Anti-Eureka

Weird Fiction, the Mythos, and Pseudoscience

Abstract

In the first decades of the 20th century, the modern literary mainstream began to move away from its vulgar forms of science fiction, horror, fantasy, or as it was then called in the Anglo-Saxon context, weird fiction. The supernaturalism of weird fiction seemed incompatible with the social realism of modern literature, which soon led to the separation of audiences, publishing and distribution channels. The aesthetically sensitive public, the respectable literary publishers, the literary establishment got separated from the pulp magazines and their audiences, from the under-the-counter distribution and the forums of sub-literature – so much so that it was only after more than half a century that the literary rehabilitation of weird fiction could begin. In what follows, I argue that the “scientific ideal” of weird fiction, its strategies of self-interpretation and self-preservation, in addition to serving its survival in the short term and hastening its convergence towards the mainstream and its subsequent recognition in the longer term, have sometimes greatly reinterpreted its original intentions.