On the Weird and the Eerie

This is classic, literary Fisher. The little book is an attempt to make sense of — and apply — two conceptual categories, the weird and the eerie, with a nod to a third that Freud, more than anyone, developed: the uncanny. For Fisher, the weird is defined by the sense that two things shouldn’t be together, while the eerie is defined by presence and absence — the sense that nothing is in a space where there should be something, or that there’s something where there should be nothing. It’s no surprise, given his track record, that most of his examples come from science fiction, horror, fantasy, and other speculative fiction, in literature, film, series, and music; it’s the natural development of his writing on hauntology (for which, see Ghosts of My Life). The second half, on the eerie, is significantly better than the first, on the weird. The weird could have been fleshed out much further — Lovecraft tried to define it in essays nearly a hundred years ago, and the VanderMeers took it on in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories — whereas the eerie seems far less explored. Reading Fisher on it, I couldn’t help thinking of the internet’s obsession with liminal spaces, and writing about the eerie strikes me as especially apt for Fisher, given his unceasing discussions of something that can’t be seen, touched, heard, tasted, or smelled: capitalism. There’s something profoundly eerie about capitalism’s presence, and about the remaining spectres of communist paths, too. It’s well worth reading, and it won’t take long, especially for anyone interested in the science fiction, horror, and fantasy circuit; Christopher Nolan, Stanley Kubrick, H. P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, Margaret Atwood, David Lynch, and more all feature.