New Weird Antho–Close to Completion
Ann and I are wrapping up the New Weird anthology this week and next, with the brunt of the pre-press work being borne by Jill Roberts at Tachyon (thanks to both Jill and to Jacob Weisman for making this a good experience).
Here’s a taste of part of the rough draft of the intro; it may change substantially in the next couple of days. We’ll post a final table of contents when we have it.
Jeff
The “New Weird” existed long before 2003, when M. John Harrison, on a message board, started a thread with “The New Weird. Who does it? What is it? Is it even anything?” For this reason, and this reason only, it continues to exist now, even after several critics, reviewers, and writers have either dismissed the term or distanced themselves from it.
By 2003, readers and writers had become aware of a change in perception and a change in approach within genre. Largely crystallized by China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, this shift literally had to do with the weird. This is what distinguishes works that fall loosely within the confines of the term “New Weird” from those gathered under less descriptive terms such as “interstitial” and “slipstream”.
New Weird refers to works that contain, as Miéville puts it “a surrender to the weird”–one that isn’t hermetically sealed in a haunted house on the moors or in a cave in Antarctica. This “surrender” can take many forms, some of them, I would argue, falsely contraindicated by Miéville himself, but it’s almost always visceral and in the moment, contains elements of surreal or transgressive horror, and is acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise.
The two animating impulses or influences behind New Weird are the more visceral and political elements of the New Wave (M. John Harrison, Michael Moorcock, some J.G. Ballard) and the transgressive horror of such seminal 1980s works as Clive Barker’s The Books of Blood. It is the oddly satisfying alchemy formed by combining these two traditions that distinguishes New Weird from Old Weird. In a sense, New Wave and transgressive horror have given the latest generations of “strange” writers the symbols and signs they’ve needed to push off into the unknown.
August 6, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Sounds like its going to be an interesting intro.
August 6, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Yes, I’m already preparing a customized noose for myself.
Jeff
August 6, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Well, by publishing this book, you are basically making “the movement” official. It is not a bad thing, but you are right that some people will get freaked out. Controversy interests people though.
August 6, 2007 at 10:57 pm
It’s a moment, not a movement. ;)
Jeff
August 7, 2007 at 8:47 am
I thought the point of New Weird was that it was always of the moment…
So if it’s no longer of the moment then it’s not a movement and it’s failed.
Just thinking out loud.
August 7, 2007 at 9:47 am
What if the moment is now? I am not saying it is, but….
August 7, 2007 at 12:18 pm
You forget I sometimes joke…
August 10, 2007 at 4:44 am
“but it’s almost always visceral and in the moment, contains elements of surreal or transgressive horror, and is acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise”
Acutely aware of the modern world, most certainly, and that gives the impression that it might be a zeitgeist movement, if indeed it is a cohesive movement at all.
But it is not exclusively ‘always of the moment’, as one poster above has suggested, and I find it hard to believe that such a tenet of New Weird exists. Mieville, in particular, deals with long-standing themes (socio-politically speaking, especially in Iron Council) but just does it in an aesthetically strange (new?) way. In terms of genre he certainly fuses, and this may be construed as New because of the way in which he does it, but there is a definite resonance in what he writes. And resonance means a sense of lasting importance.
Whether this means Mieville, and others like him, is New Weird, then, purely depends on your definition of the concept. For me, it doesn’t include ‘always of the moment.’ Far from it.
It’s an intriguing topic: the introduction could be the most interesting part of the anthology!
August 18, 2007 at 9:18 pm
hi i enjoyed the read