Weird fiction

Hi, you're listening to Dusk to Dawn, reading horror and weird fiction.

We're your hosts, Amber and Dan.

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But it's not horror.

No, and it's-

And it's not really weird fiction either, so [laughs]

[laughs] But you know-

Oops

Did we do a Lovecraftian episode?

Yeah, we did new weird and we did weird fiction previously.

Those were definitely episodes, e- especially new weird, where it was like, what is this genre? Is this a real genre? How long can a genre be called new? I guess they still call it like new wave, new music new wave, and that's like 40-plus years old at this point, so-

Yeah

There's no, no real heroes in H.P. Lovecraft stories.

I am looking at the Wikipedia page about cosmic horror, and the title of the page is actually Lovecraftian horror.

It is Lovecraftian horror, also called cosmic horror, uh, or eldritch horror, is a subgenre of horror, fantasy, and weird fiction.

Mm-hmm.

So you might know them as a filmmaker, uh, most recently of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

Um, this is sort of a mashup of sci-fi, horror, weird fiction kind of all, all together.

Um, basically, it's hard to describe what it is without giving too much away, but it's sort of three, like, different things are happening.

Like, in current time, uh, this person named Bethany Peters works as a content moderator at Glo- Globalville and sh- uh, sifting through horrific videos that are flagged online- And she begins investigating a streamer that- who's ranting about Public Access After World, but what is that? And then in 1988, there's a Dallas weatherman who makes passing reference to Public Access After World during a rambling monologue, and then he basically shoots himself on live TV.

Um, I do wanna mention, Tom, our producer, does have a book club-

Yes

... called Weird Fiction.

So if these books sounded good to you, if you're interested in getting more into this, check out his book club.

in the first, first episode, but-

I guess I needed to confirm that it wasn't like he had published one of these in, like, Weird Fiction in 1947 first.

No, I don't know.

I don't, I don't think it was like that.

Yeah.

i feel like they're out there man you know it's like yeah definitely there's on kindle i discovered a lot of shit there's like i noticed um i went through this phase where there i don't know who edited these things but there'd be like you know based on stuff that you read they'll be like you know like 25 like weird fiction tales and they'll have like yes it's like five bucks or something like that and you get like 25 stories by various authors and like yeah i

recognize like two or three of them yeah yeah yeah i used to get those the mammoth book of yeah it would be the mammoth book of best new horror and it would be like the mammoth book of ghost stories and uh they all have the same editor i can't remember stephen jones or something like that not the guy from the clash I don't even know if that's his name.

Actually, now I say it out loud.

But yeah, I feel like those are no longer a thing and you might stumble upon one in a used bookstore, but you won't find one in a newer bookstore.

And yeah, know that there used to be so many stores just dedicated to that like bookstores dedicated to horror and weird fiction and they just seem to be dwindling lately

yeah you know it's sad um but you know podcasting there's a bunch of podcasts and youtube channels out there that are that sort of recommend authors and you can kind of go through that stuff

So as far as, like,

Cosmic horror.

A lot of times it's also referenced as like – like weird fiction too.

That's another word you see a lot, like weird tales.

And, you know, I guess that's why it's like, it's one of those like genres that's really hard to put your, your, your finger on because it deals a lot with like the unknowable.

This one was kind of weird.

Yeah.

A little weird, weird fiction, you know, the followup to the pulp fiction class.

Pulp Fiction is 101 and 102 is Weird Fiction.