Flickers in a darkened movie house. Half-remembered midnight television. Light and shadow on a screen, whether big or small. A “lost” space odyssey, pretend interplanetary nightmares, a mysterious late-nite horror show hostess who may never have existed. Boojums and Alison Maehl (or Alice Mal). Insanity and rumor. Murder and fandom and Hollywood rabbit holes. In this taut, enigmatic novella, Caitlín R. Kiernan invites the reader to chase the mystery of things that may never have existed or may only have been misplaced—perhaps on purpose and perhaps for the best. Zoetrope Bizarre unfolds like frames of film discarded on a cutting room floor, Kiernan's most ambitious tale of weird cinema since the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Prayer of Ninety Cats.”