The New Weird (45 page)

The New Weird Discussions: The Creation of a Term

IN APRIL 2003, M. John Harrison asked a question on his Third Alternative Message Board that eventually led to the creation, promulgation, mutation and distortion of the term "New Weird." This was an offshoot, as far as we can tell, of a conversation that originated on Steph Swainston's message board, but only reached critical mass with Harrison's question.

We've reproduced the first part of that public discussion below, filling in full names where we know them. We have preserved many idiosyncrasies of punctuation and phrasing that are in keeping with online communication.

The entire discussion took place over several months and many thousands of words. Several other individuals, including Jeffrey Ford, Michael Cisco, Kathryn Cramer, one of the editors of this very anthology (Jeff VanderMeer), and, perhaps most notably, China Miéville, eventually entered into the fray. An archive of the entirety of this very public investigation of New Weird exists on Kathryn Cramer's website at:
www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2007/07/the-new-weird-a.html
.
― THE EDITORS

M. John Harrison
(Tuesday, April 29, 2003 ― 10:39 am): The New Weird. Who does it? What is it? Is it even anything? Is it even New? Is it, as some think, not only a better slogan than The Next Wave, but also incalculably more fun to do? Should we just call it Pick'n'Mix instead? As ever,
your
views are the views we want to hear ―

Zali Krishna:
Is it a bit like science fantasy but with more than a passing nod towards horror? Presumably the "Weird" refers back to
Weird Tales
― a pre-generic pulp era where SF, fantasy and horror were less well defined. I'm guessing here, based upon the Miéville attribution. Personally I think "Weird Shit" would be a better label ― I'd like to see bookshops with a Weird Shit section.

Jonathan Oliver:
Who coined the phrase The New Weird? I haven't seen it in use before?

Al Robertson:
Would definitely rush to Weird Shit shelves, think they should be balanced with Heavy Shit also. Dictionary Weird ― "Strange or bizarre.supernatural, uncanny" Uncanny's nice ― makes me think of unheimlich, which I suppose is a v. good definition of it ― uncomforting fiction.

Krishna:
I'm not sure I'd go near uncanny shelves. I've seen what sort of injuries falling books can cause. "Excuse me miss, can I see the Heavy Shit librarian?"

Harrison:
Nuevo Weird? [Zali], the Heavy Shit librarian, sums things up as ever. It makes that exact allusion to
Weird Tales
and especially the fact that, back then, in that marvellous & uncorrupted time of the world, everything could still be all mixed up together ― horror, sf, fantasy ― and no one told you off or said your career was over with their firm if you kept doing that. I heard it in conversation with China Miéville his self, and cheekily reapplied it in a preface to "The Tain" (mainly so I could use the title "China Miéville & the New Weird", which I thought was second in impact only to "Uncle Zip and the New Nuevo Tango"). He writes it. But who else? And what are its exact parameters? Indeed, do we
want
it to have exact parameters? Do we even want it? Is it, as Steph says, instantly rendered Old by being spoken of as New?

Stephanie Swainston:
The New Weird is a wonderful development in literary fantasy fiction. I would have called it Bright Fantasy, because it is vivid and because it is clever. The New Weird is a kickback against jaded heroic fantasy which has been the only staple for far too long. Instead of stemming from Tolkien, it is influenced by
Gormenghast
and
Viriconium.
It is incredibly eclectic, and takes ideas from any source. It borrows from American Indian and Far Eastern mythology rather than European or Norse traditions, but the main influence is modern culture ― street culture ― mixing with ancient mythologies. The text isn't experimental, but the creatures are. It is amazingly empathic. What is it like to be a clone? Or to walk on your hundred quirky legs? The New Weird attempts to explain. It acknowledges other literary traditions, for example Angela Carter's mainstream fiction, or classics like Melville. Films are a source of inspiration because action is vital. The elves were first up against the wall when the revolution came, and instead we want the vastness of the science fiction film universe on the page.

There is a lot of genre-mixing going on, thank god. (Jon Courtnay Grimwood mixes futuristic sf and crime novels). The New Weird grabs everything, and so genre-mixing is part of it, but not the leading role. The New Weird is secular, and very politically informed. Questions of morality are posed. Even the politics, though, is secondary to this subgenre's most important theme: detail.

The details are jewel-bright, hallucinatory, carefully described. Today's Tolkienesque fantasy is lazy and broad-brush. Today's Michael Marshall thrillers rely lazily on brand names. The New Weird attempts to place the reader in a world they do not expect, a world that surprises them ― the reader stares around and sees a vivid world through the detail. These details ― clothing, behaviour, scales and teeth ― are what makes New Weird worlds so much like ours, as recognisable and as well-described. It is visual, and every scene is packed with baroque detail. Nouveau-goths use neon and tinsel as well as black clothes. The New Weird is more multi-spectral than gothic.

But one garuda does not make a revolution. There are not many New Weird writers because it is so difficult to do. Where is the rest? Jeff Noon? Samuel R. Delany? Do we have to wait for parodies of Bas-Lag? [M. John Harrison,] how many revolutions have you been part of?? The New Weird is energetic. Vivacity, vitality, detail; that's what it's about. Trappings of Space Opera or Fantasy may be irrelevant when the Light is turned on.

Des Lewis:
Vivid and clever, yes, and uncluttered. The text itself need not be untextured, though. Densely textured (or neo-Proustian)
and
limpid would apply to the New Weird at different times. but always uncluttered by anything else or anything unconnected with the text.

Swainston:
Des: I agree. So the text is not "baroque"; style must be elegant even though it can be dense. On a practical level, the speed of reading is very important for action scenes! The surreal aspect is my favourite (I like colourful) but even in this the New Weird is not New ― Moorcock's "End of Time" books. The subgenre is a combination of all these traits. But let's not make it too proscriptive.

John Powell:
"in that marvellous & uncorrupted time of the world, everything could still be all mixed up together ― horror, sf, fantasy ― and no one told you off or said your career was over with their firm if you kept doing that." You could also include "realistic" fiction, thriller and symbolist fiction in that definition. The book I am reading, half way through it,
Rain,
by Karen Duve, uses alot of those categories. It's very sly about it, and very, very funny. It seems realist, straight sober, well-mannered fiction but it subverts the entire ball game. So far anyway. She is very talented.

Jonathan Strahan:
Or is it the sound of one hand re-inventing itself? I can't believe anyone is proposing another possible movement title. I mean aren't you a New Wave Fabulist or something? Seriously. I think it's a load of old cobblers. Much like the new space opera (a term invented by a bunch of critics to cover the fact that they got distracted by cyberpunk and didn't notice that no one had stopped writing the other stuff), the new weird/new wave fabulist/slipstream whatever seems to be a pretty happy and healthy outgrowth of some things that came before which would probably be much better off if left unlabelled and left to grow in the dark where they belong. I certainly can't believe that you (MJH), China, VanderMeer, or anyone else would be better off if you were packaged up with some handy-dandy label.

Powell:
I understand this idea differently. So called mainstream Anglo-American fiction tends to be very literal minded. A chair is a chair, a bus is a bus kind of thing. You can't have the vertical stripes of a John Lewis logo morphing into a vision of distant hills. It just wouldn't do. Thus you have mainstream on the one hand and science fiction on the other. Only in science fiction does the logo morph,
etc.
This bifurcation is less pronounced in European literature. The metaphysical
is
in the mainstream.

Robertson:
Have been pondering all this myself recently ― and ranting to people about it as non-realist fiction, ie fiction that's aware that it's not real (it's just ink on paper, at the end of the day) and does interesting things with this, at whatever level.

I don't see the point in trying to make a literal representation of a reality (itself a doomed enterprise) to talk about that reality, when you can have a dragon stick its head through the window, or the ghost of a spaceman wander past. For me, abandoning strict definitions of the real (tho' I think you still need emotional / thematic / internal coherence etc) leads to more interesting narratives, richer imagery, and a wider field of view in general.

I do hesitate slightly to put a name on things ― tho' it's good to have an inclusive banner to march under, it's also problematic if that becomes an exclusive banner to judge with. My attitude ― if it works, use it, if it doesn't, find out why, and use that knowledge. Having said that, there's definitely something developing out there.

Swainston:
Jonathan: yes, agree that these authors would be better off without labels at all. Each is so individual anyway: China is writing his own style,
etc.
But they're too smart to feel limited by the fact some reviewer has bounded them together.

That the authors have ten labels thrust upon the authors by readers/ reviewers/publishers probably makes them want to rationalise it into one label! It isn't the authors doing the labelling, or wishing to join anything. Perhaps the rest of us are just trying to make sense of it.

This is not the crest of a high and beautiful wave ― it's a subgenre with a lot of developing to do. Good writers are going to do what they do regardless of others' labelling and they'll outlive any fad (if this really exists, and if it is a fad).

Rick (last name unknown):
I have to confess that this thread represents the extent of my exposure to the New Weird. So far my initial reaction is similar to Jonathan S's. Apart from the new label (Oh good, another new label.), what is new? Judging by Steph's explanation above, Clive Barker and Christopher Fowler have been newly weird for years, and possibly Banks as well sometimes. You might even be able to get away with hiding some of Moorcock's antiheroic stuff in there too -although perhaps not stylistically. A list of influences and sources from which borrowing is identifiable does not bode well for an exciting new movement.

The healthiest stuff has always mixed and matched or mismatched without regard for labels. With determined
dis
regard for labels. A new movement. Apart from stuff like cyberpunk and space opera, which have the definition built into the label thus making it really easy for everyone, many of the movements that have gone before seemed to represent more of a shape-shifting, natural mutation: magic realism, Brit new wave, slipstream. All reactionary, but with blurred or easily disposable manifestos.

New labels and subgenres encourage people to try to write what fits fashion. Cyberpunk should have made that clear (shudders). Don't like labels. Don't like canons. Like beer.

Harrison:
Hi Jonathan. The old dog learns to amuse itself wherever it can, sometimes by learning new tricks, sometimes by the copious use of irony, sometimes both. I believe I'm an honorary New Wave Fabulist, yes, along with about twenty other puzzled people. Generous of Brad Morrow to bestow that laurel on me after I so repeatedly savaged his New Gothic in the
TLS
[
Times Literary Supplement]
in the 90s. As Steph remarked, "MJH, how many revolutions have you been part of?" Two or three, I suppose, and sometimes I was there and sometimes I wasn't. That history gives me satisfactions, along with a point of view on names and naming, that you can't have.

One thing is, I think it reductive to describe China or Justina or Al Reynolds (neither do I think you will be able to describe Steph herself), as a mere regrowth from some buried root. You may be able to describe many US Next Wavers as that, I'm sure. Were you intending to be reductive there, Jonathan, or was that just an accident of prose? Reductivism can be so close to belittling, can't it? Don't you find?

Another thing is, in misreading my opening post here (and ignoring the actual information contained in my second one) you underestimate not just the cheerful ironic glee of new-movement-naming; you underestimate the amount of agenda involved. If I don't throw my hat in the ring, write a preface, do a guest editorial here, write a review in the
Guardian
there, then I'm leaving it to Michael Moorcock or David Hartwell to describe what I (and the British authors I admire) write. Or, god forbid, I wake up one morning and find
you
describing me.

There's a war on here, Jonathan. It's the struggle to name. The struggle to name is the struggle to own. Surely you're not naive enough to think that your bracingly commonsensical, "I think it's a lot of old cobblers" view is anything more than a shot in it? One more question, and I think very pertinent to that last one ― Why do you want us to remain in the dark where we belong, Jonathan? What might your unconscious motive be for wanting that, do you think?

Rick:
Steph: "they're too smart to feel limited by the fact some reviewer has bounded them together". definitely. The danger is probably for new writers who have yet to build confidence, literary identity and voice.