The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Imagine if Hemingway, master explorer of the male psyche, was really a woman writing under a pseudonym. Behind the name of James Tiptree, Jr., the muscular, intellectual science fiction of ALICE BRADLEY SHELDON (1915-1987) turned gender in genre on its head in the late ’60s, exploring taboo themes fearlessly. Tiptree’s relentless and unforgiving worldview were famously considered quintessential masculine writing. When the hoax was exposed, the author carried on under the byline of Raccoona Sheldon, and the fiction was no less dazzlingly dark.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Like the two genres to which so many of their films pay homage, it’s the dialogue — snappy, rapid-fire, off-kilter — that strings together the dark screwball comedy noirs of the COEN BROTHERS. From Gabriel Byrne’s smart talk in Miller’s Crossing to the yah-sure-yer-darn-tootin of Fargo, the words take center stage. Well, words and White Russians and wood chippers and hair jelly and hula hoops and extortion and blackmail and kidnapping. Always with the kidnapping.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

An unexpected name to see on this list? Perhaps — but here’s the thing: While ALICE WALKER (1944- ) is renowned for her realistic fictin (The Color Purple, Meridian), an examination of her career’s trajectory shows that her earthly stories set the stage and built the audience for the author to deliver her later, weirder ones. The Temple of My Familiar, which uses myth and fable to weave together the world’s dark realities; the children’s fantasia Finding the Green Stone — these works fired the imaginations of readers who’d never heard the phrase “speculative literature,” but subsequently went on to discover more of it.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Our “same planet, different worlds” award for weirdness must go to THEODOR “DR. SEUSS” GEISEL (1904-1991). His tales charm all but the grumpiest readers, but beneath those happy faces, bright colors and wacky inventions lay social commentary torn straight from the hundreds of cartoons he drew for the WWII leftist newspaper PM. Still unconvinced? Seuss taught kids to read and brought anapestic tetrameter to the masses. If that’s not weird, we’re not sure what is.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

If not for space and time, everything would happen all at once. Maybe that’s what happened to the reclusive THOMAS PYNCHON (1937– ) decades ago, as his books are chock-full of everything. Anarchism, Boy’s Own fiction, Tesla, the aether, very very smart dogs, the Hollow Earth, and dirigibles — and that’s just in his latest  novel. More prized than read, Pynchon will likely go down in history famed as the guy who played himself on The Simpsons with a bag over his head.