weird fiction

English

Etymology

Popularized by H. P. Lovecraft.

Noun

weird fiction (uncountable)

1. A macabre subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th century, pre-dating the horror and fantasy genres.
   • 2020, Julius Greve, Florian Zappe, editors, The American Weird: Concept and Medium, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, pages 30–31:

     Weird fiction is, after all, notoriously typified by the presence of entities so radically different from normality that they are, to borrow a characteristic phrase from H. P. Lovecraft, “impossible to describe” (Lovecraft 2014: 404).

See also

• New Weird