Wells I’d never heard of, a post-punk band I’d also never heard of (The Fall), and works by one of my favorite artists, David Lynch.Īs for the eerie, Fisher distinguishes it from the weird by contrasting presence and absence. But Fisher goes on to talk about a short story by H.G. Lovecraft, whom I’ve written about before, is a master of the weird, and is likely familiar to many readers. Lovecraft (the first author Fisher analyzes). We have, in essence, been wrong in how we thought about the world, and it is this kind of wrongness that encapsulates the weird, as well as the fiction of H.P. Dark matter or dark energy are two other examples – just because they can be proved to exist doesn’t make it any easier to conceive that invisible forces are having an enormous impact on our visible universe.Īnd yet black holes and their effects do exist, and this means our common sense is what is wrong. Black holes, like aspects of general relativity or quantum mechanics, don’t make sense according to common sense. Its effects are, too, such as the way it distorts the passage of time. A black hole, on the other hand, is hard to even comprehend. A vampire might be scary, but it is both composed of familiar features of the world and people (just organized in a particularly threatening way) and, crucially, there is pre-existing lore that allows us to make sense of these creatures when we encounter them in books or movies. But he astutely points out that it is not the thing itself that is wrong, but rather our conception of the world.įisher explains by way of comparing a black hole to a vampire. For Fisher, the weird points towards, as I said at the outset, wrongness. The essays that comprise this book, each of which focuses on one or two works, are compelling on their own, but together provide readers with a much deeper understanding of two concepts that are too often confused with familiar elements found in science fiction, fantasy, or horror stories.īefore getting into a few of the essays, it’s worth noting that Fisher begins both sections (each of which includes writings on the weird and eerie, respectively) with brief definitions of what each concept means. Mark Fisher, in his extremely insightful and interesting book, The Weird and the Eerie, goes much further, using this sense of “wrongness” as a jumping off point to explore a wide range of novels, short stories, films, and albums.

But one thing any answer is likely to have in common is that both words point towards something being wrong.

These are words everyone thinks they know until they’re asked to explain them.

The weird and the eerie by mark fisher