WEIRD FICTION

Three Moments of an Explosion opens with a deadpan enumeration of all the ways in which corporate America has influenced the setting. A burger company (probably Burger King) sponsors a demolition. Apple has expanded its repertoire from technology to actual apples.  The narration flaunts terminology such as "squib" and "rotvertising," a portmanteau of rot and advertising. But hey, that's not important. In an equally perfunctory, matter-of-fact tone, the narrator describes a child from the Make-A-Wish foundation pressing the plunger for the demolition. This is weird fiction in a nutshell.

Weird fiction, as a genre, requires the storyteller to have a thorough understanding of the original genre so it can then be subverted. Weird fiction usually takes place in dystopian universes. These dystopias are usually taken to an absurd extent and received by the populace as completely ordinary; corporations exert an outlandish degree of control over society as a whole.

Weird fiction inverts and experiments with the expectations of the genre, usually by presenting an inherently outlandish concept and expecting the audience to accept it through suspension of disbelief. Expect a lot of concepts which aren't often seen in fiction.

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