The New Weird (46 page)

Mike: your last post is scary. You describe a literary/political struggle that cries out for canons. Another weapon of ownership surely.

For the record, I think China M is brilliant both as a writer, and in his willingness to stand up and be counted where his politics are concerned. Justina is brilliant too. Neither can be described as "mere regrowth from some buried root". You've said yourself that there is nothing but influence. The trouble with labels and movements is that they imply parameters. They encourage people to disassemble what is a fully syn-thesised whole in a quest for its building blocks, its influences. To de-embed (?). There is plenty that's new or fresh. or that
feels
new and fresh. What are we after? To define it so we can break it down into identifiable components? What then? Understand the bits in a stab at literary determinism. Study enough bits and all possible texts will emerge? Ownership.

Powell:
Structure is what I think we are after. (What I am, anyway.) Handke: "Work is almost all structure." You get the structure, you can do the essay. The story. Or whatever. It falls into place. You can complete. No structure, no completion. (e.g. hard to write an essay on what science fiction is without limiting terms to structure it. On the other hand, what does limit it? Nothing? On these grounds ― no essay.)

Justina Robson:
It's like Venn diagrams, isn't it? Everyone involved in artistic creation has a whole lot of things going on at once. Some are big footprints over predecessors and some come in from the quirky sidelines of whoever's life it is and taken all together you have a full picture of what someone's doing at a particular moment.

Trouble is, all of those Venn circles are politically charged and economically charged, like it or not. The assignment of value (quality) is something you have to do because you're human and everything has to be categorised somewhere on the scale of Important To Me/Not Important To Me. We all know, mostly to our cost, exactly what the Science Fiction/Fantastic stamp is worth in the contemporary economy of literature. It's so powerful a stamp that Margaret Atwood's publicist has gone to enormous lengths (and has been aided) to make sure it doesn't appear in any review of
Oryx and Crake
in mainstream press. (I say this because as far as I've been able to track it through a discussion on FEM-SF, [Margaret Atwood] herself has never derided SF.)

Saying these divisions are cobblers expresses justified exasperation but it's disingenuous. This is a war, the winners get all the loot and to name the Truth. I think [M. John Harrison] is right. It's also why his stand to claim the right to define, and China's stand, and my stand.is pissing in the wind unfortunately as none of us has Recognised Power of Naming.

I think that Literature is going to come to SF and try and take the entire thing over by main force in the next five years. Compare, for interest, two recent publications: Jeff Noon's
Falling Out of Cars
and Don DeLillo's
Cosmopolis.
(Personally I think the main difference will be that one is fun to read and the other isn't, but that's not what I'm getting at. I think these two books are about exactly the same thing.) I think this has to happen, because the world has turned into a SF world. This won't prevent SF itself remaining marginalised and associated with Trek and Buffy conventions, sigh, and the reason is that if you could read a new book by an unknown author from a devalued genre then you will never set it up alongside a book from a well-known author from an overvalued genre (see peer pressure, psychological weakness of human species, consensus etc.).

Henry:
It seems to me that to describe the New Weird as a movement or a school is to fall into a trap; one immediately starts trying to categorize, to reduce, to say that writers of the New Weird are x, y and z, and that x, y and z are what is important about them. It's only one short step from there to self-published manifestoes, official goals, and Five Year Programmes. I reckon that it's more useful to think of the New Weird as an argument. An argument between a bunch of writers who read each other, who sometimes influence each other, sometimes struggle against that influence. Who don't ever agree on what the New Weird is, on where it starts and stops, but are prepared to harangue each other about it. Describing the New Weird in these terms involves its own kind of codswallop, but at least it's a less constricting kind of codswallop. But I'm an academic rather than a writer; I
look
and
read
but I don't
do
so I'm writing this from the outside.

Cheryl Morgan:
Labels are marketing gimmicks. I've been asked to be on a panel about the New Weird (although it isn't called that) at Wiscon.

The main reason the panel exists is that China is one of the [Guests of Honor] and lots of eager Americans want to know where they can find "more like this". So, yes, Jonathan, it may be a load of old cobblers from a literary theory point of view, but it is also an opportunity to sell more books, and perhaps even secure a US publishing contract or two. So who wants me to claim them for the New Weird?

Rick:
I could live with that as an alternative interpretation, but then it becomes an in-crowd in-joke. MJP: I think there's scope for debate about carts and horses here. Structure is often something that is only seen in retrospect. Depending on the method favoured by the writer, it is not unusual for structure to be the last thing on an author's mind. In these cases it emerges from the struggle and the resolution. Completion occurs and then, later, the structure is perceived.

Robertson:
Hmm ― labels certainly marketing gimmicks, and with my marketing hat on New Weird vs. useful label, clearly defined area of fiction appealing to clearly defined target marketplace
etc.

But I don't like talking about fiction like this, hold onto notion that you write what you need to write and that the great struggle as a writer is not to write like a part of a school but to write like yourself. Other considerations certainly present, but secondary.

If people can be recognisably grouped, it's I hope because they share concerns / strategies / effects / etc, because they share these they create fiction that has a common mindset ― that overlaps with each other ― not because they've taken a market driven or insecurity driven decision to do so. I hope that you are a certain type of person, with certain interests, certain concerns, therefore become a certain type of writer as a natural expression of where you are. Perhaps naive ― certainly economically so.

Therefore label useful as a means of identifying that sharedness, but something that comes after the writing, not before it or driving it. Rick ― totally agree ― structure (at least, critical structure) often retrospective ― a post rationalisation of something that was intuitive when carried out.

But naming is power (as [M. John Harrison] points out) because it defines the thing named, includes certain things / people / etc, excludes certain things / people /
etc.
But if the name doesn't work it will be shortlived. There has to be an interaction, a sense of appropriate relationship. If the name is wrong, created for short term political reasons, whatever, it will drop away. Hype great but temporary, it never lasts, it's quality that endures.

Strahan:
Hi Mike ― "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 certainly saw the irony [in] it, and even wondered if there was more than a little desire to struggle against the labelling impulse by throwing more labels out there just to mischievously confuse the labelers.I don't think I've heard of a single [New Wave Fabulist] who was pleased with or felt some connection to the label. I don't even think [the editor Peter] Straub had anything to do with it, so it's a little unfortunate it is gaining any currency.

No, I wasn't attempting to be reductive or to in any sense belittle the achievement of any of the writers mentioned in this forum. What I was suggesting though, is that the endless search by a small-ish group of commentators to label and sort what is happening in the genre is a) reductive itself and b) ignores the fact that many of those writers are wholly or in part influenced by existing traditions. I would also add that I strongly feel that any label reduces and limits perception of a work of art, and so is often less than helpful. I also note my own tendency to a) label and b) use labels. It's something I try to fight.

Well, I would say that rather than misreading [your "cheerful ironic glee"], I took a particular approach.Mike, the only way I'm interested in describing you is as you. Fiction by Mike Harrison is Mike Harrison fiction. It may echo something here or there, but it's still mostly Mike. As to the need to seize the labelling day, as it were ― I understand and sympathise. I guess it's just my instinctive reaction to try to beat back the labellers and prevent the very war you mention.

"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?" Not at all. I understand, but it rankles. I don't think the war is a productive or intrinsically worthwhile thing because it leads to a reductive view of art rather than an attempt to understand what is actually being achieved by the artists in question.

"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?" I think this is your sense of mischief coming to the fore. I don't think you seriously believe that by ridiculing an attempt to drum up a label for work that may have some vague commonalities that I'm in any way trying to keep anything in the dark. If I have an unconscious motive, it's to not have to go through the whole stupid cyberpunk thing again and live through a decade of people with very little talent dressing their latest trilogy up in new weird drag. Besides, what's the matter with the dark.

Harrison:
I agree with everyone here on the basic point. It would be difficult not to, having said so many times that fiction should be written by individuals.

But two things: there
is
a struggle to name, whether we like it or not, and that struggle is also a struggle to define and own. I think labels are crap, but I'm not willing to give up my own definition of what's going on without a fight. Especially, paradoxically, since one of the best things going on with this form of fiction is its genuinely unlabelable (is that a word?) quality, the sense I have of real, lively writers doing exactly what they want to do. So please excuse me, all of you, if I go over the top a bit about this sometimes.

I think I agree most with Justina and Cheryl's pragmatism here: anything that does a job for the fiction, I'm in favour of.

Steph, I take your point about ownership: I just don't ever intend to wake up being owned by someone else ― otherwise, why be a writer in the first place? The New Wave named itself (or stuck itself to the best label it could find from those on offer), not just for publicity purposes, not just as a flag, but because to name yourself is to take responsibility for your ideas. That's a way to prevent commercialisation and carpetbagging, especially now, when we're surrounded by middlemen who live by that kind of parasitism.

Henry: I so wholly agree with this: "I reckon that it's more useful to think of the New Weird as an argument. An argument between a bunch of writers who read each other, who sometimes influence each other, sometimes struggle against that influence. Who don't ever agree on what the New Weird is, on where it starts and stops, but are prepared to harangue each other about it. Describing the New Weird in these terms involves its own kind of codswallop, but at least it's a less constricting kind of codswallop."

Jonathan: you're right, of course, there was deliberate mischief-making in both my posts; and, yes, it was designed to get us all baying at one another; and yes, I wish to God we could have our cake and eat it. This whole process is as undignified as hell, especially right at the start of something that might get no further but which has to describe itself (and thus nurture itself) somehow.

Justina: Speaking of carpetbagging from the mainstream, I think you're absolutely right, and that a big convulsion is in the offing. We need to take the advantage and get our act together, certainly. But I'm not as convinced as you that we'll lose. (After all, we have Battleship Miéville.) It's up to us, as individuals and as sharers of some labelled or unlabelled umbrella, to make ourselves as strong and feisty as possible. There
will
be a melting pot, at some level, although personally I think it will take the form of a steadily-enlarging slipstream. Up to us to allow for that and see it as an opportunity, not a defeat. To be honest, I'm in favour. The prospect shakes me out of my old guy's lethargy. I'm ready to swim or drown.

Strahan:
Hey Mike. You win. Just used "new weird" in a book review. Let's do a definitive anthology to celebrate!

Harrison:
OK Jonathan. Now, what shall we call it.

Strahan:
Why The New Weird, of course. Or maybe Odd Worlds: The Best of the New Weird.So the next obvious question is, who are the new weirdoes? We have China and Jeff and.

Morgan:
Thank you Jonathan, that's exactly the question I need answered for my Wiscon panel. (And you have the two names I have.) Suggestions would be appreciated. By the way, I have suggested to Wiscon that "New Weird" be used in the panel title.

Harrison:
Hi Jonathan. I think naming names would be making rather too much mischief, for me, at present. The Wiscon panel Cheryl mentioned will surely produce a list we can all argue over. Instead I've been mulling over Justina's point above, trying to match it to my own sense that something is happening here (but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?) which I see as really quite new in the history of the ghetto's relationship with the mainstream. As Justina says: it's a science world now, & they're just waking up to that out there, also how to speak about it, or let it speak itself through you.