Even
from the start “Year’s Best Weird
Fiction” was surrounded by positive vibe, successfully funded through an
Indiegogo campaign the first volume of this short fiction collection, bearing
the mark of Undertow Books and ChiZine Publications, two of the most prestigious
publishers of weird fiction, and edited by Laird
Barron and Michael Kelly, in
their turn two of the genre modern masters, “Year’s Best Weird Fiction”
continued to further its initial success by becoming the most sold ebook of
ChiZine Publications and by entering on Locus Magazine’s 2014 recommended reading. These are no small achievements, weird fiction is a hard seller and it
has difficulties in finding its place on the market. But isn’t the struggle of labeling
this sort of fiction an appealing situation for the weird genre? Although it
could be argued that weird is a label after all. Still, its power of reaching
across various other genres and transforming them into something unique makes
weird fiction a very interesting genre from my point of view. And I like to
believe that its ability of stepping over boundaries made “Year’s Best Weird
Fiction” such a successful project. This year sees the release of the second volume
of “Year’s Best Weird Fiction”, edited this time by Kathe Koja and Michael Kelly
and published by the same team of Undertow Books and ChiZine Publications. With
the recently revealing of “Year’s Best
Weird Fiction Volume 2” table of contents it seems that the second installment
of this collection holds at least as much promise as the first. I say this with
assurance since if I had to choose a single story as guide from this table of
contents I’d be more than happy to select Isabel Yap’s “A Cup of Salt Tears”, a
wonderful and very touching story, one of my favorites from the previous
reading year. Another interesting aspect to be noted on the table of contents is
that plenty of the short stories included in this second volume of “Year’s Best
Weird Fiction” come from online mediums, Tor.com, Shimmer Magazine, Strange
Horizons, Subterranean Press Magazine, Crossed Genres or Lightspeed Magazine
are venues of short fiction that can be enjoyed online. I find it very
interesting because it seems not only that the speculative fiction market is
changing, though it is only natural for this to happen, but also that the
quality of online fiction and editorial work put behind these projects is
growing constantly. It offers me more reasons for being optimistic about the
future of speculative short fiction. I am certain that “Year’s Best Weird
Fiction Volume 2” would rise to the level of quality to be expected from
Undertow Books, especially when the cover is a landmark on itself as well, the
artwork of Tomasz Alen Kopera is
mesmerizing and intriguing, another excellent point of attraction for the
second volume of “Year’s Best Weird Fiction”.
“The Atlas of Hell” by Nathan Ballingrud (Fearful
Symmetries, ed. Ellen Datlow, ChiZine Publications)
“Wendigo Nights” by Siobhan Carroll (Fearful
Symmetries, ed. Ellen Datlow, ChiZine Publications)
“Headache” by Julio Cortázar. English-language translation by Michael Cisco (Tor.com,
September 2014)
“Loving Armageddon” by Amanda C. Davis (Crossed
Genres Magazine #19, July 2014)
“The Earth and Everything Under” by K.M. Ferebee (Shimmer
Magazine #19, May 2014)
“Nanny Anne and the Christmas Story” by Karen Joy Fowler (Subterranean
Press Magazine, Winter 2014)
“The Girls Who Go Below” by Cat Hellisen (The Magazine
of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014)
“Nine” by Kima Jones (Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction
From the Margins of History, eds. Rose Fox & Daniel José Older, Crossed Genres
Publications)
“Bus Fare” by Caitlín
R. Kiernan (Subterranean Press Magazine, Spring 2014)
“The Air We Breathe Is Stormy, Stormy” by Rich Larson (Strange
Horizons Magazine, August 2014)
“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado (Granta
Magazine, October 2014)
“Observations About Eggs From the Man Sitting Next to Me
on a Flight from Chicago, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa” by Carmen Maria
Machado (Lightspeed Magazine #47, April 2014)
“Resurrection Points” by Usman T. Malik (Strange
Horizons Magazine, August 2014)
“Exit Through the Gift Shop” by Nick Mamatas (Searchers
After Horror: New Tales of the Weird and Fantastic, ed. S.T. Joshi, Fedogan
& Bremer)
“So Sharp That Blood Must Flow” by Sunny Moraine (Lightspeed
Magazine #45, February 2014)
“The Ghoul” by Jean Muno, English-language translation by
Edward Gauvin (Weirdfictionreview.com,
June2014)
“A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide” by Sarah Pinsker (The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2014)
“Migration” by Karin Tidbeck (Fearsome Magics: The New
Solaris Book of Fantasy, ed. Jonathan Strahan, Solaris)
“Hidden in the Alphabet” by Charles Wilkinson (Shadows
& Tall Trees 2014, ed. Michael Kelly, Undertow Publications)
“A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap (Tor.com, August 2014)
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