 Paperback edition cover | |
| Author | Jeff VanderMeer |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy Noir |
| Publisher | Underland Press |
Publication date | November 2009 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 339 pp. |
| ISBN | 0-9802260-1-5 |
| OCLC | 318422341 |
Finch is a fantasy novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer, his third set in the Ambergris universe. Written in the noir style of detective novels, it stands alone, while referencing characters and events from the earlier City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword .
At the time of Finch, Ambergris is ruled by the gray caps, a non-human, "spore-based" species. Their "Rising" followed a destructive civil war between rival human factions.
The title character, reluctant detective John Finch, is tasked with investigating a double-murder, one victim a human and the second a gray cap.
Eric Brown reviewed the book for The Guardian and says that "Finch plays with the conventions of the noir thriller, espionage and fantasy genres, mixing all three to produce something unique and unsettling." He does suggest that the "fractured, fragmented prose style ... is likely to alienate as many readers as it charms" but concludes that the book is "a compelling experience, a fungalpunk nightmare pullulating with dark, phantasmagorical transformations: it works equally as a stylish detective story, a perverse example of the New Weird fantasy subgenre, and an effective metaphor for the dehumanising effects of occupying forces and totalitarian regimes." [1]
The novel was a nominee for the 2010 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. [2]
Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy's first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases (2003) is an anthology of fantasy medical conditions edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts, and published by Night Shade Books.
Thomas Ligotti is an American horror writer. His writings are rooted in several literary genres – most prominently weird fiction – and have been described by critics as works of philosophical horror, often formed into short stories and novellas in the tradition of gothic fiction. The worldview espoused by Ligotti in his fiction and non-fiction has been described as pessimistic and nihilistic. The Washington Post called him "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction."
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European folklore and gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft. Weird fiction often attempts to inspire awe as well as fear in response to its fictional creations, causing commentators like Miéville to paraphrase Goethe in saying that weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous. Although "weird fiction" has been chiefly used as a historical description for works through the 1930s, it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, under the label of New Weird, which continues into the 21st century.
Nemonymous was a short fiction publication that labeled itself a "megazanthus". It was published in the United Kingdom from 2001–2010, and edited by British writer D. F. Lewis.
The New Weird is a literary genre that emerged in the 1990s through early 2000s with characteristics of weird fiction and other speculative fiction subgenres. M. John Harrison is credited with creating the term "New Weird" in the introduction to The Tain in 2002. The writers involved are mostly novelists who are considered to be part of the horror or speculative fiction genres but who often cross genre boundaries. Notable authors include K. J. Bishop, Paul Di Filippo, M. John Harrison, Jeffrey Ford, Storm Constantine, China Miéville, Alastair Reynolds, Justina Robson, Steph Swainston, Mary Gentle, Michael Cisco, Jeff VanderMeer and Conrad Williams.
Veniss Underground is a 2003 fantasy novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer, following the adult lives of three different protagonists across a short period of time in the decadent, surreal city of Veniss, which is situated above a vast underground labyrinth of hovels and mines ruled over by the amoral crime lord Quin.
City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris is a collection of fantasy short stories by American writer Jeff VanderMeer, set in the fictional metropolis of Ambergris. The setting was further explored in the novels Shriek: An Afterword (2006) and Finch (2009).
Shriek: An Afterword is a fantasy novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer. Published in 2006, Shriek is set in the fictional city of Ambergris, a recurring setting in VanderMeer's work. The novel was written over a period of eight years, owing in part to what the author said, "[some scenes that are] very personal."
Infernal Devices is a steampunk novel by K. W. Jeter, published in 1987. The novel was republished in 2011 by Angry Robot Books with a new introduction by the author, cover art by John Coulthart, and an afterword by Jeff VanderMeer.
Ann VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press.
Steampunk (2008) is an anthology of steampunk fiction edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and published by Tachyon Publications. It was nominated in 2009 for a World Fantasy Award.
Finch is an EP by American five-piece indie rock band Murder by Death. Although the band's fourth album, 2008's Red of Tooth and Claw, was released on the Vagrant label, Finch's October 7, 2009 release was on Tent Show Records, Murder by Death's record label in the EastWest family of labels.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is an anthology of weird fiction edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.
Annihilation is a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is the first in a series of three books called the Southern Reach Trilogy. The book describes a team of four women who set out into an area known as Area X. The area is abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization. They are the 12th expedition; the previous expeditions have been fraught with disappearances, suicides, aggressive cancers, and mental trauma. The novel won the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award for best novel.
Some Kind of Fairy Tale is a 2012 novel by the British author Graham Joyce. A work of speculative fiction, it won the British Fantasy Society's Fantasy Novel of the Year award in 2013, and was nominated for the 2013 August Derleth Award for best Horror Novel, and the 2013 World Fantasy Award for best Novel.
The Spire is an American weird fantasy / mystery comics series written by Simon Spurrier and drawn by Jeff Stokely. The eight-issue limited series has been published since 2015 by Boom! Studios. The series was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2016 for “Best Limited Series”.
Borne is a 2017 novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer. It concerns a post-apocalyptic city setting overrun by biotechnology.
The Silent Land is a horror fantasy novel by English writer Graham Joyce. It was first published in the United Kingdom in November 2010 by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and in March 2011 in the United States by Doubleday. It is about a young married couple who are buried by an avalanche while skiing in the French Pyrenees. They free themselves, but find the world around them silent and devoid of people.
Dead Astronauts is a 2019 science fiction novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is a sequel to Borne but features different characters and a new narrative. It was nominated for the Locus Awards Best Fantasy Novel of 2020.