New Weird
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The New Weird is an avant-garde literary movement or literary genre that began, nascent and unnamed, in the 1990s and culminated in a series of novels and stories published from 2001 to 2005. The writers involved are mostly novelists who are considered to be parts of the horror and/or speculative fiction genres. The author all critics agree on as a "New Weird" writer is China Miéville, who self-describes as such. Other writers who have been variously described as "New Weird" include M. John Harrison, Steph Swainston, and Jeff VanderMeer — although some of these writers are more properly precursors to New Weird.[citation needed]
[edit] Definition
There is considerable debate about whether or not New Weird is a movement among like-minded authors, or merely a label that has been applied to them after the fact to describe perceived similarities between their works.[citation needed] It has even been dismissed as a marketing ploy, albeit a very deliberate and self-conscious one. Many of the authors who are associated with the movement either disavow belonging to it, or simply don't care what categorical labels their readers craft to name their work.
However, despite this confusion, the introduction to the New Weird anthology edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer, published by Tachyon Publications in February 2008, claims a specific definition for New Weird that clarifies the issue considerably:
New Weird is a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping off point for creation of settings that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy. New Weird has a visceral, in-the-moment quality that often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects — in combination with the stimulus of influence from New Wave writers or their proxies (including also such forebears as Mervyn Peake and the French/English Decadents). New Weird fictions are acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise, but not always overtly political. As part of this awareness of the modern world, New Weird relies for its visionary power on a "surrender to the weird" that isn't, for example, hermetically sealed in a haunted house on the moors or in a cave in Antarctica. The "surrender" (or "belief") of the writer can take many forms, some of them even involving the use of postmodern techniques that do not undermine the surface reality of the text.
Part of this genre's roots derive from pulp horror authors, whose stories were sometimes described as "weird fiction".[citation needed] The "weird tale" label also evolved from the magazine Weird Tales; the stories therein often combined fantasy elements, existential and physical terror, and science fiction devices.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- H. P. Lovecraft: Notes on Writing Weird Fiction
- Michael Cisco essay on the New Weird
- Library Thing: Books tagged "new weird"
- summary of and notes on the original Third Alternative Press message board discussions (original discussions no longer online).
- Archive of 2003 New Weird discussion on the TTA M. John Harrison forum: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, & Part 5.
