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 Series. The series' 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.
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 traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction, such as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. 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 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.
Robinsonade is a literary genre of fiction wherein the protagonist is suddenly separated from civilization, usually by being shipwrecked or marooned on a secluded and uninhabited island, and must improvise the means of their survival from the limited resources at hand. The genre takes its name from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The success of this novel spawned so many imitations that its name was used to define a genre, which is sometimes described simply as a "desert island story" or a "castaway narrative".
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.
Weird West, also known as Weird Western, is a term used for the hybrid genres of fantasy Western, horror Western and science fiction Western. The term originated with DC's Weird Western Tales in 1972, but the idea is older as the genres have been blended since the 1930s, possibly earlier, in B-movie Westerns, comic books, movie serials and pulp magazines. Individually, the hybrid genres combine elements of the Western genre with those of fantasy, horror and science fiction respectively.
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."
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.
Annihilation is a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is the first entry in VanderMeer's Southern Reach Series and follows a team of four women who set out into an area known as Area X, which is abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization; they believe they are the 12th expedition, with all previous expeditions falling apart due to disappearances, suicides, aggressive cancers, and mental trauma.
Authority is a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is the second in a series of four books called the Southern Reach Series. In an interview, VanderMeer stated that, "if Annihilation is an expedition into Area X, then Authority is an expedition into the Southern Reach, the agency sending in the expeditions." It was released in May 2014.
The Southern Reach Series is a series of novels by the American author Jeff VanderMeer first published in 2014—Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance, with the most recent novel Absolution published in 2024. The series takes its name from the secret agency that is central to the plot. In 2013, Paramount Pictures bought the movie rights for the series, and a film adaptation of Annihilation was made with Alex Garland as writer-director. The film was released in 2018. The most recent entry in the series, Absolution, was released on 22 October 2024.
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.
Annihilation is a 2018 science fiction horror thriller film written and directed by Alex Garland, loosely based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. It stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac. The story follows a group of scientists who enter the Shimmer, a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating plants and animals caused by an alien presence.
Laura Miller is an American journalist and critic based in New York City. She is a co-founder of Salon.com.
Ecofiction is the branch of literature that encompasses nature or environment-oriented works of fiction. While this super genre's roots are seen in classic, pastoral, magical realism, animal metamorphoses, science fiction, and other genres, the term ecofiction did not become popular until the 1960s when various movements created the platform for an explosion of environmental and nature literature, which also inspired ecocriticism. Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. Environmentalists have claimed that the human relationship with the ecosystem often went unremarked in earlier literature.
Borne is a 2017 novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer. It concerns a post-apocalyptic city setting overrun by biotechnology.
The Strange Bird: A Borne Story is a short story written by Jeff VanderMeer and published in 2018. Its genre has been described as being post-apocalyptic, new weird, and climate change fiction. Its main character is a bird-like creature made of biotechnology with some human consciousness inside of her, and it has been thematically interpreted as an analysis of people's relationship with the environment and with animals.
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 a finalist for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and also a finalist for the Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
Absolution is a 2024 novel by Jeff VanderMeer, and the fourth entry in the Southern Reach Series. It is both a prequel and sequel to the Southern Reach Series.
