And of course, once more we’re running a bit behind (currently reading stories in Mid-March) but making steady progress.  We’ve received close to 3000 stories via the portal so far and are still receiving snail mail submissions as well (about 4-5 a day).   My editorial assistants and I are happy to see so many impressive stories, but frustrated that we just don’t have the space for all of them (working on something to help rectify this – stay posted ).  So thanks to all for your patience while we work hard to get to each and every one of you.

Some news – just a small sampling of stories we’ve recently acquired that you will see later this year (please note: this is not all of them):

Stephen Graham Jones – an amazing post-apocalyptic zombie story (no, you’ve not seen one like this before). 

Annalee Newitz – monstrous weirdness in an alternate future of San Francisco

Conrad Williams – a photographer finds something strange

Tamsyn Muir – a young girl is schooled in the many ways of magic (Harry Potter this is not, trust me)

Tom Underberg – A Sin eater in search of something he must have in order to feel again

Jamieson Ridenhour – Unusual musical Deal with the Devil story in the Deep South

Leena Likitalo – Short bizarre story from this up-and-coming Finnish writer

Never even mind his biggest radio hit, the classic lycanthropic dance tune “Werewolves of London” — the songwriting oeuvre of WARREN ZEVON (1947-2003) conjures a twisted universe where upwardly mobile zoo gorillas steal the lives of urban yuppies, the ghosts of murdered mercenaries stalk their old battlefields, and Earth itself fades to the entropic assault of chemical pollution while love blooms in the mall. Unsettling, surreal, and wickedly funny, Zevon died too soon, but his specter haunts rock & roll forever.

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.

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.

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.

TOM WAITS (1949– ) has built his oeuvre singing odd stories of life on the road, chronicling hobo existence, underground Americana, and downright weird folks through sordid lyrics and abrasive melodies. Every album is a singular experience, a collection of unique tales told in musical notes and gravel-throated vocals. His latest album, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards is a tour de force through the weird world of his creativity.

ANNE RICE (1941– ) made vampires sexy again in the public imagination. In doing so, she pushed the door open a bit wider on the mainstreaming of goth culture, and she set the stage for the subsequent rise of Laurell K. Hamilton and, more indirectly, today’s most popular new hybrid strange-fiction genre, the paranormal romance. Fanged exsanguination and dramatic fornication: a weird combination indeed.

We haven’t found any evidence that ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) ever met fellow 85er Philip K. Dick, but they certainly should have recognized one another’s reflections. While Dick was forecasting the future’s fractured mindscape, Warhol was beta-testing the pre-release version he’d hacked together in his Factory for art. The experiments he conducted there — upon still and sequential images, upon the interplay between life and media, even upon Dracula and Frankenstein — rarely failed to pinpoint a nexus of the strange and the strangely banal.

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.

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.