Over on Weirdfictionreview.com, we’ve gone “Kafkaesque,” posting the entire introductory essay to the new anthology by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly, along with an appreciation of Alfred Kubin. (And don’t miss fiction from Leena Krohn, interview and two pieces of fiction from Michal Ajvaz.)

Meanwhile, my co-editor on The Weird: A Compendium of Strange & Dark Stories will be appearing in Amsterdam on December 8th at the American Book Center to do an event in support of the anthology.

Weirdfictionreview.com now has a regular book reviewer, too: Maureen Kincaid Speller. For information on how to send her books, click here.

Finally, both Maureen Kincaid Speller and Des Lewis have continued their story-by-story reviews of The Weird compendium, with Maureen’s latest here (the sidebar used to have the other entries, but you may have to search for them). Des, meanwhile, is up to posts Five and Six.

Interested in more on The Weird?

Or check out Weirdfictionreview.com…

(Image accompanying Quintus Erectus by Ajvaz, photo of Caplin Rous.)

We’re very pleased this week to feature the brilliant Czech writer Michal Ajvaz on Weirdfictionreview.com, with an interview and two pieces of fiction. Please go check it out–direct links below. “Quintus Erectus” and the interview are exclusive to WFR.

The Miraculous Side of the Universe: Interview
“I was accused of being too weird by critics who were proponents of the realistic story. And I can imagine a book that is really too weird: a book whose weirdness doesn´t come from the soul of its author and which substitutes this absence of true weirdness (which doesn´t need to be too weird in many cases) by piling up superficial effects.”

“Quintus Erectus”
“The quintus was extremely cuddly; but I must confess that its cuddliness wasn´t pleasant for me. When it tenderly nuzzled my face with its false face, where a tongue of an animal suddenly appeared in an improper place, and when the quintus began to lick me with it, I didn’t feel good.”

“The Secret War”
“The Europeans continued to hold to mathematics, even after they began to perceive mathematical equations and calculations as bizarre dramas, as evidence of the work of the same blind forces as those that cultivated logical deduction and flowed through ma­chines, forces which drove an unceasing, monotonous division and unification. The Europeans were made nauseous by multiplication because now they perceived it as a diseased swelling, a proliferation anterior to any kind of sense and order, a growth which had arisen by the dull repetition of the same numbers and their resigned coa­lescence in the whole.”

(Sneak peek of next week’s “Reading the Weird”–catch up on episode 1 and episode 2 before part 3 runs next week.)

If you head on over to Weirdfictionreview.com today you’ll find a great piece on the grotesque in art by Nancy Hightower and an interview with Tanith Lee, on top of a Thomas Ligotti interview, fiction, and much more.

Tomorrow we’re posting a sampling of eerie paragraphs from our The Weird antho and a Miskatoni University feature.

Next week, we have the next installment of our original webcomic, fiction from Finnish writer Leena Krohn, a feature on Franz Kafka, exclusive interview with Margo Lanagan (including an awesome photographed handwritten page with edits from her classic story “Singing My Sister Down”), and essays on Alfred Kubin. In addition, we will have two pieces of fiction (one new, one reprint) from famed Czech writer Michal Ajvaz, along with a new interview. And, to top it off, we’ll feature our managing editor and World Fantasy Award-finalist writer Angela Slatter.

In future weeks, we’ll be running fiction by Tanith Lee and Steve Rasnic Tem, original features on the likes of Michel Bernanos, and more interviews with Lucius Shepard, Stephen Graham Jones, Liz Williams, and more.

Here’s a little snippet previewing next week’s Ajvaz selections…

“The Europeans were made nauseous by multiplication because now they perceived it as a diseased swelling, a proliferation anterior to any kind of sense and order, a growth which had arisen by the dull repetition of the same numbers and their resigned coa¬lescence in the whole; they dreaded division because in it they saw disintegration, made more horrifying still by the unnatural disinte¬gration of wholes into parts of equal size. Addition was yet worse, as it meant a progressive decline in new units, heralding the de¬struction of all divided shapes and the enthronement of One that is nothing, the victory of the monster of the Whole.”

It’s been a weird week—one that started with receiving our The Weird: A Compendium of Strange & Dark Stories and also having my wisdom teeth removed, even as we continued to post a lot of content at our new site Weirdfictionreview.com. Painkillers have left me floaty, drifty, and susceptible to highs and lows, which is only intensified by The Weird itself. This is a project, clocking in at 750,000 words (TOC here), that has consumed our lives for two years. It’s drained us, exhilarated us, left us for dead in pits of despair, energized us, and now it’s real and out in the world. I’ve learned more from compiling this anthology with Ann than any other book we’ve done, and perversely it’s both delayed some of my fiction writing simply because of the work involved and been essential to inspiring other pieces of fiction.

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I am struck, in Maureen Kincaid-Speller’s latest post about reading The Weird anthology, by the sentence “I cannot remember a time I didn’t know this story.” She’s referring to Saki’s “Sredni Vashtar,” but I’m curious, dear readers, as to what story you have known as long as you’ve been alive? Or, at least, it seems that way…

(Will the real Beak Doctor step forward? Oh, he will. Soon enough…he will.)

Happy Halloween, although it’s coming a little late for me as I’ve spent my day in the commencement of harrowing dental adventures (but not yet dentures).

Some coverage for our The Weird antho (750,000 words covering a century) beginning to appear as the monster lurches into bookstores between now and November 10.

—Starshipsofa Interview wherein Ann and I talk about people in comas, Mexican circuses, and being asked to pay 60,000 pounds for a 3,000 word short story…along with all things Weird, and about Weird Tales.

—Forbidden Planet behind-the-scenes Director’s Cut feature about putting together The Weird, just posted.

—Forbidden Planet blog exclusive featuring the original webcomic Leah Thomas is doing for our weirdfictionreview site that launches tomorrow. It’s called “Reading the Weird” and is basically this talented young creator’s reaction to encountering the anthology, put through the frame of a journey by two quirky characters.

And remember, as Halloween winds down, this is your brain on Halloween (via The Psychologist–thanks Nick Wood.)

Our Finnish friend Ninni Aalto is a wonderful artist, writer, and graphic designer–you may remember her Tallahassee Tentacles hockey shirts. Now she has a new book out, Sähköjänis, which translates (we are told) as Mechanical Rabbit (electric?). Ninni has a real rabbit named Schopenhauer, and a cartoon version of this bunny appears (prominently) in the book. (Check out the website.)

Sähköjänis is autobiographical, with Aalto or her alter-ego appearing in it. Some of the comics are about coffee or about her life as a graphic designer with ideas coming out of her faster than she can keep up with them. There are day-in-the-life comics and others featuring cats. It’s really quite cool.

Here are the great endpapers, and a few of the interior pages…

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J.M. McDermott recently released an ebook of his interconnected collection Women and Monsters. Now he’s also got a site for the book where he’s posting individual stories in return for donations or buying the ebook. I haven’t had a chance to read the entire book, but I think it’s a fascinating and unique collection and McDermott is one of our most original writers. Check it out.

Matt Cheney writes about current awards-complaining in the context of just being named a judge himself.

It brought back memories of being a World Fantasy Award judge. I still remember when they announced our consensus winner, Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore I was sitting in the banquet room with a prominent NY editor for a genre imprint right in my line of sight. As Murakami’s name was announced her face twisted into a mask of anger and disbelief. Which along with some general muttering made me worry about getting out of the room unscathed.

Later, another editor generously tried to rationalize the decision by finding six degrees of separation between Murakami and the genre subculture, as if membership in that subculture was a prerequisite for receiving the award. Someone else told me it wasn’t right the award had gone to someone who wasn’t one of us—again, referring to the subculture. I then had to sit through a lecture from a fellow writer about how Kafka on the Shore wasn’t the best Murakami, and ergo wasn’t worthy of the win…despite the fact at the time I’d read everything Murakami had ever written and thus could at least be said to have some perspective on it all…and definitely not in need of the lecture. Later still, some stuck the “blame” for that choice on me, even though it had been a book put forward by another judge and the decision had been unanimous.

All I know is…that year we read thousands and thousands of pages of material and also exchanged over 5,000 emails as judges. We gave it all our undivided attention and debated all of it, and dealt with it all honestly.

There is always plenty of room for debate and for honest differences of opinions, and it’s important when looking at finalist lists and the winner lists that for judged awards most of the time the judges spend hundreds of hours reading and re-reading and agonizing. And there’s no way to get it completely right. But for most judges, the process is one that creates a further love for fantastical literature and a determination to be as fair as possible.