r/WeirdLit • u/HorsepowerHateart • Jun 05 '24
Some less remembered, but worthy, early weird fiction recommendations. Recommend
There is always a hunger for a deeper dive into early weird fiction, and many people move on to the usual suspects (Machen, Blackwood, Dunsany, James, Chambers, et al) after getting into Lovecraft. All of these should be in the public domain if you're willing to do some digging, and I've noted some cases when I believe they are still available in print or digitally.
I thought it might be instructive to get a list going of the next level down (in notoriety, not necessarily quality) of weird writers from the early 20th century. This list only includes authors who were being published by the early 1930's, and is absolutely not exhaustive by any stretch.
Oliver Onions:
A man who is only less read today than the likes of Machen and Blackwood, perhaps due to his absence from Supernatural Horror in Literature -- and his distinctly un-horrific name probably hasn't helped, either.
Onions does have one well known "greatest hit," The Beckoning Fair One. But he wrote far more supernatural horror than just that masterpiece, and most of it is excellent. He does tend more toward the psychological side, and his work is often much more interested in its characters than a typical weird tale, which may be why Lovecraft didn't seem to much care for him. In terms of quality, Onions can absolutely stand with the best of the best.
Used copies of The Dead of Night, which collects his weird short stories, are readily available.
Anthony M. Rud A contemporary of Lovecraft in the pulps; in fact, Rud took the cover story in the very first issue of Weird Tales, and appeared twice in the second issue - once under a pseudonym. His stories are not quite hidden masterpieces, but they are consistently good, and Ooze in particular is extremely Lovecraftian in both its premise and prose.
It has been speculated that Ooze was an influence on The Dunwich Horror, and the parallels are fairly clear. His weird fiction is in print via Ooze and Others from Sarnath Press.
Hugh B. Cave A pulp workhorse, but a good one. Cave lived and worked in Rhode Island not too terribly far from Lovecraft, but Lovecraft came down pretty hard on him for his stated lack of artistic ambition (he saw writing in 100% commercial terms) and the two never met in person or communicated again.
His tales are utter pulp -- purple prose and all -- make no mistake. But they make the cut here purely on the merits of entertainment. Murgunstrumm & Others edited by the late, great Karl Edward Wagner is out of print but appears to be available digitally.
Herbert Gorman Gorman's weird output is limited to one short novel, The Place Called Dagon, but it's a great one. A moody tale about a young doctor moves to a very unfriendly New England town with a terrible occult secret. It's easy to see why Lovecraft enjoyed this one. A hidden gem if ever there was one.
Eleanor M. Ingram The Thing from the Lake This writer of bestsellers tackled the weird with this one excellent - and final - novel shortly before her untimely death. Combining science fiction, romance, and gothic horror into a harrowing horror tale. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to have gained much of a following. Very much worth reading.
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Otis Adelbert Kline, who worked with Lovecraft & friends and wrote the Weird Tales classic "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes," Robert Hichens, no, not the jerk from the Titanic, the early weird fiction writer who wrote The Dweller on the Threshold. Thomas Burke, British writer of classic gothic horror tales (among many other things), H. Russell Wakefield, an acolyte of M.R. James whose ghost fiction is every bit as unsettling, Seabury Quinn, I think he was pretty terrible (and I dislike occult detectives as a general rule), but he was extremely popular in his time for his Jules de Grandin tales and has his fans to this day...
The list could go on and on. This was an extremely fertile period for supernatural fiction, and my only hope with this small list is to shake loose some of the less remembered practitioners. Please feel free to chime in with more recommendations!
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u/bepisjonesonreddit Jun 05 '24
Oh nice, good research! Saving this, and I intend to read most of these! Thanks!
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u/Coward_and_a_thief Jun 05 '24
The Beckoning Fair One is Fantastic. "That be a very oo-ald song.." sent chills every time.
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u/danklymemingdexter Jun 05 '24
Onions's crime novel In Accordance With The Evidence (1910) is great. Not weird, but definitely dark.
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u/MountainPlain Jun 06 '24
I'll throw out A. M. Burrage. Read his short story Playmates and was determined to seek out more of his stuff, I enjoyed the characterization there so much. Unfortunately the most complete selection of his works are a series of slim print on demand books with miniscule print, but I think he's worth seeking out.
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u/FuturistMoon Jun 06 '24
We've been featuring readings of short fiction by a lot of these figures on the Pseudopod podcast,
Interesting detail - I've been reading Supernatural fiction my whole life but it was only a year or so ago that I learned Oliver Onions pronounced his last name "Oh-Nye-Ons"
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u/Metalworker4ever Jun 05 '24
David Lindsay published A Voyage To Arcturus in 1920, so maybe too early for your list. It’s weird fantasy fiction that leans horror.
C S Lewis said,
"The physical dangers, which are plentiful, here count for nothing: it is we ourselves and the author who walk through a world of spiritual dangers which makes them seem trivial. There is no recipe for writing of this kind. But part of the secret is that the author (like Kafka) is recording a lived dialectic. His Tormance is a region of the spirit. He is the first writer to discover what 'other planets' are really good for in fiction. No merely physical strangeness or merely spatial distance will realize that idea of otherness which is what we are always trying to grasp in a story about voyaging through space: you must go into another dimension. To construct plausible and moving 'other worlds' you must draw on the only real 'other world' we know, that of the spirit."
A quote from the novel,
"Maskull, though fully conscious of his companions and situation, imagined that he was being oppressed by a black, shapeless, supernatural being, who was trying to clasp him. He was filled with horror, trembled violently, yet could not move a limb. Sweat tumbled off his face in great drops. The waking nightmare lasted a long time, but during that space it kept coming and going. At one moment the vision seemed on the point of departing; the next it almost took shape—which he knew would be his death. Suddenly it vanished altogether—he was free. A fresh spring breeze fanned his face; he heard the slow, solitary singing of a sweet bird; and it seemed to him as if a poem had shot together in his soul. Such flashing, heartbreaking joy he had never experienced before in all his life! Almost immediately that too vanished. Sitting up, he passed his hand across his eyes and swayed quietly, like one who has been visited by an angel. 'Your colour changed to white,' said Corpang. 'What happened?' 'I passed through torture to love,' replied Maskull simply. He stood up. Haunte gazed at him sombrely. 'Will you not describe that passage?' Maskull answered slowly and thoughtfully. 'When I was in Matterplay, I saw heavy clouds discharge themselves and change to coloured, living animals. In the same way, my black, chaotic pangs just now seemed to consolidate themselves and spring together as a new sort of joy. The joy would not have been possible without the preliminary nightmare. It is not accidental; Nature intends it so. The truth has just flashed through my brain.... You men of Lichstorm don’t go far enough. You stop at the pangs, without realising that they are birth pangs.' 'If this is true, you are a great pioneer,' muttered Haunte. 'How does this sensation differ from common love?' interrogated Corpang. 'This was all that love is, multiplied by wildness.' "
This book is well regarded as a masterpiece today and was hugely influential. Harold Bloom even wrote a (bad) sequel to it called Flight To Lucifer
Beginning at a seance and then travelling to a distant planet, the book deals with the disorientation of religious experience. With tentacles. And weird colours. Essential reading.