What is the difference between horror and weird fiction?

Horror in general, is weird fiction a subgenre? a synonymous of classic horror? I'm really curious about it

It's a good question, and I hope others chime in.

Genre distinctions are always debatable. As used in this group, though, weird fiction is more expansive than horror, since it includes pieces from which horror is relatively absent, where the emphasis is on supernatural adventure or visionary fantasy. By the same token, not all horror is weird: there are psychological thrillers and tales of violence that could be classed as horror without entering into the weird at all. Also, for my part, I tend to dismiss from the weird category those stories that use fantasy or horror tropes that are highly conventionalized, and where the literary purpose is obviously divorced from a sense of strangeness or "externality." There's nothing much weird in Twilight.

The "Tradition" of our title has always implied to me a genealogical relationship among our literature of interest, with the "Weird" being more than slightly a matter of the Weird Tales brand, reflecting the "home field" of the senior members of the "Lovecraft Circle." So, one way to look at the weird of this tradition is to see it as those earlier stories that inspired, and those later stories inspired by, the explicitly "Weird" writers of the pulp era.

I also see overlap between Weird and Horror genres, but there are examples of each that are not the other. So, it's not that Weird is a Horror specialty or subgenre.

I identify that aspect of Weird fiction which comments on our world in metaphysical or cosmological terms: the world is not (only) a rational place, as science argues it is. Along with that, humanity is not particularly special, important, or superior -- despite any conceits we may have! Along with this goes the idea that there isn't so much a pitched battle of Good v Evil (Us v Them), as that we're just out of our depth. Our plans and dreams may be squashed, but not because Evil triumphs over us, so much as that the universe doesn't much care about our plans and often we are powerless to alter that. That's something I associate with Lovecraft but evident in many Weird authors, and is distinct from much of Horror fiction.

Horror is the only literary genre named after an emotion. It is usually identified with the likes of Stephen King or Clive Barker, but you might as well include Shakespeare and Cormac Macarthy, too. Horror is everywhere that human beings are. It is a visceral, fight-or-flight reaction to events.

The weird has a much more refined nuance. As paradoxosalpha notes, weird fiction doesn't always require horror tropes. It will usually try to relate the experience of an overwhelming awe in the face of truly unknown/unquantifiable events, but even that puts a limitation on it that doesn't really exist!

>2 paradoxosalpha:

The "Tradition" of our title has always implied to me a genealogical relationship among our literature of interest, with the "Weird" being more than slightly a matter of the Weird Tales brand, reflecting the "home field" of the senior members of the "Lovecraft Circle." So, one way to look at the weird of this tradition is to see it as those earlier stories that inspired, and those later stories inspired by, the explicitly "Weird" writers of the pulp era.

Well put!

I'm not sure "weird" is actually a literary genre at all; it more like a flavor. That makes defining it difficult. I'd certainly agree that the Weird Tales brand (and Vandermeer's "new" weird) provide a handy framework for comparing or discussing authors and their works. Fantasy can be defined - or science fiction - or "horror" - though clearly overlap exists - but "weird"? Like chocolate, it could be cake, stout, ice cream or a dog

Hey, if it walks like Howard the Duck . . .

Your curiosity will help ensure you keep doing great.

I strongly recommend Robert Aickman's stories as weird without necessarily being horror. He is an author whose work has been fairly inaccessible for some decades due to availability and cost. Faber & Faber have remedied that recently with a series of his collections at a reasonable price. I always find his stories interesting and thought provoking.

Thinking of modern writers whose work could be considered weird I thought of Haruki Murakami. What do people think of his stories as being weird? I love his work and I see his introducing apparently supernatural or incongruent elements as a mechanism for getting his readers to see the world from a new position. (a case of @bookstopshere's Howard the Duck.)

>9 frahealee: I loved The Beetle. I got the impression the author was having great fun with it.

>11 frahealee: That sounds just the ticket. I hope you will still want to toast me when you finish it. :-)

This interview with James Machin, author of a new book Weird Fiction in Britain 1890-1939 gives another perspective on the what-is-weird-what-is-horror- question (and coincidentally gives another thumbs up for Mary Butts story "Mappa Mundi", as recently discussed on the advance nominations thread).


http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2018/09/weird-fiction-in-britain-1890-1939.html

>13 housefulofpaper:

Nice to post that here, I enjoyed especially "a resistance to reductive, materialist accounts of the universe" as a theme of Weird fiction, it tallies with my own interests. Interesting that Ramsey Campbell is one of those replying in the comments.

>13 housefulofpaper:

Excellent interview - thanks for posting. I'm adding the book to my TBR list.

>13 housefulofpaper:

Machin writes:

Brian Stableford remarked somewhere that the Decadence of the 1890s never really died, it just moved to the U.S. with Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, etc. This observation really struck me, and in a way the entire book is more or less built on Stableford’s insight here.

Excellent!

And we should read more John Buchan.

>16 paradoxosalpha: And we should read more John Buchan.

Hear! Hear!

That's where I got the title. Machin's book looks good. Has anyone read it yet?

>18 RandyStafford:
Published last month at $85. I'm waiting.

Maybe I'll snag it via inter-library loan next year.

>19 Crypto-Willobie:
>20 paradoxosalpha:

The author noted the publisher expects mostly libraries to purchase it, unsure if there'll be a paperback edition. ILL would be the way to go for me, too, if at all.

I feel somewhat lost (and ashamed!) with so may authors I don't recognize. I've spent a fair amount of time floating around genres though, and trying to figure them out. I agree that horror and weird aren't in a hierarchy to one another but probably on the same level, as both can be genres easily attached to others. A work can be one without being the other.

That's another snag with genre, is how often books will straddle the lines. Frankenstein is Gothic, but also considered science fiction. Oryx and Crake is dystopian, yet also sci-fi (or "speculative" depending on who you ask). If you put vampires in historical fiction, does it stop being historical fiction and become horror or Gothic? Are vampires by themselves Gothic? If you aren't scared by vampires does it stop being horror?

Defining "weird" reminds me a bit of defining "cyber-punk." Not always easy to put into words, but recognizable when you see it.

I've yet to read Dracula though he will forever be Gary Oldman inside my head. ;).

As a slasher film buff I feel the need to say that "not all horror is about blood!" but that opens another genre web that might really only be important for those of us that dwell in it. I've spent enough time sorting through the forest that is the Fantasy genre to get internally irked when someone calls it all (insert unpleasant here).

>25 frahealee: Grand Marnier is a favourite of mine, so it will be "Just grand!", as we say here.

I hope you are enjoying it.

>27 frahealee: Wait till you meet the Inquisition!
No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.

How did you enjoy The Beetle?

Burning at the stake was a common punishment for heresy and witchcraft.

The guillotine is French. I am not aware of anywhere else that uses it.

No witches burned in Salem at least -- just hanging and, in one notable case, "pressing" which involved slowly being suffocated by rocks piled on your chest. An interesting historical movie about the Salem witches is Three Sovereigns for Sarah. It hews pretty close to the facts and uses trial transcripts.

WARNING: Post #39 looks suspicious. I would not touch the link if I were you. The account was just set up today.

I have flagged it.