories represented the pursuit of some indefinable and perhaps a maddeningly unreachable understanding of the world beyond the mundane, a “certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread” or “malign and particular suspension or defeat of…fixed laws of Nature.” In the past several years I’ve been reading stories that dig deep into the weird, especially when they deal with nature and the uncanny.
October World Eco-fiction Spotlight
I figured that October would be a great month to explore how nature and the literary weird collide. First, let’s look at our world eco-fiction spotlight this month, Rae Mariz’s Weird Fishes (Stelliform Press, 2022). The feature comes a little early this month due to upcoming travel, so don’t forget to check out last month’s spotlight, if you missed it, with Lauren James and her novel Green Rising.
Weird Fishes takes place in oceans in the North and West Pacific, most particularly in “The Center of the Sea” near the Mariana Trench around Guam and the Mariana Islands, the Pacific gyre between Hawaii and California, and along various marine migration routes. Rae draws another inspiration from the coral off the eastern coast of Moloka’i. The story has two sea creatures navigating a complex relationship and heartbreak in a beautiful, weird, and sometimes brutal world. Weird Fishes explores depths unknown and imaginary waves of life lived in an ever-changing sea due to climate change. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Rae and found refreshing commonalities as well.
Note that Weird Fishes has some aspects of the weird, but it’s not really weird fiction. Or maybe it is, with shades of light and brilliance. Rae describes the novel as first-contact science fiction as well as an eco-fable.
Monthly Book Recommendation
I’ve read some darn good books lately and have a line-up of monthly recommendations to offer in the future. But this month I’ll stick with the weird. The earliest published book I dove into in the ecological weird category was Michael Bernanos’s The Other Side of the Mountain.
Bernanos’s novella was published in 1963, and it was eventually translated from French to English. I read the story in one sitting, in my hammock on the back deck whilst drinking some red wine several years ago.
It starts normally enough, with a hungover 18-year-old guy agreeing to join a ship crew. A storm and lack of food and water results in some pretty horrible conditions, including cannibalism and death among the other crewmates. The teen becomes friends with the cook, also a long-time sailor, and they survive only to reach a different realm of some kind. The stars are different, and the land they reach is red and hellish. They think that reaching the big mountain in the middle, and seeing what’s on the other side, is their only salvation. Yet, pure horror happens on their trek, including carnal plants, genuflecting trees, a river that opens up to sink them, small villages and other areas where things and people have vitrified, and so on. The basis of the story seems to be a poetic telling of nature in the very raw, where horror in our definition happens all the time. Seen through the lens of Earth people, the new land defies much logic but simply has different species and laws of physics. This book really impacted me for some reason, and I always long to read it again while sipping wine under a hot sun.
Ecological Weird Links
Want to learn more? I have written a lot, and so have other authors and readers. Here’s just a sampling of what’s out there:
My interview with Tlotlo Tsamaase (The Silence of the Wilting Skin and “Eclipse Our Sins”)
My interviews with author Marian Womack: Little Red Drops and Lost Objects
My interview with Christiane Vadnais about Fauna
My synopsis of the movie Men: Dragonfly
Article about weird fiction at Dragonfly
My review of Rory Power’s Wilder Girls
My own novella: Bird Song
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A great history of folk horror.
When Horror Meets Sci-Fi: A reading of “The Voice in the Night” by William Hope Hodgson
Dark Places: Ecology, Place, and the Metaphysics of Horror Fiction by Brad Tabas
A Reddit thread with some book recommendations in Weird Lit. I started the thread about six years ago.
Another huge Reddit community is at Southern Reach, all inspired by Jeff VanderMeer’s trilogy.
Gry Ulstein’s Weird Fiction in a Warming World: A Reading Strategy for the Anthropocene
Miranda Jeanne Marie Iossifidis’s Reimagining climate futures: Reading Annihilation
Ecogothic Landscapes from American Studies Center - OSA UW (video)
Weird Fiction Review. I’m not sure if this has been continued, but it’s a great site that had new content up to 2018.
I hope you all have a great and spooky month! I’ve been so busy, first dealing with a hurricane that knocked out our power for days and now a vacation. I leave tomorrow for a much-needed time of hanging out with family. I will be gone for the next two weeks or so but will be checking email when I’m away.
Resources
In case you’ve missed these exciting resources at Dragonfly, which are constantly being updated, check ‘em out!
Rewilding Our Stories: A Discord community, now expanded into a website, where you can find resources, reading, and writing fun in fiction that relates strongly to nature and environment. There’s a new submissions call-out for place writing!
New subreddit: Ecofiction. A place to find almost daily news about novels, articles, news, and films in the field of rewilded and ecological fiction.
World’s biggest playlist? Our environmental/nature song-of-the-week playlist goes back to 2015.
Book recommendations: a growing list of recs.
Eco/climate genres: They’re all over the place, and here’s an expanding compendium
Inspiring and informative author quotes from Dragonfly’s interviews
List of ecologically focused games
List of eco/climate films and documentaries
Eco-fiction links and resources
Book database: Database of over 900 book posts at Dragonfly.eco
Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation: Fiction aimed toward children, teens, and young adults
Indie Corner: The occasional highlight of authors who publish independently
Backyard Wildlife: A hidden gem exploring how we are rewilding our own backyard and meadow
Artists & Climate Change. This is an extraordinary resource delving into all kinds of the arts focused on climate change. For a while now they’ve been rerunning my world eco-fiction spotlights. I’m a core writer for their team, and I’m both honored and grateful. Look for my “Wild Authors” series there.
Copyright 2024 Mary Woodbury