| Arguably strange or uncanny fiction was the default position of storytellers for centuries. Myths and legends, folk tales and fables all mix the real and the imaginary as a matter of course. In fact ‘realism’ is a relatively new concept in storytelling but the desire for the fantastic has never completely gone away. The short story is a natural home for such stories, being a form that mirrors the length of folktales or a verbal anecdote.
I encountered uncanny fiction first through Greek (and later, Norse) myths, folk tales, and then through children’s fiction, which has been an obvious torchbearer for fantasy. Film and television played a big part in developing my taste for the odd - whether it was Doctor Who or the Addams Family. Comics too. And I became aware of writers who wrote strange tales without a specific readership age in mind. I remember being read Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and being absolutely entranced by it aged eight or nine. I was read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at about the same age. What a beginning - ‘Marley was dead: to begin with.’ But Dickens is also responsible for one of the greatest of all English ghost stories - The Signalman. Except that it isn’t really a ghost story. We are back to uncanny fiction again. I read H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds when I was a boy, going on to read The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau with equal relish. But it wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I read his short stories. The best of his work seem to remain incredibly relevant. The Stolen Bacillus manages to be both a chilling and a wryly amusing take on terrorism. The Country of the Blind has the quality of an ancient fable. Perhaps my favourite H G Wells short story is The Door in the Wall, a wonderful, haunting tale that does not easily fit into any genre. The things we read in our late teens really shape our tastes and shape us as people, I think. I continued to seek out uncanny fiction, wherever it might occur and the writers who intrigued me seemed to be constantly bursting out of the genre the book shop or library tried to confine them to. Edgar Allan Poe is often described as a horror writer - and the visions he conjures up are often very horrific - but he was also wrote detective fiction, sci-fi and fantasy. His work is hypnotic and strange but defies easy categorisation. Much the same could be said of Franz Kafka whose writing I stumbled upon in my twenties. Or Ray Bradbury. Or Elizabeth Bowen. Or M R James. Or Saki. Or Daphne du Maurier. Or Jorge Louis Borges. Or Stephen King. Or Ursula LeGuin. Or Neil Gaiman.
Uncanny fiction is a refusal to accept boundaries in what can be imagined or written. It has fed my imagination for decades and will continue to do so for some time still I hope. How about letting a bit of weirdness into your life. To quote another writer of uncanny fiction - David Bowie in ‘Changes’ - ‘Turn and face the strange. . .’
Chris Priestley |
