Weird Stories to Tickle Your Imagination | The Astral Wanderer
You’ve come here for something straight up bizarre. You seek the weirdest of weird stories to tickle your imagination, to rouse your senses, and to take you to the furthest reaches of existence beyond the fringes of the universe. You crave the bizarre, the awesome, the epic, the profoundest depths of impossibility.
Search no further. You’ll find what you seek (as well as many things you’d never think to search for) at The Astral Wanderer.
Many of the pieces you’ll find here are fairly short, perfect for a quick shot of oddity to brighten your day. A few others are a bit longer, allowing for long, deep enjoyment (or prolonged suffering, depending on your perspective).
Why Read Weird Stories?
But why read this stuff at all? The primary reason is because strange, outlandish stories are part of who we are.
As human beings, we’re constantly reaching. We reach for new knowledge, we reach past the outer limits of our abilities, we reach for the heavens themselves. It only follows that some of us constantly push the bounds of reason and possibility to try to make the impossible real.
The wheel. Cars. Airplanes. Computers that fit on your wrist. Ultimately, these things all represent what happens when humankind pushes the bounds of reality.
Creative, absurd, and frankly weird stories are no different. Here, you’ll see what happens when people take ideas and push them beyond the limits of reason. Because of this, it represents yet another way in which human beings strive to be more than they presently are. As you read fiction (and very strange fiction, at that), you set yourself out in a realm of boundless wonder where nothing is truly impossible.
No, But Really, Like, Why Bother?
Why so many commas? Inserting that many commas into a question only shows how integral to human nature it is to push—oh, never mind.
Remember Doctor Seuss? Remember his stuff? You remember how weird and out there it was, right? And how he’s heralded as being completely brilliant and awesome because of it? We quote him fairly regularly in our society, but to read some of his stuff, you’d think he was completely bonkers.
Anyway, he said something pretty profound once. Quoth the Seuss:
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”
Without the weird and fantastical, the mind atrophies. You’re not as awake. In addition, it helps you cope with the difficulties of life.
As a result, it keeps you from going completely bonkers. As Vicente Huidobro said in his very bizarre book-length poem Altazor:
Si yo no hiciera al menos una locura por año, me volvería loco.
Or, roughly translated:
If I didn’t do one act of insanity per year, I’d go insane.
A dead Chilean author said it. Therefore, it must be true (insert mocking laughter and rotten tomatoes here).
But in all seriousness, consider the catharsis people find when they do something outright absurd, like skydiving, or telling goofy jokes, or taming lions, or throwing rotten fruit at terrible comedians. These things have no visible practical purpose, but they relieve that little part in all of us that craves something crazy.
This is that something crazy. Read it, indulge a bit of madness, and avoid going completely insane in the constant rush of quotidian demands.
The Role of The Astral Wanderer
This page started as a fun project of sorts. It still is, really—it’s cathartic for the author to publish whatever his fevered mind decides to conjure up. Sometimes, the results are cool. Other times, they’re strange. And still others, they’re outright horrifying. In all cases, the works published here express something of the soul.
The role of The Astral Wanderer has evolved a bit since its conception. What started as senseless fun with no direction is now a living entity driven by a life’s purpose. That purpose is twofold:
- First, to fill the world with shamelessly weird stories and other works for the fulfillment of all.
- Second, to provide a voice of reason from like a bajillion miles up.
The political shouting matches, socioeconomic entanglements, and personal challenges we all deal with look a lot different from an interstellar lens. Sometimes, it helps to take that kind of perspective on difficult issues. If nothing else, it helps us comprehend just how full and vast this universe is and just how pointless our egos are.
Frankly, the world could do with more of that kind of thinking.
To contact The Astral Wanderer with comments or questions, click here. To get started filling your mind with weird stories and other nonsense, either click here or select “Writings” in the menu.