The New Weird
9 stories
Secret Sidewalk by tomlichtenberg
tomlichtenberg
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Beauregaard Sweet became invisible, but his troubles began when he suddenly reappeared. Now everybody wants something from him. Manny the mechanic wants his wife. Sharad LeMaster wants his secret. Emma Biggs wants another shot at the TV news, the Four Tribes want to send him back to wherever it was he'd gone, and all he wants to do is eat donuts and watch reality TV. A tale of 1001 more nights.
Troglodyte Rose: A Rose in Any Other Game by AdamBeyonceLowe
AdamBeyonceLowe
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Life for Rose is a game. A deadly game. She lives in the squalor of Subterran Prime: a sprawling underground world where mad gods sleep around the fools who serve them; where the savage Justicars seek out criminals and undesirables for swift justice at the end of their bronze beaks; where hapless slaves are branded with the mark of the cypher and fed to the starving masses or the gluttenous ruling class. In this world Rose has two things: her intersex lover, Jay Chimera, and her imagination. Geared with both, she hurtles through dreamworlds and virtual realities, until she discovers the ultimate gift: a drug, the Haze, that makes her dreams reality. But in order to get the Haze she must put herself in the way of the Justicars and face their terrible thirst for punishment. Can Rose and Jay play the game and reach the next level in their quest for escape, or will they lose everything? This is a self-contained novelette that serves as a taster of my current work-in-progress, the full-length novel Troglodyte Rose. This is loosely adapted from a novella published in 2009 by Cadaverine Publications, which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. The interactive website that accompanies this story is available at troglodyterose.com. Artwork by Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon. Interactive website designed by Michael Bryant.
THE POSTMODERN MALADY OF DR. PETER HUDSON by DChapman1980
DChapman1980
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April, 1814. As news of Lord Byron’s death sweeps London, two young prostitutes are found murdered. The murderer, and his shocking motive, becomes a secret passed down from father to son, one which remains undisclosed for nearly 200 years. It is the truth of Dr. Peter Hudson, who witnessed modernity evaporate into uncertainty, a man who embodies the contemporary human condition like no other. The novella, The Postmodern Malady of Dr. Peter Hudson, is the title story in this collection of eight short stories that unite around themes of time, memory and identity. Each is an experiment in convention, characterisation, and genre that use the tropes of crime, murder, and the paranormal to explore the contradiction between abstract understanding, and lived reality. These are stories about the reconciliation of these ideas in the midst of the human obsession with immortality and frailty.
The Rapture of the Nerds (written with Charles Stross) by CoryDoctorow
CoryDoctorow
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Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun. The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander…and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple.
Karma Police by baradit
baradit
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Simple. Think about a Police corp that can arrest you for crimes commited in a previous life.
The Adventures of Queen Draqueesha and the Undead Composer Mozart by ZanyOxter
ZanyOxter
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An ancient power awakens when Mozart steals the legendary Rainbow Sword from the National Museum of Nalas. His daring escape leads him much, much farther than he had ever imagined, right into Queen Draqueesha's college. He goes into hiding, under the alias of Gregory Trent, but as an assassin comes to take his life, things get complicated.
The Queen of Cats by maybeiwas2shy
maybeiwas2shy
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Dark things swarm around the city. Newspaper-boys are lured into houses, strange mansions whisper into musicians' ears, old men tell tales of vampires, drums boom in the Savannah, children worship false gods and priests begin to question the very foundations of the universe. And all this has something to do with a girl who has no name and a cat whose name nobody knows. A dark, surreal adventure, this book is my flawed tribute to weird-fiction and the writers who made me. A WATTPAD FEATURED STORY 2nD PLACE WINNER FOR THE HAND PICKED AWARDS 2017 - PARANORMAL CATEGORY RUNNER UP FOR THE ANTI-WATTYS 2015 Cover designed by @sublime- Trailer by @Welc0meT0MyW0rld
MY NAME IS HATE by okaydavek
okaydavek
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A bleak, steampunky western in which a pregnant woman hunts down her runaway husband, with a mysterious black dog hot on her heels.
Meanwhile by pantopicon
pantopicon
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“Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.” -- Alexandre Dumas "The Count of Monte Cristo"