An Update
I am thinking of widening the scope of the tales that I share here. Thought this project started with an aim to share lesser known folktales and fairy tales from across the world, I think there is possibility to share tales of weird fiction as well. Like all my side quests (and main quests), this is also an evolution of my personal tastes. We have been exploring this genre in Northstar Reading Guild as well. There is a very obvbious overlap between fairy tales and weird tales in its use of motifs such as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. What the weird fiction does, perhaps more intently, is the creation of an "atmosphere" and search of the numinous.
With any good writing, it is not much possible to put a neat boundary around the genre. Philip Dick write Sci-fi but to me its the pervading atmosphere that is more representative than a scientific trope. Stanislaw Lem writes Sci-fi but to me it is the existential dread that defines his works.
Perhaps it might be best to simply list a few writers of this kind, who I have encountered up to this moment, to give an approximate map of territory:
- MR James
- Arthur Machen
- H. P. Lovecraft
- Edgar Allen Poe
- H. G. Wells
- Robert Aickman
- Jorge Luis Borges
- Philip K. Dick
- Shirley Jackson
- Gene Wolfe
I will share some stories that I encounter in the wild as travel through this dark forest.