Weird Fiction: I Have Many Questions

As one does when writing a book they plan on publishing one day, it’s crucial to find an audience to market that book to. Doing so can be very difficult if said book does not fit into the conventionalities of mainstream genre fiction. If the book is part of a small category that doesn’t even fit in with a niche outsider genre, that piles on more challenges to an already hard puzzle of marketing a book. This is where my problems lie. For as long as I’ve read, I’ve never attached myself to a particular community, whether that be through my reading or writing. As a consequence, I’m slightly familiar to clueless with understanding what qualities set certain genres and writing communities apart.

When looking through a shelf through any bookstore, it’s clear that there isn’t much diversity when it comes to what sells through the mainstream market. Science fiction, fantasy, thriller, and romance are the general pickings for anyone browsing for new books. While I could be bitter about this reality, I don’t mind the fact that a “punk rock” book scene can exist as an alternative to what I find with a quick look through Barnes and Noble. Like any art scene, there will be a mainstream and an underground. Books aren’t much different from music in that way. There are songs that list on Billboard with artists that perform in huge stadiums for thousands of people and there are songs that can only be found through a search on Bandcamp with artists that play in small venues with material that’s more experimental and left field. For literature, labels like bizarro, transgressive, splatterpunk, surreal, and weird fiction are common genres used for works that have a less conventional appeal.

Here comes the problem. The alternative literature community, if one exists, is incredibly difficult to find, even in online spaces. When finding small publishing houses that specialize with these genres, it’s common to find the website to not post anything for years or lead to a dead site. There are little to no blogs that discuss these genres and/or write works for them. The closest thing I could find for a bizzaro fiction community was two Facebook pages with regular posts but little engagement. For all the many small bookstores I’ve visited throughout the years, some in places known for their alternative art and music scene, I’ve never seen a single book from an underground genre.

Considering what I write falls into a more niche category of literature, it’s demoralizing to see how little of a market for it there really is. Even small local bands have more of a fanbase than most obscure authors online. With this realization, I present a set of questions and thoughts about “weird fiction” at large. Take note I’m not a seasoned aficionado with knowledge about these genres, I’m just some rando on the internet asking questions after my first impressions with genres mainly under the umbrella of “weird fiction”. Essentially, genres that are considered niche and unconventional in the world of literature. While I risk being far off base in some judgments I make, I’m willing to learn and discuss with my audience who may know more than I do.

Question 1: What happened to Weird Fiction?

From what I can glean online, genres like bizzaro have been around for a while, but any news on recent developments of it is sparse. I’ve heard countless theories of its disappearance from the scene being taken over by SJWs to the audience simply not being there, as stories about darker topics are less appealing in this stressful decade. Whatever the reason, I can’t find a stable following online that discusses or reviews books from more obscure genres. The closest I came to were several YouTube channels that specialized in reviewing transgressive and disturbing novels. As difficult as they were to find, they provided a great resource to introduce me to less conventional and known pieces of literature. As a plus, these channels had better engagement than any social media pages of the same subject and were filled with people interested in writing weird fiction and/or avid readers of those works. While YouTube channels were the closest thing I could find to “a community”, the channels were still sparse and isolated from each other across the platform.

Question 2: Why have I never heard of it until now?

Out of all the genres that encompass weird fiction, transgressive fiction is often the most mainstream. The average person has likely heard of Fight Club, American Psycho, or Kurt Vonnegut in passing. Even for a sparse reader, there’s a fair number of titles that are well known in the mainstream, easy to access at any bookstore, but strangely enough, the genre label isn’t. While I’ve read my fair share of Charles Bukowski and Hunter S Thompson, I’d never heard the term “transgressive” used to describe them until I’d adventured into weird fiction YouTube where the word was commonplace. Since then, I’ve been more accustomed to the terms used when describing this sector of books, but often wonder how useful they are when trying to give a general audience an idea of a book’s content.

Words like bizarro, splatterpunk, and transgressive are not terms most are familiar with unless readers attempt to seek them out. Efforts most are not interested in going through the trouble for. Another thing to consider is that genres of movies and music that fit the aesthetic of weird fiction are much more well known to their literature counterparts. I like to compare bizarro fiction to B horror movies or Pink Flamingos when trying to explain the genre. It’s impossible to use a bizarro book to explain things the other way around unless I suppose there’s people who live under a rock and do nothing but read bizarro fiction. From my surface observations, there’s much more history with this kind of storytelling in movies, comics, and any other type of medium that isn’t literature. Perhaps it’s that readers/writers stigmatize campy writing styles as they consider writing a “serious medium”. Whatever the reason, the history of absurdist, weird, and dark storytelling in writing is one that often floats below the mainstream.

Question 3: Can weird fiction come back?

This is a question most will be clueless about, including myself. Weird fiction was never a popular genre to start out with, only making its times in the limelight brief without further growing into a trend. While the hard state of our times may contribute to its sparse presence in modern literature, I believe there are ways to improve its relevance. In the best works nonconventional literature offers, the philosophical questions and concepts presented are what make those books compelling. When browsing modern transgressive literature, the biggest common mistake I see is the overindulgence of shock over substance. I’m not suggesting absurdist writing is undesirable, but that it’s less interesting without underlying subtext or themes.

The conundrum of our times is that people are hard to shock these days. Sex, drugs, murder: Things that used to ruffle feathers decades ago our younger generations are much more desensitized to, even in large doses. I simply don’t think piling on the shock will sell anymore unless it’s used as a secondary tool to illustrate interesting questions or themes in a story. People in today’s world still get offended (a lot), but it’s for much different reasons than twenty years ago. In the end, something that questions the popular core values of a society and/or people in that society has a greater bite than any over the top sex scene, especially if it shows perspectives that are taboo to discuss openly. (There are many these days)

Question 4: How can I contribute to the weird fiction scene?

Stepping my toes in the waters of underground literature is my current aspiration. The question is where to start and where to aspire from there. What to make of this blog is a twisted mystery to me. Perhaps I will dedicate it to reviewing writers from the weird fiction bubble or blog about my creative adventures writing for a scene known for its questionable content. Whatever I plan to do, I want to bring more attention and appreciation for writing outside of the box. In the future, I hope to provide more resources to help writers/ readers discover outsider literature. As there’s a growing interest in outsider art and music in the last decade, outsider literature wouldn’t be a far stretch from those mediums. Strange books are an uncharted niche, ready to grow if people have interest. Perhaps I’ll be wrong and there’s no interest in such books, but it’s worth a shot.

Conclusion

As much as I will ponder the possibilities, the reality remains clear. The future of weird fiction is unknown and the genre may remain in obscurity. Even if obscurity is the inevitable outcome, I want to find and appreciate the gems in this genre for all it’s worth. Bizzaro, transgressive, splatterpunk, and other categories of weird fiction have much potential to provide less conventional content in a predictable world of mainstream published books. It would be a tragedy to not challenge that world and encourage original stories that are more lacking as the years go by. The book world needs to have its feathers ruffled again, it needs to bring more attention to itself and have its readers and writers question its very foundations.