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Books with WTF premises
Books that make you want to side eye the author, because why....would you come up with that?
For example, Frank Herbert, you know, the guy that came up with a beloved series that examines philosophy, religion, human nature, and the dangers of power, also wrote The Whipping Star - a book about a noirish, twice-divorced space detective who has to free a star from being contractually obligated to be whipped to death by a notorious, billionare dominatrix.
I'm looking for books where the premise is played straight, like the author doesn't know what a little weirdo they're being.
Certainly the most WTF-inducing book I've ever read was "Kafka by the Shore," by Haruki Murakami. There are talking cats, a cat murderer who's collecting the "souls" of cats to create a flute or something, supernatural events, oedipal elements, situations where it's not clear if a character is dreaming or awake...
I don't even remember how I came across "Kafka," but by the end I was certainly asking myself, "What in the hell did I just read?" That said, I'm interested in reading one of his more popular works, "Norwegian Wood." I think it's supposed to be a more "normal" story.
Somewhat coincidentally, "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka is probably my second choice.
1Q84 by Murakami is imo that same level of "wtf" though I just consider both just modern day fantasy. Be warned though, there's one very unnecessary sex scene that border's very fine line of being okay at all. It's not quite King's kid rape scene or whatever the fuck it was. "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" and "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" are probably my favorites of his and they are relatively "normal" stories.
You know a dude is writing some batshit crazy stories when "I hadn't actually slept with the woman, only cum in my pants" Wind-up Bird Chronicle is one of his normal books.
Heh, yeah maybe that should go in the weird category.
I love Murikami, but every one of his books is pretty much: lonely author swept up into absurd, suspenseful events where mysterious women crave his body and jazz/cats/whiskey provide a back drop. Throw in a goat or sheep in as well for good measure.
But again, I love his books. They are my favorite pallet cleanser when I can't find a good book to sink into.
I started with Norwegian Wood and loved it, and you're right, it is the most "normal". 1Q84 is nuts and fun. As is Wind Up Bird Chronicles. Honestly if you asked me to tell you the differences between "Kafka by the Shore", "Wild Sheep Chase", "Dance, Dance, Dance" and "South of the Boarder, West of the Sun" I'd have a pretty hard time of it.
Recently I really enjoyed "Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World". It's super weird, etherial, and absurd but also entirely enjoyable.
EDIT: There are also some great playlists online of the music from his books.
His "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" also becomes very WTF-y at the end, but I don't think Murakami is really "playing straight" by OP's definition. His weirdness is intentional.
Oh man, I loved Kafka. Read it in Japanese with an online book club. Maybe missed some things, but it was cool experiencing it in it’s original language.
Inspired by that, I tried to read NW, but found it incredibly boring; some really weird sex things. Also just completed Tazaki, which was more interesting, albeit that didn’t have much supernatural things, either. I guess I like his “wtf” stuff more!
Norwegian Wood is my favourite book. The way the book transports you to a certain place and time is unparalleled imo.
I hope you like it!
The show Dexter got pretty popular. Not as many people read the books. You can tell by how little discussion there is about how fucking insane they are.
The first book is pretty close to the show. Dexter is dating a woman, getting closer to her two kids, working with the police, and... Y'know, murdering serial killers as a hobby.
It's a pretty straightforward crime novel. Dexter talks about his Dark Passenger, which is a metaphor for his urge to kill, personified as a literary device to show his struggle with it.
In the show, Dexter keeps on serial killin' and coppin' his way through life. It follows the natural progression from season 1, with a different Big Bad serial killer each season. It gets pretty wild. Then they keep it going way longer than they should have and it starts to suck pretty bad.
But the books lose the plot pretty much immediately.
spoilers
In book two, we find out that Dexter's Dark Passenger is an immortal psychic alien parasite. It gets scared away by another parasite, after which Dexter loses not only the urge but the ability to kill. He reclaims his parasite, and then his step kids catch a parasite of their own so he has to be their serial murder tutor.
It's... A lot.
It feels dirty. These are real problems that actual human beings deal with, and it feels somehow wrong to try to turn them into entertainment this way. It's also such a dramatic change from the set up of the first book. It's jarring.
I never made it much farther into the books. Maybe they're good? I'm alright never really knowing haha.
I was able to suspend my disbelief because I believe that evil people are common enough even if they don't kill people. I could only stand a few seasons though.
I loved the book City & the City by China Mieville but any time I explain the premise, the response is "but it's unbeleivable." But today I feel we often have the truth right in front of us, but refuse to accept it.
I also read this book, and I think the author delivered the premise of the two cities pretty well. It didn't feel super weird since it's all in text and the narration and dialogue explains what's going on pretty thoroughly. It gets a bit mind-bendy later on, but not any more than your average sci-fi or psych thriller.
What I'm interested in is seeing how they pulled it off in the TV show... I've been meaning to watch it for a while but haven't gotten around to it.
I was fascinated by the interplay of geography, psychology, and authoritarianism Miéville came up with to make that setting work. My main reaction was, "Yeah, okay, I can see how that might be accomplished, but why!?" I get the history he described as its source, but as an American I don't think I really grokked the socio-political forces he was invoking (which I eventually just assumed was a characteristic of certain European cultures that he was familiar with but I didn't understand).
I watched that mini-series fairly shortly after reading the novel. They did a surprisingly decent job, considering what an unusual and complicated concept it had to portray.
Without having read the book, since the author is British, it sounds like a commentary on English social stratification "The City" i.e. The City of London (not to be confused with the larger London City).
That's a good insight, I hadn't thought of that. I did see a reference shortly after reading it (it might have been in an interview w/ Miéville, I don't remember now) to Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog, a Dutch city w/ a "complicated border" b/t the Netherlands and Belgium.
Oh wow a part of my comment is missing, presumably accidentally deleted during corrections.
I wanted to say that The City (of London) stands as a representation of this stratification since it's an expensive business hub, global financial center, sort-of-independent and a thing in itself within London (it contributes 2.5% to the GDP of the entire UK).
But then again like I said I haven't read the book it just struck me as very fitting.
Oh I didn't know there was a movie, and I see it was from the BBC, I'll have to check it out!
The first book that comes to mind for me, aside from books already mentioned, is One-Hundred Years of Solitude.
I don't even know how to summarize it without just re-typing out the while thing. Time is a circle. History is subjective.
I wrote this same thing about another book that reminded me of Solitude, and thus it obviously applies to Solitude itself:
Obviously, I really enjoy that aspect of the book. Along with pretty much everything else. Even translated from Spanish to English, the prose is gorgeous. I don't read Spanish well enough to pick up on any wordplay, or the finer intricacies, but it seems to be just as (likely more) gorgeous in Spanish.
But the entire plot is just fuckin nuts. And on top of that, very quickly, you do buckle up and enjoy the ride. You go along with it. And all that craziness starts to make sense in it's own way and now you're batshit crazy too. I absolutely love it.
Reading this I've realised that the book must have really done a number on me because none of it seems crazy to me now. Yellow butterflies.
I bet most folks would know Chuck Palahniuk from Fight Club, but he has written much more and it's all weird/nihilistic/wtf. A few selected things:
I know you selected a random collection. I still have to put forth Lullaby as my first choice - a real-estate agent making money flipping haunted houses, an arc of redemption for someone who lost a child to SIDS and keeping a close group nearby as family-replacement, and I can't talk about the main part of the story without spoiling things.
"A story about a guy who has extra sensitive smell/taste, then things happen, and he ends up getting bit by a bunch of animals for fun. Being bit by a black widow spider gives him an erection, and he spreads rabies across the country."
I'm sorry, what??
That sounds incredible.
I'm not really into Palahniuk, but I did read and love Rant. It's so weird it's pretty hard to explain. The main guy habituates his body to like snake venom and rabies, can inexplicably produce piles of very old and valuable coins, and I think there's some time-travel incest? And like a city with two parallel populations, like night people and day people? It's a trip.
Perdido Street Station is, by far, the most WTF opening chapter I’ve ever read. Good book though.
Great choice! Definitely had a span where choice-theft was in my vocabulary, like accusing a housemate (who'd also read the book) of 5th degree choice-theft for not getting input on the toppings for a pizza. They did not appreciate that they were a node in a matrix.
I'd seen a few spoilers so had a vague idea of what to expect but even so, my jaw kept literally dropping while reading it. A great book and very WTF indeed.
I am 99% I read that book, but I can't remember it being outrageously weird (for a fantasy book), although it has been a while. Any chance someone can refresh my memory?
Most of Miéville's works would probably qualify, to be honest; The City & the City (which was inexplicably adapted into a pretty decent BBC miniseries) and The Last Days of New Paris are two that spring to mind (I also tried reading Railsea, a unique retelling of Moby Dick, but I couldn't get past the central conceit and eventually put it down). The only quibble is I don't think Miéville is an unknowing weirdo -- I see his fiction as inventive but deliberate thought-experiments set out in novel form.
That looks like an interesting book. I am a pretty lazy reader though, is it easy to read?
Not a book, but this sci fi short story by Cordwainer Smith (real name Paul Linebarger) is about human astronauts telepathically linking with cats to fight mysterious psychic monsters that threaten interstellar travelers in deep space.
The Game of Rat and Dragon
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/29614
I highly recommend his work in general, it's just so fascinating and slightly bizarre, and so beautifully written. Much of it is in the public domain and available on Gutenberg.
P.S. The author's life story itself would make a cool premise for a book or film! His godfather was Sun Yat-sen. He advised Chiang Kai-shek and John F. Kennedy. He instructed the CIA on psychological warfare. And he wrote science fiction under a pen name because he didn't want people in his industry to know about his creative writing :))
I recently was recommended Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith and bought it, but have not gotten around to it yet. What should I read after that?
Pretty much everything! Which isn't a lot, sadly, as the author passed away when he was only in his 50s :(
So aside from Norstrilia, we only have this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rediscovery_of_Man
"Other than Smith's novel, Norstrilia, which takes place in the same future history, the book collects all of Smith's known science fiction writing."
As I previously answered in a similar thread...
The Man Who Folded Himself (David Gerrold, 1973) is a mind-bending science fiction novel that explores time travel, personal identity, and the consequences of...
spoilers
... essentially, fucking and falling in love with multiple versions of yourself at different points of a single timeline -- no multiverse shenanigans.
It's a 70s book and it shows, sci-fi free love taken to the extreme. Probably my favorite time travel tale of all time.
Permutation City (Greg Egan, 1994) is a hard science fiction novel about digital immortality, consciousness, identity, and the nature of reality. Some cool, trippy computer science and theoretical physics speculation. What I love the most about Egan's writing is that he makes no excuses about being a science nerd, and he's very good at taking a core concept to mind-boggling yet logical extremes. Ultimately, Egan explores transhumanist themes, questioning what really makes us humans and how far can we take our modes of existence without completely thwarting our very selves.
Egan's Orthogonal trilogy is absolutely nutso, too. Really good, but crazy.
I love Egan, but Orthogonal seems highly mathematical. Do you think a humanities dude such as myself would get anything from that series?
I have a PhD in engineering. The physics is difficult for me, and I'm the kind of engineer that has to know something about this type of stuff.
It's a fun story but totally bizarre. You could still read and enjoy it, but you'll be missing out on some things.
Yeah... that is usually the case with Egan. But Orthogonal, due to its premise, seems even less accessible than normal.
Thanks ;)
I thought the summary of The Man Who Folded Himself sounded really familiar, but it turns out I was thinking of the movie Predestination, which itself is based on a short story from the 50s called All You Zombies.
Also, I love Egan and Diaspora is one of my favourite books. It's not an easy read but I recommend checking out the first chapter Orphanogenesis on his site, which describes the birth of a virtual consciousness.
It brought All You Zombies to my mind as well! I’ve read that one and enjoyed it/have thought about it a lot since, but haven’t read The Man Who Folded Himself. The premise is definitely a fascinating one and I’m glad it hasn’t only been done once.
How does it compare to all you zombies?
All You Zombies is short form philosophy. The Man Who Folded Himself is long form psychology.
Relative to its length, All You Zombies is more complex time-paradox-wise, so it works more on an intellectual level. It is more of a puzzle, and also much shorter, drier, and cryptic. The Man Who Folded Himself is not as difficult to understand in terms of time mechanics, but it goes much further into the rabbit hole of the premise, with a more comprehensive commentary on love, romance, identity, and sexuality -- emphasis on the latter. Think 1970s free love and sexual revolution.
The Man Who Folded Himself is superior anyway, which is not a fair comparison because it is a novel. It goes beyond the time travel gimmick with a compelling character study. The "self-love" part, so to speak, is definitely similar, but, while in Zombies! you're kinda piecing the story together, in Folded... it gets a lot more development, with a tenderness and romance you won't find in Zombies!.
It could work even without the science fiction element if you replaced the main character's "versions" with a slew of other lovers.
But, of course, it wouldn't be nearly as powerful and cool.
A classic of Russian literature and one of my favorite books ever — “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov. Partly set in 1930 Moscow, where the Devil and his entourage (featuring a black, vodka-drinking, chess-playing, talking black cat) disrupt society, and partly in ancient Jerusalem, portraying Pontius Pilate and the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s the quintessential WTF book, and a timeless literary masterpiece.
This one is more what than what-the-fuck, but I did reread the book description when I first came across it.
City of Thieves by David Benioff is set during the Nazis' siege of Leningrad where two prisoners are given a chance to save their lives by the general if they can manage to go across enemy lines and fulfill one objective - get a dozen eggs for the general's daughter's wedding cake. It was such a good book, it was one of my favorite reads last year.
I read it over a decade ago and I still remember it fondly to this day. The chess scene towards the end still lingers in my mind.
That was a nice scene. It's really a book I could recommend to anyone because it's just such a well-told story that leaves an impact.
Most WTF book I can recall reading was John Dies at the End. The movie version only barely scratches the surface of that WTF story. It has, IMHO, one of the most grabbing and laugh-out-loud gruesome opening segments of any book I've read in recent memory.
It's really hard to describe the book's premise, as it's just bizarre. Two guys, two gals, and some weird dimensional drug that crosses multiple interpretations of sanity when explaining its events. Totally hilarious, too.
It’s astounding to me that I didn’t think of this before my suggestion in this thread; John Dies at the End is an excellent book. I don’t know what prompted me to read it, because I would never believe cosmic horror comedy could work if I hadn’t.
So this is story from childhood. I was maybe 11. I was a huge fan of Roald Dahl's children's books. I was reading well ahead of normal grade level, so I found some Roald Dahl in the adult section of the library. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and other short stories. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6671.The_Wonderful_Story_of_Henry_Sugar_and_Six_More?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=AIwjRbBmMo&rank=4
And yeah, that was a lot wierder than young me was expecting from one of my favorite authors.
I had a different kind of wtf moment picking up the Godfather at 12. Great story except for the description of Sonny having sex with the bridesmaid took some wierd turns.
Also this short story by Joyce Carol Oates. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/08/-bd-11-1-86/304109/ I have seen a lot of people online mention things that they can never unsee. This one is one that I will never be able to unread. It hurt my heart.
I'm incredibly curious, but I remember how reading The Lottery made me feel (because it still makes me feel that way) and it's been years. I think I'll pass on this one.
Yeah, no kidding. Which takes place at the very beginning of the book, iirc? Puzo introduced me to things like "weakening of the pelvic floor"...
The Oates story reminds me fleetingly of Spares by Michael Marshall Smith, although only in concept, not in style or tone.
Or Never Let Me Go.
The Yellow Wallpaper — Classic feminist short story about a woman going insane because wallpaper.
Wall of Kiss — Love story between a woman and a wall. This is the bizarro genre, so the author has some awareness, but it is all played pretty straight.
When I read the title I immediately thought of the Locked Tomb series, which is basically about lesbian necromancers in space. After reading some of the comments though, I'm sure that would pass as pretty vanilla.
I think the big picture of TLT has some WTFuckery going on, but each book in it starts relatively simple-seeming.
But the big picture? (SPOILERS FOR ENTIRE SERIES)
One guy spontaneously develops necromancy, nukes the entire earth, eats the 11 billion souls of humanity, chases some people he is angry at for not taking his advice, treats the soul of the Earth itself as a pet dog, and embarks upon a 10,000 year campaign to find, chase and punish the descendants of those people while the other planetary souls chase him.But at least queer, non-binary, and transgender are 100% ordinary in his colonialist empire, so there's that.
It's a little weird.
I don't know, man... Call me old-fashioned, but I can do necromancers or I can do space; but necromancers in space sure did raise my eyebrows in the first book. I remember re-reading bits of the first chapter, trying to understand if it was fantasy or sci-fi... turns out the answer was yes.
For all its originality, it was unavoidable to fall in love with the series, though. God, Harrow is such a cool character, can't wait to see more of her.
Rapture of The Nerds by Cory Doctorow is a spectacularly weird work of science fiction. I highly recommend it.
Some themes explored: gender and identity, the nature of consciousness, genetic engineering, alien intelligences.
Yumi Nikki: I Am Not in Your Dream is a novelization of the surreal dream exploration indie game Yume Nikki, and its no less weird than source material. For example there is a scene in which someone examines a crushed corpse in the road and becomes a walking traffic light.
House of Leaves is a horror novel with two connected story lines. One about a man who finds the manuscript of his deceased neighbor, and the other about a house that breaks the laws of physics.
It's an interesting read.
Don't you mean House of Leaves?
Hmm House is showing as purple for me, not blue. Oh well.
David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System is pretty great.
I'm sure there's a lot I've forgotten in the decade since I've read it, like:
Flatland is a classic, where the characters are two-dimensional shapes:
Lots of absurdist works like The Third Policeman. Bicycles can't be trusted, since we all known due to atomic theory they will slowly swap parts with their rider until they're more man than bicycle.
I think I understand your call, and I wish I had a better recommendation, but in the meantime I'd offer up the Illuminatus! trilogy as possibly fitting your mold. It's a weird-as-fuck sci-fi adventure that involve a submarine-owning libertarian, conspiracy theories galore, and more -- and looking up the authors I'm not totally sure how facetious they actually were being.
A favorite recommendation that fits - Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. It's the story of an American journalist interviewing and investigating Fevvers, a brash Cockney burlesque performer who claims to have hatched from an egg and has the wings to (maybe) prove it. The language is lush and visceral and we go on a crazy journey from Victorian brothels to Siberian shaman-led psychedelic reindeer urine trips and many more bizarre situations in between.
Soul by Andrei Platonov. Really different from the other books that is talked about on this thread. Mostly because it is a pure fiction book and not a sci-fi one. It takes place during the early Soviet period and it is about a group of outcasts that the main character is sent to help somewhere in the Turken Republic. And allegedly Stalin had wrote in the margins of this novella that it was "shit." And it was also censored heavily to the point where the modern version will tell you where the official Soviet version ended.
Another one would be the Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chinghiz Aitmatov. It would be a fiction novel like Soul was, but it does have a sci-fi subplot that had left me with wtf, I really can not explain the subplot without going too much detail. But the main plot of the book is about the main character traveling to his people's traditional graveyard to bury his friend in what is now Kyrgyzstan. And throughout the book he is going through all of his memories that he had with his friend and remembering other people that he had met during that time. It also talks about the destalinization that had occurred after Stalin's death.
These two are one of my favorites that I had the privilege to read. But I really liked Aitmatov's novel more.
Edit: reading through the thread, apparently I have some very vanilla taste in books. Although the book The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov seems promising and a fun read that @mrzool has pointed out.
I suppose “Dead Astronauts” by Jeff VanderMeer qualifies. Although I’d be hard pressed to say what it is actually about. It’s kinda like a series of acid trips disguised as a sort-of-prequel to a book about a giant flying bear and a murderous plant.
I’ve been reading House of Leaves lately and it’s… something else. I’m really enjoying it, it’s not really a horror book, but there’s an unsettling feeling to it that’s incredibly hard to explain.
It’s a daunting read, being a (physically) large book with 700+ pages filled with strange formatting and other oddities.
I read a lot of JG Ballard when I was young. I don't know where to even start. I don't think he knew or cared how weird it all was.
Don't Breathe A Word by Jennifer McMahon. The cover and the description on the back made me think it was going to be a fantasy story about fairies. It was a story about
Spoilers, and trigger warning for SA
an entire town (somehow) covering up the kidnapping of a girl who is given to her mentally ill cousin (along with a second girl) for... breeding purposes. Yes. Underage incestual rape.FANTASYYYYY!
Anyway, also, the family murders the girl babies and buries them. Why? I can't remember. I just remember how much I haaaated the damn book.
I hated it even more at the end when the author tried to pull "Yeah okay but ALSO maybe there ARE fairies???"
Why has no one mentioned Phil Dick yet? Like half his stuff…
Basically anything mentioned in Ergodic Literature: The Weirdest Book Genre
Harlan Ellison is always a good time with this, especially the book A Boy and His Dog.
Vic, a boy with no moral compass, survives an apocalyptic wasteland with his psychic dog named Blood. The dog is the more humanistic of the two, while Vic is just one that succumbs to his animalistic urges. During their adventures;
Spoilers
*Blood helps Vic locate women (for him to rape) in return for food,
*by the way, Blood succeeds in this task,
*after Vic rapes a women he is led to an underground society that determines that because Vic isn't infertile he should impregnate their entire female population,
*the same girl that Vic raped decides she wants to escape this society with him,
*Vic then kills and eats the girl he raped after she tried to tell him to abandon Blood,
*...but hey at least the dog doesn't die at the end of this story!
I have not read it, but yesterday I learned that Roald Dahl of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory fame wrote a book of short stories called Switch Bitch, all with themes of rape by deception. Here's the synopsis of one: