The New Weird (49 page)

Another reason to be suspicious of "New" is the very good one that binary oppositions are always suspect. New is young, alive, snappy; old is senile, incontinent, annoying. Alarms go off at this point: one does well to be careful and not be arrogant. Personally, I don't set myself against any writer, style or theme. I consider myself an enthusiastic fan and disciple of many writers, alive and dead. If I have a fogey bogey it's a bogey in the form of a word, namely the word "should." How many times does one hear "A novel should be." "Characters should be." "A plot should." "A sentence should."? Once, in fact, is too often. The art world has discarded "should," but the mass-market economics which support the writing world, and probably, too, the time investment literature requires of readers, make such a casting off, on a large scale, much more difficult. Much so-called New Weird fiction, however, doesn't -it seems to me ― pay much mind to "should." By dint of that, perhaps something new has come or will come; but even if not, by casting off "should" one at least removes an impediment to the growth, if such is possible, of new narratives and new myths.

As I read over this essay, which does not seem very well-jointed to me, I remember that it is very hard to analyse a phenomenon from within

it, and while it is still alive and changing; still, it seems a better idea to have a go at it yourself than leave it to other people to decide for you, after you're dead and can't say it wasn't that at all.

European Editor Perspectives on the New Weird

SHORT ESSAYS BY MARTIN SUST, MICHAEL HAULICA, HANNES RIFFEL, JUKKA HALME, AND KONRAD WALEWSKI

IN OUR TRAVELS IN 2006 throughout Europe, we found many "echoes" of New Weird, and many different ways in which it worked as a stimulus to both publishing and other writers. For this reason, we asked editors from the Czech Republic, Romania, Germany, Finland, and Poland to respond to questions about New Weird, with the results published herein as short essays. ― THE EDITORS

Martin Šust, editor, anthologist, and writer

As foreign rights assistant and book editor at Laser Books, Martin Šust runs imprints such as New Weird and New Space Opera. He serves as the editor-in-chief of the Czech edition of
THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION
and also works for the Czech SF/F magazine
PEVNOST.
In addition to editing three New Weird anthologies, he has edited an anthology of British New Space Opera called
THE FIRES OF STARS,
with an American volume called
THE DUST OF STARS
scheduled for next year. He has won nine awards from the Czech Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. Šust can be contacted at
[email protected]
.

"CREATING NEW WEIRD TO WORK FOR US"

I believe that the New Weird movement started as a provocation, and a good one, but its success may have scared the creators themselves. Several great internet discussions caused a big stir by asking questions like "Is there really such a movement?" with many different answers. But in the end, however, there was only
one
real answer: "Maybe!"

"Maybe!" is good enough for publishers and readers because genre fiction
needs
movements ― real ones or fake ones, it doesn't matter. Especially since there haven't been any movements for twenty years, and everyone knows that we need some great movement every twenty years ― the
Golden Age
with changes in the vein of J. W. Campbell;
New Wave
with struggles against the taboos, led by Michael Moorcock and Harlan Ellison;
Cyberpunk
where science fiction cross-pollinated the old approaches with new ideas, a la William Gibson and Bruce Sterling; and, finally,
New Weird
with its crossing genres and fighting spirit a la China Miéville. All movements need only to urge readers and writers toward change while containing strong personalities to start off.

So we have
something like
a movement and years pass. Now we can judge: Is it something like a real movement or not? And damned if the answer remains only "Maybe!" There are some strong arguments for both sides of this issue, and we all know them. But for me, as an editor (and forgive me for being so outspoken), there is only one important thing: It seems that the readers are grateful for the chance to read something fresh and new, something that isn't boring like ordinary fantastic literature. With authors like China Miéville, Ian R. MacLeod, Steph Swainston, K. J. Bishop, Jeff VanderMeer, Hal Duncan, or Jay Lake, we created an imprint (and two anthologies) full of new ideas and new attitudes. Maybe it's not really
new
for fantastic literature, but it
is
new for our readers. Yes, maybe we only
want
to see the connections between these authors and nothing like New Weird actually exists, but here in the Czech Republic we now have an imprint of great titles (all with covers by British art genius Edward Miller) ― and, for us, this is one big and unforgettable result of New Weird.

For the first time we can publish very good fiction in one great book line, with the most successful titles helping the others. The result? All of the books in this line have sold well, meaning we can branch out and buy a few experimental titles as well. For the first time also we have something interesting enough to attract a foreign artist, and with his helpfulness we have created something really extraordinary in the "look" of the books. For the first time we, as a small foreign publisher, can compete on equal terms with the American market and publish not only commercial bestsellers, but really interesting titles too.

How do we pick books for our New Weird line? Every book must have something more than cross-genre leanings (science fiction, fantasy and horror). Every book must do more than attempt to create a story with the use of techniques more common to mainstream literature (like surreal visions for example). It must have a truly unique spirit and the desire to create something both good and new. These are qualities you see in the works of such New Weird predecessors like Gene Wolfe, Mervyn Peake, or M. J. Harrison. I realize that what I've detailed may still seem too general, especially since I have to convey them in a foreign language, but such difficulties are at the heart of the issues with the New Weird movement itself.

All of this success and interest has helped in other, tangential ways as well ― like creating a Czech edition of
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
for example. It has also forced other Czech publishing houses to make room for books by fresh new fantasy writers like Daniel Abraham, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Alan Campbell, Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, David Marusek, Cory Doctorow, and Charles Stross. Perhaps even more importantly, we can also publish special editions of anthologies containing work by foreign newcomers who don't even have books published in the Czech Republic.

This is the only true answer to the question. For us, it isn't "Maybe!" For us, the New Weird movement exists. Maybe it doesn't exist in the United States or Great Britain, but we have our own version in Czech Republic ― we've created it to work for us.

Michael Haulica, editor-in-chief, Tritonic Publishing Group

In addition to his work for Tritonic, Michael Haulica is editor-in-chief for the
FICTION.RO
magazine and a decorated writer who was Romania's Man of the Year in Romanian SF&F for 2005. Haulica has had over fifty short stories and novellas published in Romanian, English, Danish, Croatian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Australian magazines. Haulica has also written several award-winning books while also writing columns on genre fiction for two of the most important Romanian literary magazines.

"THE NEW WEIRD TREACHERY"

For me, New Weird is science fiction, fantasy, and horror mixed together, with a literary approach. That's why the New Weird authors transcend the genres and anger the "hardcore" fans, especially the fans of any genre who feel they and their devotion have been betrayed by these authors. In the meantime, New Weird authors seem to forge greater alliances with "mainstream readers" ― those who usually don't read genre fiction but do read these weird tales because they are extremely well-written, like any other kind of "high literature."

Therefore New Weird novels are the literary shuttles between two worlds: genre and mainstream. They form first contact expeditions, and, in some cases, the second and third contacts come soon after.

New Weird is also a literature for twenty-first-century readers written by the real twenty-first-century writers. This is true even if the history of New Weird has roots in the last hundred years in H. P. Lovecraft's works, H. G. Wells's
The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896),
Adolfo Bioy Casares's
La invencion de Morel (1940),
and many other writers who lived with the consciousness that the world is a very weird place.

In Romania, New Weird has taken genre literature from the "genre ghetto" and given it to a larger audience. After I published China Miéville's New Crobuzon Trilogy, the first in a book line without Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror as a label on the covers (a trend continued with M. John Harrison's
Viriconium
omnibus), many "mainstream readers" began to read our science fiction and fantasy books. After that, it was easier for us to publish and attract readers for Jeff VanderMeer's
Veniss Underground
and K. J. Bishop's
The Etched City.
Readers who enjoyed this "first contact" then moved on to books by Geoff Ryman, Kelly Link or Roger Zelazny.

This New Weird movement in Romania followed another Romanian movement in the mid-nineties. Readers and critics referred to me and other writers from this period as the "cyberpunk generation." However, it wasn't really "cyberpunk," in that the cyberpunk motives, attitudes, and technology were wedded to distinctly Romanian touches in terms of historical and mythic touchstones. Now, ten years later, I call it "technopunk fantasy." For example, we have created a weird being, the
motocentaur,
half-human, half-Harley Davidson (or any other motorcycle brand), writing fantasy like cyberpunk. These were good times for authors like Danut Ivanescu, Don Simon, Sebastian A. Corn, and me.

At the moment, the nearest thing to a New Weird Romanian author is Costi Gurgu, who recently published a novel called
Retetarium,
about a fantasy world where the supreme goal in anyone's life is to be a Master of Cooking Recipe Receipts. The author lives now in Canada, and I hope he will be published soon in English. He is a unique addition to the field, in my opinion.

However, all in all, I don't think there's a difference between the Romanian approach and the general New Weird. We are all writers in the same world. Sometimes a Weird World. Like our novels.

Hannes Riffel, acquiring editor, Klett-Cotta

Hannes Riffel was born in the blackforest, Southwest Germany, in 1966 and has been running a SF/F/H bookshop for fifteen years now. He has translated, among others, Sean Stewart, Bruce Sterling, Hal Duncan, and John Clute and edited, again among others, German editions of stories and novels by Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Ursula K. Le Guin, JeffVanderMeer, Mark Z. Danielewski and Maureen F. McHugh. He is the editor of
PANDORA
magazine and lives with his wife, the translator/editor Sara Riffel, in East Berlin.

"THERE IS NO NEW WEIRD"

We do not have anything like the New Weird in Germany. Europe may be culturally dominated by the United States, but that does not mean that we are on the same level of theoretical debate. Most of the important English-language writers get translated (China Miéville, Jeff VanderMeer, Hal Duncan), but there is little reflection going on about whether they are different and in what way. One of the laudable exceptions is Ralf Reiter, whose essays in the Heyne SF Jahrbuch display a sharp eye for literary evolution, and some articles published in Franz Rottensteiner's Quarber Merkur.

This may have something to do with why, for me, the New Weird is not a certain form or
school
of literature, but a gut feeling. As a bookseller and genre editor I have to read so much cliche fiction, that every time I discover something special, something that goes against the grain, the butterflies in my stomach go wild. It may be a useful description that those butterflies buzz around the work of China Miéville, and that they get excited in a certain way while I read Jeff VanderMeer, Steph Swainston or Hal Duncan. But they get excited as well when I read Elizabeth Hand or Kelly Link, and I would not consider those two ladies as being part of any kind of New Weird.

To be honest, I never thought New Weird existed at all. I felt the same way about Cyberpunk: some guys and gals wrote stuff that was different, referenced from each other, broke rules in a way that at least from the outside looked similar. But in the end Cyberpunk is only useful to highlight a certain development in the history of Science Fiction. We can talk or write about the way
Snow Crash
took its password from
Neuromancer, Accelerando
from
Snow Crash,
and so on.

Names like New Weird and Cyberpunk are just that: names. As a bookseller I try to find out what people like and get them turned on to books of the same ilk ― which is mostly like set theory, where you have to find out what goes together. To my mind naming things just pigeonholes them, and no one wants that to happen with a story or a book they've written. As I do not earn my money writing academic papers (although I've taught at university, so I know what it's all about), I try to stay away from compartmentalizing things.

Even if New Weird does exist, from a publisher's standpoint, it isn't healthy in Germany. Miéville does not sell too well here, and the fact that he's published by a mass market house with no record of quality translations does not help either. He gets some recognition from fans, and there's some interest in possible predecessors like
Gormenghast
or
Viriconium.
But, all in all, editors like me still have to go out on a very long limb to publish people like VanderMeer or Duncan. Germany has a tradition of not recognizing fantastic literature as such if it is labeled high literature. Books published by major literary houses, from Garcia Marquez to Susanna Clarke, are widely praised, but not because of their opposition to realism. Right now I am ushering
House of Leaves
into print, and we are doing our best not to market it as horror, god forbid! This is, of course, a postmodern novel which only makes use
of.you know what.