Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction written in the late 19th and early 20th century. It can be said to encompass the ghost story and other tales of the macabre. Weird fiction is distinguished from horror and fantasy in that it predates the niche marketing of genre fiction. Because genre or stylistic conventions had not been established, weird tales often blend the supernatural, mythical, and even scientific. British authors who have embraced this style have often published their work in mainstream literary magazines even after American pulp magazines became popular. Popular weird fiction writers included H. P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen,, M. R. James, and Clark Ashton Smith.
Although "weird fiction" is chiefly a historical description for works through the 1930s, the term has also been used since the 1980s, sometimes to describe slipstream fiction that blends horror, fantasy, and science fiction.
Read more about Weird Fiction: History, Notable Authors and Collections
Famous quotes containing the words weird and/or fiction:
“Pregnant women! They had that weird frisson, an aura of magic that combined awkwardly with an earthy sense of duty. Mundane, because they were nothing unique on the suburban streets; ethereal because their attention was ever somewhere else. Whatever you said was trivial. And they had that preciousness which they imposed wherever they went, compelling attention, constantly reminding you that they carried the future inside, its contours already drawn, but veiled, private, an inner secret.”
—Ruth Morgan (1920–1978)
“... all fiction may be autobiography, but all autobiography is of course fiction.”
—Shirley Abbott (b. 1934)