Contemporary weird fiction reading list

A chart of New Weird books and other bizarre, unsettling, and uncanny literature published in the last 30 years or so. This is a follow-up to my previous chart of classic weird fiction and another selection from my list of over 200 works of weird literature.

Jack Half-a-Prayer

I read "Embassytown"  and "The City & The City" back to back and then decided to look up the author and I too was completely surprised he looks like someone who could beat the ever living shit out of me in an alley behind a club.

(Source on Bluesky)

what, and i cannot stress this enough, the fuck

i need this immediately

The way I'm watching Candela Obscura really feels like reading a China Mieville book. I have begun with the Needle and the Thread, without the making characters or anything so I am basically figuring things out through context with no background. Who are these people? I'll figure it out. What is this Oldfaire thing? We'll see. And the bleed? Something to avoid. Same ambiance as half the books of Mieville I've read and same exercise of figuring it out. Loving it here.

I also watch like bits of 20 minutes or so so literally like reading on the lunch break.

Coming, July 2024, The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville.

“I share the streets with aimlessly moving scraps of paper and little whirlwinds of dust, with motes that pass like erratic thieves under eaves and through doors.”

- China Miéville ‘Perdido Street Station’

Reading “Perdido Street Station” rn and the world building is fantastic.

Illustration by Edward Miller (aka Les Edwards) for the short story "Jack", included in the Subterranean Press edition of Iron Council by China Miéville.

tinyurl.com/yww6tfp3

China Mieville Bas-Lag trilogy custome made leather dust covers presented in a velvet lined chest.

do you want a China Mielville story? 'cause this is how you get a China Mielville story.

In Chicago, there is a hole in the asphalt after a crushed rat, and for the past few days the city residents have been making sacrifices in it.

Source: https://twitter.com/CantEverDie/status/1746321098910683331/photo/1

“Literary” speculative fiction reading list

A list of recommended sci-fi and fantasy books with high-quality prose and serious or complex themes, including works by Le Guin, Wolfe, Delany, Miéville, and Banks. This selection is drawn from a much longer list of well-written and ambitious SF that I published on my website.

I need China Miéville to write more Hellblazer stories, because that short one in the christmas special of original Vertigo run (250) wasnt enough .. like..Miéville had John figured out and his way of writing urban fantasy would work perfectly.

Perfect.

(*tho it would be so much better if it wasnt colored by Jamie Grant n Stefano Landini.. why would you do this to lineart like this...its so painful to look at..)

tim talking about train focus in china mieville books

speaking of that last post, maybe i should try rereading mieville's Kraken. bc the first time i read it i had to basically motor through the entire book thinking "is this going to make sense soon or" and i'd like to try again.

i find mieville really interesting bc hearing him speak or reading some of his essays are like wow! you're actively rewiring my brain! and some of his fiction definitely reached directly into my psyche and rearranged its guts. but other times i'm trying to read his fiction and im like. ok so this is just a philosophy text but imagined with fantastical framing with really interesting worldbuilding but the structure is in shambles and i feel like i'm just reading vignettes of philosophical musings on the nature of existence or the continuity of self while maybe there's an apocalypse (or several) happening and i think that's the ostensibly a major (sub)plot of the book but even after i finished reading all 500 pages i could not tell you for sure

but i can't tell if the structure is 1) actually weak, 2) "weak" on purpose for artistic reasons, 3) not weak, i just didn't understand it, 4) not weak, i just didn't like it

meanwhile, perdido street station is like wow this book was so intense and interesting and incoherent in the best way and also i have only read it once bc i am too afraid to read it again!! it is one of the best books i've ever read!!!