Reactions and Reactionaries-Part One

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

I have written these past few weeks about the so-called "New Weird," which may or may not have been new (in 2008) and the practitioners of which may or may not have been doing something innovative in their writing. One thing they seem to have in common is their dislike or disdain for convention or tradition, especially for well-accepted and well-liked writers of the past. China Miéville, for example, dislikes J.R.R. Tolkien for his conservatism, evidently also for his Catholicism. (I guess you can take the British Marxist out of the Church of England, but you can never take the Church of England out of the British Marxist.) Here is Mr. Miéville on Tolkien: "His was a profoundly backward-looking reaction, based on a rural idyll that never existed--feudalism lite." (1) I won't go very far into the idea that socialism is the proper successor to feudalism, with the State assuming the role of the king (and God), the intellectual élite taking the place of the aristocracy and clergy, the people being kept in their place as serfs, and of course no usurping middle class in sight. I just want to give you an idea of how a writer of "the New Weird" feels about an old-time fantasist.

China Miéville's near contemporary Jeff VanderMeer had a few things to say on H.P. Lovecraft and Weird Tales previous to and following the end of his wife's tenure as editor of that magazine. You could have read his essay "Moving Past Lovecraft" on the website Weird Fiction Review, dated September 1, 2012, but it's no longer available there. Too bad. The upshot of Mr. VanderMeer's essay is that Lovecraft is dead and gone and that it's time for something new. I agree with some of the things he wrote. (For example, like him, I don't think Lovecraft should be at the center of weird fiction as if he were Azathoth at the center of Ultimate Chaos. There are other writers and other ideas.) But the author gives too much away with his hackneyed language of the left. Talk about needing something new: we all need a break from this old and tired way of writing and thinking . . .

Observe that: a) Lovecraft; b) Weird Tales magazine under editors other than Ann VanderMeer; and c) weird fiction not approved by Mr. VanderMeer are characterized by worn-out leftist pejoratives: conservative, non-progressive, nostalgia, nostalgic, the dead past, cannibalistic, narrowness, etc. In contrast, a) Jeff and Ann VanderMeer; b) writers of their circle; and c) everything they like are described in approving terms, all equally worn out by writers on the left: inclusiveness, progressive, innovative, transgressive, diverse, etc. I understand that Mr. VanderMeer composed his essay in the heat of the moment. Maybe things have cooled off in the many years since. Maybe that's why we can no longer read his essay.

So, if you're keeping track, China Miéville's dragon-for-the-slaying is J.R.R. Tolkien, while Jeff VanderMeer's is or was H.P. Lovecraft. Their fellow supposedly "New Weird" author K.J. Bishop is a little more positive: in an interview from the website Strange Horizons, from October 18, 2004 (here), she admitted, "I was a Lord of the Rings fan, and I have plenty of regard for Tolkien still." She also seemed to recognize that "the New Weird" may not have been so new after all:

Other kinds of fantasy have always been written; the picaresque has been around for ages, as have folk tales about ordinary people to whom strange things happen, and to me the "New Weird" is coming out of those traditions. The elements of decadence and horror are there in the Arabian Nights and the Brothers Grimm. I think that what appear to be evolutions in the writing are really changes in public taste and what gets published. [Boldface added.]

Maybe Ms. Bishop doesn't quite fit in "the New Weird" category after all.

Next is British author Steph Swainston on Tolkien:

The Brontës had a contribution to make to fantasy literature--their Great Glass Town. Sometimes I wish the fantasy genre had grown from Great Glass Town instead of Middle Earth. But they were ahead of their time, and Charlotte Brontë knew better than to go public with such a private world, even though her brother Branwell pushed her to do it and I suspect Thackeray would have loved it. I like to use variety--and as little repetition of words as possible. It amazes me that so much fantasy writing is leaden and conservative, still influenced by Tolkien's use of a solemn, "epic" style. Anything can happen in fantasy, so why use such stilted prose? [Boldface added.] (2)

That's not so harsh; Ms. Swainston may have made a legitimate point about Tolkien's style. But here again is that critical, if not pejorative, term, conservative. On the other hand, I'm not sure that the Brontës or William Makepeace Thackeray could be called liberal or progressive.

Here is a more informative quote from Steph Swainston:

[Jeff VanderMeer]: Do you believe in the existence of Evil?

[Steph Swainston]: Certainly not. 'Evil' is just a strong word for something you don't like.

More on that topic next.

Notes

(1) From "Tolkien-Middle Earth Meets Middle England" by China Miéville in Socialist Review on line, January 2002, at the following URL:

http://socialistreview.org.uk/259/tolkien-middle-earth-meets-middle-england

(2) From "Dangerous Offspring: An Interview with Steph Swainston" by Jeff VanderMeer, Clarkesworld, October 2007, here.

A map drawn by Branwell Brontë of the Brontë family's Glass Town world. The map above is somewhat similar to those showing Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age and J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth in that there is a bulging continent on the north and a great gulf on the south.

Original text copyright 2017, 2026 Terence E. Hanley

The New Weird Anthology-Part Four

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

My original program in 2017 was to go one by one through the authors in The New Weird anthology (2008). I didn't get very far in that very long list. Maybe that's one of the reasons I hit pause on this series. Very quickly, though:

M. John Harrison (British, born 1945) was an associate of Michael Moorcock at New Worlds magazine. He appears to have taken the lead on the formulation of "the New Weird."

Clive Barker (British, born 1952) is a prolific and very well-known author of all kinds of works.

Simon Ings (British, born 1965) has collaborated with M. John Harrison.

Kathe Koja (American, born 1960).

Thomas Ligotti (American, born 1953) is an atheist, socialist, and anti-natalist. Despite his evident leftism or progressivism, Mr. Ligotti seems to me a fairly traditional kind of writer and not one to want to throw off the past. I could be wrong.

K.J. Bishop (Australian, born 1972).

Jeffrey Ford (American, born 1955).

China Miéville (British, born 1972), is supposed to have been one of the lead proponents of the so-called "New Weird." He is of course a Marxist. He also holds a Ph.D. That places him on the academic/scholarly side of things instead of on the "self-taught" side.

Jeffrey Thomas (American, born 1957).

Brian Evenson (American, born 1966). He also holds a Ph.D., in his case in literature and critical theory, and so he is not "self-taught," either, as the writers of "the Old Weird" were.

Jay Lake (American, 1964-2014). It's never too late to send condolences, I hope, and so I send them to his family and friends.

Leena Krohn (Finnish, born 1947).

Steph Swainston (British, born 1974). From an interview on the website Clarkesworld: "I prefer not to draw lines between good fantasy and good mainstream literature, but see the whole thing as a continuum." Emphasis added.

Alistair Rennie (Scottish, b. ?) is also a musician.

These are the rest of the authors in the first two sections of The New Weird. As you can see, they are a mix of Baby Boomers and Generation X (with one pre-Boomer, and only if those categories apply in the rest of the world). The youngest of them is now past fifty years old.

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley

The New Weird Anthology-Part Three

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

I am looking at the authors whose work appeared in the 2008 anthology The New Weird, edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer. This list is in chronological order by the date of composition or publication of their individual works. Michael Moorcock, who wrote his story in 1979, comes first. He is first in other ways, too.

"Crossing into Cambodia: A Story of the Third World War" (1979) by Michael Moorcock

Born in London in 1939, Michael Moorcock is the oldest writer represented here. He came to fame as the editor (1964-1971, 1976-1996) of the British New Wave science fiction magazine New Worlds. Note the modifiers: New and New. There, I think, is the impulse: to ride a new wave, to discover new worlds, to make and forge something new, something the world has never seen before. This is the impulse of the young writer, artist, and thinker. It's also the impulse of the political progressive, radical, or revolutionary. In the world of arts and ideas, the impulse towards newness has yielded, since World War II, neorealism in Italian cinema, nouvelle vague in its French counterpart, bossa nova in Brazilian popular music, and British and American new wave music of the 1970s and '80s. Neo-, nouvelle, nova, new. 

In the world of arts and ideas, an impulse to newness is usually innocuous. In fact it often reinvigorates old forms. It is in politics--or when politics crosses over into the world of arts and ideas--that the burning desire to make something new becomes so dangerous. In striving for newness, in attempting to make a new society by throwing off the old one, by starting over again at year zero, the people behind so-called progressive political systems have murdered, starved, tortured, and imprisoned countless millions of their fellow human beings. What is claimed to be new--misery, poverty, murder, oppression--is actually as old as time. In any case, it's no coincidence that the authors of what is called "the New Weird" tend towards political progressivism. So is their aim to politicize weird fiction and fantasy? I believe so, judging from Mr. VanderMeer's introduction to The New Weird. Michael Moorcock, their progenitor, is an anarchist, pragmatist, Marxist, and socialist. He makes that clear in his writings. The authors of "the New Weird," politicized or even radicalized as they may be, would seem to follow in his footsteps. The sub-genre itself seems to exist in a direct line of descent from something he helped create, the original British New Wave. So what again is new about "the New Weird"?

If science fiction is discontinuous from other genres [an idea I haven't discussed just yet], then there was, at least in its early years, the possibility that something new could be brought into the world. New scientific discoveries and new technological developments allowed for newness in the arts. That newness seems to have worn out in the immediate postwar era, though. In his editorship of New Worlds, Mr. Moorcock wrote and encouraged the writing of a new kind of soft, sociological, political, and philosophical science fiction that departed from the conventional hard, scientific, technological, and action-oriented science fiction of the 1920s through the 1950s. In addition, the New Wave was about making science fiction more literary. I can't argue with any of that, and I have enjoyed science fiction from the 1960s and '70s written under the influence of the New Wave.

Following the pulp era, science fiction certainly needed higher literary standards. One result of the New Wave may be that some more literary authors--Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Walker Percy--have also indulged themselves in writing science fiction, without fear of shame or opprobrium. But conventional science fiction authors have closed in on finer literature from the other direction, too. I don't know whether we're there yet, but there may come a time when science fiction and fantasy are continuous with a higher or finer literature. (Continuity--there's that concept again.) Maybe someday there will even be a Nobel Prize winner among authors of genre fiction. (If Bob Dylan can win the prize, why not someone who writes about talking squids from outer space?) I believe attaining a higher literary quality or a merging of genre fiction with finer literature was also a goal of "the New Weird."

According to the Wikipedia article on him, Michael Moorcock has written in reaction to or unfavorably of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert A. Heinlein, and many other authors considered to be conservative or reactionary. For a more in-depth discussion of this topic, read Mr. Moorcock's essay "Starship Stormtroopers" (1977; 1984). There's a lot of the typical leftist claptrap in "Starship Stormtroopers," but don't let that stop you: it's an interesting, engaging, informative, and well-written work. Reading it also helps to illuminate the issue at hand, for Michael Moorcock and the New Wave seem to have shared with the authors of "the New Weird" a desire to throw off the past and to dismiss or discard the writers and works of the past.

So, it seems to me that the inspiration and model for "the New Weird" of today (actually yesterday, as its eponymous anthology was published nearly two decades ago--more on that in a minute) is the New Wave of the 1960s and '70s. These supposedly new sub-genres or sub-sub-genres are of the same essence (1):

• Both are in reaction to older and supposedly more conservative authors, conventions, styles, forms, etc., each in its respective sub-genre, New Wave in science fiction and "the New Weird" in weird fiction. That reaction is often extremely fierce, angry, and dismissive. In fact, the fierceness, anger, and dismissiveness of current authors towards their predecessors seems to be an identifying feature of supposedly new literary movements.

• Both strive to make something new of old genres, but that impulse to newness may not be exclusively or even most importantly towards artistic, literary, or aesthetic innovation. The impulse to newness may actually be more powerfully driven by leftwing political philosophies of various stripes: Marxism, socialism, progressivism, anarchism, nihilism, the New Left (there's that word New again), critical theory, political correctness, multiculturalism, cultural Marxism, radical environmentalism, the cult of global warming, etc.

• Both strive also towards higher literary standards and towards a confounding of categorization, a crossing over, bending, or merging of genres, ultimately perhaps a convergence of genre fiction with mainstream literature.

So, New Wave did all of that to science fiction, but that began more than sixty years ago. It may have been new then, but it can't be new now. The impulse to newness makes us need something new new. So maybe what New Wave did to science fiction in the 1960s and '70s can be done to weird fiction today [or eighteen years ago, when the anthology was published]. Maybe an old genre or sub-genre can be remade as a politically progressive new sub-genre called "the New Weird" in which the authors, conventions, styles, and forms of the past are overthrown, dismissed, discarded, or even forgotten. In the process maybe literary standards can be raised as well. Maybe that's where Michael Moorcock came in, and maybe that's why he was represented in The New Weird, for what he did with the New Wave in Britain appears to be the model for what Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer tried to do with "the New Weird" in America and elsewhere. In other words, they may have tried to make something "new" by simply copying something that was done before, in fact nearly fifty years before. (2) If that was their plan, they should have made quicker work of it: the New Wave in science fiction lasted a couple of decades before supposedly being overtaken by cyberpunk. (3) If the publication of the VanderMeers' anthology marked the beginning of "the New Weird" as a sub-genre or sub-sub-genre (or maybe what they wanted was to make it a supergenre), then it was already approaching obsolescence when it was still hot off the press, for we live in an era--a progressive, science-fictional era--in which anything done a year or even a month ago is already old hat. And on top of all that, the VanderMeers lost their showcase for their ideas, in the form of Weird Tales, just as Mr. Moorcock had in New Worlds, in their case in 2012 when Marvin Kaye gained control of the magazine. In the world of today, what's an editor attempting a revolution to do when he loses his or her magazine?

Note

(1) Even the names are of these two sub-genres are similar. It's as if the proponents of this supposedly new thing stood on the edge of a chasm, shouted "New Wave," and heard back the echo "New Weird." One problem is that "the New Weird" is such an awkward construction. At least wave is a noun. Put new in front of it and it rolls pretty trippingly from the tongue. Beyond that, everyone knows what a new wave is and everyone wants to ride it. Ask anyone what is "the New Weird" and you're likely to get back a blank stare. No one seems to know. Actually, I think I know: "the New Weird" is [or was] hype. And not very successful hype. It was an attempt to make something new by copying something old that was once new, i.e., new more than four decades before. It appears to me to have been something that has been tried so often before: an attempt by an intellectual (or pseudo-intellectual) of whatever merit to make a name and a place for himself in the world and in the history of ideas. This striving for notice is especially prominent in democratic societies, those in which every man is responsible for his own status but in which all men are made equal and reduced to the same level. Leftists claim to love democracy, but it is in a democracy that they are most frustrated in their desire to rise above everyone else.

(2) First in print in 1926--100 years ago this month--Amazing Stories was the first science fiction magazine in America. The term science fiction hadn't even been invented yet when it first appeared on the newsstand. Thirty-eight years later--in 1964--Michael Moorcock assumed the editorship of New Worlds. In other words, the New Wave was older in 2017 (when I wrote) than was magazine science fiction as a whole when Mr. Moorcock arrived at New Worlds. Even cyberpunk is getting pretty long in the tooth. Remind me again, what exactly is new about all of this?

(3) You might date the beginnings of cyberpunk to the arrival of William Gibson's Gothic science fiction novel Neuromancer in 1984. Cyberpunk is supposed to have grown out of the New Wave. Because of that, I'm not sure anyone can say that the New Wave actually came to an end. (Beginnings and endings, firsts and lasts, are always hard to state.) In any case, note that the first two stories in The New Weird are also from 1984. It may have been that what is called "the New Weird" was really just a continuation of the New Wave, mixed with other genres, including cyberpunk, then shaken, stirred, and given a new name. In other words, the so-called "New Weird" wasn't new at all. By the way, notice the pun: Neuromancer ≈ New Romancer. And remember the name of the protagonist from the very loose movie adaptation of William Gibson's cyberpunk novel: Neo from The Matrix (1999). Newness. Always newness.

New Worlds, August 1967, under the editorship of Michael Moorcock and with a cover design by Eduardo Paolozzi. Even Marxists know that sex sells.

Text copyright 2017, 2026 Terence E. Hanley

The New Weird Anthology-Part Two

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

The New Weird is an anthology of fiction and essays published in 2008 by Tachyon Publications and edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer. There are in this book fifteen stories, plus a seven-part round-robin story, eleven essays, a list of recommended reading, and biographical notes on the contributors. Eleven of the fifteen stories were published previously. A twelfth, "Crossing into Cambodia: A Story of the Third World War" by Michael Moorcock, was originally published in 1979. evidently written in 1979 but not published until in this book. [See the comment below. Thank you, Mr. Trepniak for the correction.] The point here is to get at what is called "the New Weird." I'm not convinced there is such a thing, but I'm only just beginning. Already, in reading about Michael Moorcock, the first writer on the list to follow, I'm starting to see into the phylogeny of this supposedly new sub-genre or sub-sub-genre of fantasy. ["The New Weird" is obviously not new anymore in 2026, but then it may never have been new.]

I asked a friend what is "the New Weird." He said that it's weird fiction that departs from the supposed racism, sexism, misogyny, etc., of a previous era. I take that to mean that it is specifically a reaction to H.P. Lovecraft. In reading about "the New Weird," I have also gotten the idea that it's a general reaction to the conservatism of twentieth-century fantasy in the work not only of Lovecraft but also of J.R.R. Tolkien, and to a lesser extent, C.S. Lewis.

I have already written at length about the inherent conservatism in fantasy vs. the implicit progressivism of science fiction. They are, after all, genres about opposites: fantasy is about the past, while science fiction is about the future. Of course, racism, sexism, misogyny, etc., are not necessary parts of weird fiction. Yes, there are weird fiction stories that include these things, but they don't have to be in there in order for it to be proper weird fiction. If you doubt, that, read, for example, the stories of C.L. Moore. To go more deeply, though, I suppose that to readers and writers of certain political persuasions, anything that is conservative is necessarily racist, sexist, and so on. I guess the idea is that if we're going to rid weird fiction of these things, the past must be overthrown and weird fiction remade, hence "the New Weird."

I don't think Lovecraft goes very easily into the same basket as Tolkien and Lewis. Although he was a Tory, Lovecraft's conservatism seems to me a kind of default position, sometimes an affectation, perhaps also a psychological response to the facts of his childhood. It's worth pointing out, too, that Lovecraft loosened up as he aged. He even had nice things to say about socialism, as so many people did in the 1930s. By socialism, I mean both types--those two angry bedfellows known as international and national socialism, that, although they may hate each other, also can't live without each other.

Lovecraft was also a materialist and an atheist. He would seem to have philosophical sympathizers among today's readers and writers of fantasy, especially of "the New Weird." Tolkien and Lewis on the other hand were devout Christians. It seems to me that their conservatism came more naturally to them than Lovecraft's and that it was less a reaction to loneliness and alienation than it was a choice, certainly in the case of the ex-atheist Lewis, who consciously and joyously converted to a new faith.

Jim Morrison was onto something when he sang, "Women seem wicked/When you're unwanted." Replace "women" with "black people," "brown people," "foreigners," "Jewish people," etc., and you might have a better idea of where Lovecraft's fear of and hostility towards these groups came from. People who perceive themselves at the bottom of the ladder are always looking to get one rung up. They often do that by trying to push another guy down. Those who feel inferior often try to boost themselves by talking down someone else. In any case, I would like to write about the authors represented in The New Weird in chronological order by their work. In writing about the first author, I believe I'll get pretty quickly to the origins and essence of this supposedly new sub-genre (or sub-sub-genre or . . .)

To be continued . . .

Copyright 2017, 2026 Terence E. Hanley

The New Weird Anthology-Part One

The New Weird anthology (2008) is now nearly two decades old. I began writing this series in 2017, nine years after it was first published. I wrote, then, halfway through the eighteen years that separate us from its initial publication. You could say that I'm beating a dead horse. I would say that I'm beating a dead horse. But I'm not the only one to call it dead. In his introduction to the anthology, co-editor Jeff VanderMeer admitted: "New Weird is dead." And yet he put out an anthology. And yet here I am writing about it. It's not even one of the walking dead, and yet I'm writing about it.

One of the problems in all of this is that I don't have a copy of the book, I have never had a copy of it, I have never read it, nor have I read any of its stories or essays, except for the introduction. So how well qualified am I to write on this topic? Maybe I can claim to write about the penumbrae of "the New Weird" rather than about the thing itself, if it exists. Call it an excuse.

That introduction, by the way, is available on line at the following URL:

https://www.jeffvandermeer.com/blog/2009/06/28/the-new-weird-anthology-notes-and-introduction

I'll list below its content and authors, adapted from The FictionMags Index.

Mr. VanderMeer's introduction includes a lot of listing, namedropping, and insider information. The lists are of the authors' names and their works. As I've said before, lists are not writing. They're lists. But there is some writing hidden in there, too, including the admission that "the New Weird" explicitly followed "the New Wave" of British science fiction of the 1960s and '70s.

Mr. VanderMeer was more accepting of H.P. Lovecraft in his introduction than I have seen in at least one of his other essays. It's not clear to me that "the New Weird" was meant to take the place of any "Old Weird," with Lovecraft in a leading position among "the Old." I'm not sure why anybody would even see any necessity in that. But like all authors of younger generations, those of "the New Weird" wanted a place at the table, even if it meant pushing out the older ones. And now here it is eighteen years later and those young authors are no longer young. In fact, I would guess that most are now middle-aged or older. (Sadly, terribly, one has died.) It happens to all of us, as long as we make it alive through youth. I wonder if middle age has given them any new perspective. I wonder what they might think now of the so-called "New Weird" and the effort they seem to have made to create something that had never existed before. A new story can be new. It's a lot harder to swing a new movement or a new genre. Beyond that, people generally don't get younger, stronger, and more energetic as the years go by. Revolutions are hard to sustain when your knee hurts, your sugar is too high, and you're on meds.

One more thing about the introduction to The New Weird: about three-fourths of the way through, there is a "working definition" of "the New Weird." It reads like a corporate mission statement, developed by a corporate committee. As I've said, genres, sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres, as wells the authors who write in them, have too often become in our time branded commercial products. It's no wonder that the authors of "the New Weird" would operate by a corporate mission statement, which seems to me to be written in the special language of corporate gobbledygook.

* * *

The New Weird (2008) edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer; published by Tachyon Publications; xviii + 414 pp.

Cover art by Mike Libby.

Contents

"The New Weird: 'It's Alive?'"--Introduction by Jeff VanderMeer

[The New Weird is divided into four sections.]

Stimuli [Fiction]

• "The Luck in the Head" by M. John Harrison (1984)
• "In the Hills, the Cities" by Clive Barker (1984)
• "Crossing into Cambodia: A Story of the Third World War" by Michael Moorcock (1979)
• "The Braining of Mother Lamprey" by Simon Ings (1990)
• "The Neglected Garden" by Kathe Koja (1991)
• "A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing" by Thomas Ligotti (1997)

Evidence [Fiction]

• "Jack" by China Miéville (2005)
• "Immolation" by Jeffrey Thomas (2000)
• "The Lizard of Ooze" by Jay Lake (2005)
• "Watson's Boy" by Brian Evenson (2000)
• "The Art of Dying" by K. J. Bishop (1997)
• "At Reparata" by Jeffrey Ford (1999)
• "Letters from Tainaron"--An excerpt from the short novel Tainaron by Leena Krohn (2008), translated by Hildi Hawkins
• "The Ride of the Gabbleratchet" by Steph Swainston (2008)
• "The Gutter Sees the Light That Never Shines" by Alistair Rennie (2008)

Discussion [Essays]

• "New Weird Discussions: The Creation of a Term" by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer
• "'New Weird': I Think We're the Scene" by Michael Cisco
• "Tracking Phantoms" by Darja Malcolm-Clarke
• "Whose Words You Wear" by K. J. Bishop

European Editor Perspectives on the New Weird:

• "Creating the New Weird to Work for Us" by Martin Šust
• "The New Weird Treachery" by Michael Hăulică
• "There is No New Weird" by Hannes Riffel
• "Blurring the Lines" by Jukka Halme
• "The Uncleaned Kettle" by Konrad Walewski

Laboratory [A Seven-Part Round-Robin Story]

• "Festival Lives: The New Weird Round Robin" essay by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer
• Festival Lives, View 1: Death in a Dirty Dhoti by Paul Di Filippo
• Festival Lives, View 2: Cornflowers Beside the Unuttered by Cat Rambo
• Festival Lives, View 3: All God's Chillun Got Wings by Sarah Monette
• Festival Lives, View 4: Locust-Mind by Daniel Abraham
• Festival Lives, View 5: Constable Chalch and the Ten Thousand Heroes by Felix Gilman
• Festival Lives, View 6: Golden Lads All Must . . . by Hal Duncan
• Festival Lives, View 7: Forfend the Heavens' Rending by Conrad Williams

Appendices

• "Recommended Reading" by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer
• "Biographical Notes"

To be continued . . .

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley

A Proliferation of Genres

"The New Weird" is supposed by its proponents to be real. If it is, then it must be a sub-genre of weird fiction. Weird fiction is a genre. Some might say that it's actually a sub-genre of fantasy fiction, in which case "the New Weird" is a sub-sub-genre. But a weird tale isn't necessarily a fantasy. It's possible for a weird tale not to include any fantastic, supernatural, or speculative elements at all. "The Basket" by Herbert J. Mangham (sic) is an example. Although there is a visit to a fortuneteller--perhaps a weird-woman--in the story, there aren't any obviously supernatural events. "The Grave" by Orville R. Emerson is another example of a non-supernatural weird tale. Both are stories of weird being visited upon a man. Both were in the first issue of Weird Tales, dated March 1923. So let's call "the New Weird" a sub-genre.

So far in this series, I have talked about the proliferation of genres that happened after World War I (during the pulp-fiction era), and then again after about 1960 (during the academic/scholarly/nostalgic era). I won't list here the more realistic genres and sub-genres of romance, Western, railroad, boxing, war, spy, suspense, crime, detective, mystery, and so on. I also won't write about mythology, legends, sagas, fables, folk tales, fairy tales, or tall tales. Instead, I'll stick to the 20th-century genres that are supposed to fall under the very broad category of fantasy.

By the way, in writing this entry, I came across a very apt explanation as to why genres have proliferated. It's not because of artistic reasons. Instead, it's because of commercial considerations in the form of niche marketing, just as I wrote the other day. In his introduction to The New Weird (2008), Jeff VanderMeer gave a lot of credit to the development of this sub-genre to his fellow Gen-Xer, China Miéville, but then noted that Mr. Miéville moved away from "the New Weird." From Mr. VanderMeer's introduction:

The passion behind Miéville's efforts made sure that the term ["the New Weird"] would live on, even after he began to disown it, claiming it had become a marketing category and was therefore of no further interest to him. 

We should note here that China Miéville is a Marxist, thus disdains, I assume, the workings of what is called capitalism. I wonder what he thinks of the many brands of Marxism and socialism, of their many spin-offs and offshoots and sub-genres, as well as of all of the commercial products associated with it.

* * *

If you want to be liberal rather than conservative in your definition of what makes a genre or sub-genre, then weird fiction can include the following:

• Weird fiction
• Weird fantasy
• Weird science or science fantasy
• Heroic fantasy or sword and sorcery (such as the Conan stories)
• Weird Western
• Weird war
• Weird hero
• "The New Weird"

Related to weird fiction is horror. In fact, some people say "horror" when what they really mean is "weird fiction." They are not the same thing--they are not at all the same thing--but then "weird fiction" is not easily defined. In fact, weird fiction may be indefinable, as it involves an inscrutable and indefinable weird. Anyway, here are some horror genres:

• Supernatural horror
• Psychological horror
• Ghost stories (ghost stories might be a genre separate from horror)
• Gothic horror or Gothic fiction (the other day I invented the word Gothics to cover this genre, Gothic being an adjective and not a noun)
• Terror, horror, or weird menace
• Lovecraftian horror or cosmic horror
• Urban horror
• Body horror
• Eco horror
• Zombie stories
• Vampire stories
• Werewolf stories
• Monster stories in general
• Kaiju
• Occult horror (devils, demons, demonic possession, cults, etc.)
• Paranormal romance

If you separate science fiction from fantasy fiction, then science fiction might include:

• Science fiction
• Scientific romance
• Pseudoscience, Scientifiction, and other types of proto-science fiction
• Science fantasy
• Planetary romance or swords and planets
• Space opera
• Hard science fiction
• Military science fiction
• Soft science fiction or social science fiction
• "The New Wave"
• A lot of -punks:
• Cyberpunk
• Postcyberpunk
• Steampunk
• Retropunk
• Atompunk
• Dieselpunk
• Clockpunk
• Mannerpunk
• Biopunk
• Nanopunk
• Solarpunk
• Slipstream
• Cryptozoological or cryptid fiction
• Superhero fiction
• Alternate history
• Time travel
• Parallel universe or parallel worlds
• Lost worlds
• Utopia and Dystopia
• Apocalypse and Post-Apocalypse
• Cozy Apocalypse
• (There could be a parallel sub-genre, Cozy Dystopia.)

Finally, in fantasy, there are these genres and sub-genres and probably many more:

• Fantasy
• High fantasy
• Low fantasy
• Science fantasy
• Heroic fantasy or sword and sorcery (without any weird elements)
• Planetary romance or swords and planets
• Lost worlds
• Contemporary fantasy
• Urban fantasy
• Dark fantasy

There is no way this is a complete list. Even if it were complete today, it might not be tomorrow. You never know when an author, critic, or academic will invent a new sub-genre.

Thanks to Wikipedia for a big part of this list.

Weird War Tales, September 1973, a comic book that crosses genres, with cover art by George Evans.

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley

Crossing the Boundaries of Genre

Until now, this entry and the next existed only in draft form, and they were pretty spare. Publishing these entries now is part of my program of turning drafts long held in suspended animation into a final form.

* * *

So I'm working with the idea that genre fiction, or the pulp genres, proliferated after World War I, partly because of market forces, and then proliferated again--when?--in the 1960s? The 1970s? Definitely by the 1980s and '90s. That later proliferation seems to have had more to do with the needs and ambitions of the authors, critics, analysts, and scholars of the pulp genres than on anything to do with readers and fans. During the pulp era, pulp fiction and pulp magazines were looked down upon as trash. After the pulp era (perhaps in bouts or in a pervading fog of nostalgia), there were those who tried to elevate it and attach it (or reattach it) to mainstream fiction or literature.

Critic Leslie Fiedler (1917-2003) looked at our literature in Love and Death in the American Novel (1960; 1966). His is an all-explanatory theory. Two quotes early in the book give away his thesis:

[. . . ] the American novel is pre-eminently a novel of terror (Dell/Delta, 1966, p. 26)

and:

It is the Gothic form that has been most fruitful in the hands of our best writers [. . .]. (p. 28)

Both terror (or horror) and the Gothic, or Gothics (my new word, to stay away from "the Gothic" as a parallel construction of the cacophonous "the Weird"), can be considered genres of the pulp-fiction type. Dr. Fiedler covered genre fiction in his book and even mentioned H.P. Lovecraft, even if it was only by his surname. He covered other American authors in greater depth, many of whom wrote before genre fiction became separated from mainstream fiction. Leslie Fiedler also wrote science fiction, as did mainstream novelists after him, including Walker Percy (Love in the Ruins, post-apocalypse, 1971), Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake, dystopia/post-apocalypse, 2003), and Cormac McCarthy (The Road, post-apocalypse, 2006). I don't know whether the New Wave was the first "new" sub-genre within science fiction--i.e., the first following the end of the Golden Age in 1950, or the first post-pulp sub-genre--but it was named by a critic, P. Schuyler Miller, in 1961, or only a year after Dr. Fiedler's book was published, as well as at the beginning of a decade of nostalgia, reconsideration, and reevaluation.

* * *

I have said that the proliferation of genres after the 1960s was less commercial than during the pulp-fiction era. That's true in its way, but the 1950s and '60s were also an era of consumerism in America. (Read the old MAD magazine to see one satire after another of advertising, consumerism, etc. Is it only a coincidence that a TV show about the advertising business of the 1960s was called Mad Men?) Commercial brandnames proliferated, too. How many products, packages, jingles, and slogans from that time have become lodged in our brains? The point is that writers, fans, and readers in America have been conditioned since childhood to think in commercial terms, in terms of brandnames and towards buying and consuming branded products. People don't talk about eating pizza or drinking soft drinks. They talk about specific brands of each--and of every other product, seller, and service there is. Countless numbers are like walking, talking advertisements for their favorite brands. Without their knowing it, they have been recruited by giant corporations into doing their bidding. And when it comes to branded, commercial products and services (including apps), Americans' powers of discernment are immense and cut exceedingly fine. In short, the proliferation of genres, sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres in fiction can be seen as like a proliferation of branded products and services, each with its own unique and highly differentiated qualities. I have encountered a term in my research for this series. It's niche marketing. That seems to be what has happened in genre fiction.

* * *

Isaac Asimov asserted that the Golden Age of Science Fiction ended in 1950 when it became no longer possible for a fan of science fiction to read everything that was published in his field in every given month. For the fan and reader, science fiction had grown out of control. You could say that the reader could no longer dominate in his reading. Well, if that's true for the reader, why couldn't the same thing be said of the science fiction writer? If an ambitious writer could no longer dominate in his field, what was he or she to do? One solution was to dominate (or to imagine that one could dominate) within a chosen sub-genre or sub-sub-genre. A writer could say to himself or herself, "I might not be [or can't be] the most accomplished, admired, or influential writer of science fiction, but I can dominate in my field of dark-urban-gothic-horror-science-fantasy." And that's where we are, for every author now lets us know immediately in what sub-genre or sub-sub-genre he or she self-consciously operates. And not only is the sub-genre or sub-sub-genre a brandname, the author's name has become a brandname as well. And on top of that, many authors package themselves as like commercial products. Each has his or her own distinctive, unchanging, recognizable look: hair (or none), clothing, tattoos, piercings, accessories, and so on, like a superhero or a member of KISS. Genre authors may claim higher ambitions, but the words, the look, and the manner are all commercial. They're selling themselves and their works as branded products.

* * *

One of the claims of "the New Weird" is that it crosses genres. Here is a sentence from Wikipedia:

Non-conformity to strict genre definitions is a commonly recognized facet of new weird fiction. 

The problem is that nobody ever said you can't cross boundaries between genres. If there are boundaries, they exist only in the mind of the author, critic, fan, or reader. I would add that only the person lacking in imagination limits himself or herself in his or her writing. If you're a conformist, you probably shouldn't be a writer. A writer should set himself or herself free to write whatever he or she likes and to break through every perceived boundary and barrier. Earlier writers didn't limit themselves, because there weren't any genres, but also because there weren't any limits. Before there were genres and the self-imposed limitations of genre writing, there was, for example, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838), which is a sea adventure, a travelogue, a horror story, a weird tale, and ultimately a strange, visionary, apocalyptic, and uncategorizable work. For another example, there was A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843), which is a Christmas story, a ghost story (including aspects of horror), a humorous work, and a work of realism, including social realism. In its looking into the future, it can even be taken as a proto-science-fictional work, or a work of alternate futures. Those two stories and countless others like them cross boundaries. Does that make them "New Weird"? No, but I'm not sure that anyone would claim such a thing. Burn, strawman, burn.

Now I'll go back to Charles Fort.

As I wrote the other day, Fort was a monist. He believed in the continuity of all things and railed against those who promulgated discontinuity, specifically scientists and science-minded people. The title of his first book, The Book of the Damned (1919), refers to recorded facts or occurrences--he called them data--that were damned and excluded by science. He wanted his data to be included in the whole of knowledge. He wanted continuity.

The proliferation of pulp genres--or the genrefication of fiction as I have called it--began at around the same time that Fort published his book, that is, in 1919. (That was also the same year that J.C. Henneberger landed in Indianapolis and began moving towards his publication of Weird Tales.) Before there were pulp genres, there was just fiction, or literature. In other words, there was continuity. The proliferation of genres introduced discontinuity to the point that science fiction and fantasy in particular are now broken up into dozens of sub-genres and sub-sub-genres. Call that an artifice, a construct. Lay the credit--or the blame--on scholars, critics, analysts, and academically or theoretically minded authors. If writers of "the New Weird"--others, too, including Walker Percy, Margaret Atwood, and Cormac McCarthy--have crossed boundaries among various genres, or from genre fiction to mainstream literature and back again, then they are only going back to the way things were before. In other words, they are making things continuous again, even if some may still cling to their favored genre labels or brandnames. I will add that "the way things were before" is the opposite of "new."

Like Karl Marx, another monist and haunter of the British Library, Charles Fort proposed an all-explanatory theory of nature and history. Leslie Fiedler seems to have done the same kind of thing regarding our literature in Love and Death in the American Novel. I very much admire Dr. Fiedler's book. Marx and Fort have their ardent admirers. (Leslie Fiedler was a Marxist by the way. Another by-the-way: like Dr. Fiedler, Charles Fort wrote science fiction.) There are those who seek to bend the world and its people to their theories, even if it's only in the smallest way. (Too often, it's in the biggest and bloodiest way. I'm looking at you, Karl.) There are those who would also propose all-explanatory theories. (Conspiracy theories are often all-explanatory. The basic Fortean concept is a kind of conspiracy theory, and a lot of conspiracy theories have grown from his data.) It seems to me that "the New Weird" is a theory and not really a thing. I can't say that it's an a priori-type of a theory, but maybe it's close. In any case, "the New Weird" seems to me a kind of brand-making and an attempt by its promoters to gain status and prestige for themselves as discoverers and theorizers of something they claim to be new. (You don't discover things that you invent.) Despite the desire so many people have for new things, there really isn't anything new under the sun. That includes, I think, the so-called "New Weird."

To be continued . . .

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley