The White Cat of Drumgunniol, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, H.The Haunted and the Haunters, Edward Bulwer-Lytton.The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe.The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe.The Confession of Charles Linkworth, E.How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery, E.The Roll-Call of the Reef, Arthur Quiller-Couch.The Woman’s Ghost Story, Algernon Blackwood.I also have plenty more books that came from out-of-print publishers. This was not my first eco-weird-fiction novel, and definitely not my last, as I find this genre ripe for the tapping–it is followed with modern authors such as Jeff Vandermeer. As the nature around them takes on its own will, as if it has a conscience, their unrest deepens. It is of their utmost concern that they get off this island and back to the river, but they are also trapped because of flooding. The two find the corpse of a peasant, and they wonder if it is a sacrifice to the island, and further fright sets in. The main character tells himself that if he states out loud his fears to his companion, simply described as the Swede, that the fears will then become manifest and real. While the events happening around the two men exist on the border of the explainable and the non-explainable (whispers, strange light figures escaping into the heavens at night, and so on), there is a palpable fear that the two seasoned river canoers had not felt before when camping, and, being rational people, they wonder if they are hallucinating or so scared that their imaginations are running wild. This happens in The Willows, to be sure, as the men setting up camp on island become frighteningly aware of the natural elements around them–the sun, the river, the wind, the willows–taking on preternatural qualities that make them seem not of this world–and these elements take on qualities in the story that present as either the soul of the primordial world, or even perhaps as the forgotten psyche of humanity. Tap eco- in front of that, and it then becomes a living, crawling genre wherein the physical world around the story becomes a major part of the tale. Weird fiction is distinguished from horror and fantasy in its blending of supernatural, mythical, and even scientific tropes. It can be said to encompass the ghost story and other tales of the macabre.

Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th century.

To start, weird fiction is a traditional genre espousing horror and other elements.

One might wonder, “What is ecological weird fiction?” I don’t think I made this up, but Googling the term, I have only found myself asking for recommendations in the genre–yet, most certainly, I have gotten the gist of this type of work when talking with Jeff VanderMeer when we discussed ecology and weird fiction.

Algernon blackwood's the willows