"We live in Gothic times." — Angela Carter
The Gothic tale, disreputable as it is, can, more readily than the realist short story, provoke unease and jolt us from complacency.
Uncertainties is an anthology series—featuring authors from Britain, America, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines—each exploring the concept of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as “winter’s tales”. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .
Contents
"Foreword"
Timothy J. Jarvis
"I Seen Her"
Rebecca Lloyd
"The Birds of Nagasaki"
Lucie McKnight Hardy
"Myling Kommer"
Brian Evenson
"The Pit"
Kristine Ong Muslim
"We Pass Under"
Gary Budden
"Hand Out"
Anna Tambour
"I Serve the Lambdon Worm"
John Darnielle
"A Novel (or Poem) About Fan, Aged 11 Years" or "The Zoo"
Camilla Grudova
"At the Museum"
Marian Womack
"These Words, Rising from Stone"
Charles Wilkinson
"Some Girls Wander by Mistake"
Nadia Bulkin
"Reflection, Refraction, Dispersion"
Aliya Whiteley
"Primal"
D. P. Watt
"Feeding the Peat"
Claire Dean
"Biographical Notes"
"Acknowledgments"
Timothy J. Jarvis is a writer and scholar with an interest in the antic, the weird, the strange. His first novel, The Wanderer, was published by Perfect Edge Books in 2014. His short fiction has appeared in The Flower Book, The Shadow Booth Volume 1, The Scarlet Soul, Murder Ballads, and Uncertainties I, among other places. He also writes criticism and reviews, and is co-editor of Faunus, the journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen.
