The New Weird-Part Two

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

Continuing the quotes from the Wikipedia entry on "the New Weird":

Various definitions have been given of the genre. According to Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer, in their introduction to the anthology The New Weird, the genre 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."

Now who can argue with that? Not only is it authentic over-intellectualized gibberish, it expresses . . . well almost nothing at all. I'm not the only one who's confused. From Wikipedia:

According to Gardner Dozois . . . the VanderMeers' anthology "ultimately left me just as confused as to what exactly The New Weird consisted of when I went out as I'd been when I went in." [Boldface added.]

Younger writers might point out that Gardner Dozois, born in 1947, was one of an older generation, a generation against which they are rebelling, one that they are still striving to overthrow. (There will be more from Gardner Dozois in the near future.)

And what of this business of generations? Does that have anything to do with any of the "new" this and "reactionary" that? It may be significant that the four writers from part one of this sub-series were all born between 1968 and 1974. They aren't exactly spring chickens, but they're not Baby Boomers, either, or, like the late Marvin Kaye (1938-2021), members of the Silent Generation. (We won't even bring up J.R.R. Tolkien, who was born in 1892, or H.P. Lovecraft, who was born two years prior.) Maybe writers of about their age (in 2008 when The New Weird was published) were reaching the height of their powers as artists and the pinnacle of their influence as published authors, critics, reviewers, and essayists. Maybe they were simply doing what every generation does or wishes to do, for--artists or not--don't we all want for previous generations to step aside and allow us our place in the sun?

But here's something more: China Miéville, Jeff VanderMeer, K.J. Bishop, and Steph Swainston are all from what is called Generation X. You can't really generalize about a whole generation, which is, after all, a concept and not a real thing. Even if you accept that a generation is a thing, you can't say that this or that is true about a group of people who number in the millions. What is true about Generation X, though? Well, in America, they're a smaller group than the generations before and after them. Knowing that may give Gen-Xers a vague sense of inferiority, grievance, or lack of power, political or otherwise. More than that, though, members of Generation X grew up in a time when tradition seems to have broken down, perhaps the same tradition against which writers of their generation seem to be rebelling. Could Gen-Xers suffer from a special kind of confusion, loss, grief, insecurity, anxiety, depression, or despair? I'm not sure. They were stereotyped as latchkey kids in their youth and as slackers in their young adulthood. Do these things explain the negativity, nihilism, atheism, materialism, depression, despair, and drug use that seem to characterize their generation? I don't know. Again, these are generalizations that can be applied anywhere, at any time, to any sufficiently large group of people. We are all human beings, after all, and all subject to these very human failings, frailties, and more.

However, there is one thing different about the members of Generation X that has not been true of any other generation in American history, for Generation X is actually a half generation (I have called it before the Truncated Generation), the first and only to be split between those born before legalized abortion and those born after. In other words, those born after January 1973 grew up with some eventual awareness that their lives could easily--and legally--have been extinguished in utero by the person whom they supposed should have loved them more than any other. They would have known that millions out of their cohort--their potential brothers and sisters, cousins and classmates, colleagues and coworkers, friends, lovers, and spouses--were missing, and not only that they were missing, but that they had fallen like prey to a cruel and voracious predator, with no one to protect them or defend them when they needed it most. A kind of genocide had been waged upon them by older generations, people of the Silent and Baby Boom generations. (I don't think it's any coincidence that abortion was legalized as Boomer women were reaching their peak years of fertility.) What effect can that knowledge have had on the millions born in the last fifty-three years, especially of the first half-generation--Generation X--who came into the world under those conditions? Is it any wonder that they revel in or are so fascinated by violence, mutilation, dismemberment, blood, brains, guts, gore, and death? That they might hate themselves, wish to harm themselves and mutilate and mar their own bodies? Is it any wonder that they might harbor enmity against the preceding generations that wanted to kill them? (1)

One effect of growing up with the knowledge that you could have been killed when you were at your most helpless and vulnerable--and that millions of your fellows were in fact completely wiped out--might be a common plaint when terrible things happen: Where was God? people ask. Why did he not keep this from happening? I thought he is supposed to love us? In response, people very often conclude that there is and can be no God. I’ll leave you with this quote from Steph Swainston, followed by a final comment:

Evil™, as an adversary in fantasy novels, should be avoided at all costs. I have written three novels without once using the word 'evil', because the people of the Fourlands don't have the religious concept. Ironically, as a result they don't have as much conflict between cultures as we do. (2)

Ms. Swainston is an archaeologist. Presumably she has studied history. Yet she remains naïve (at best) about history, religion, and human nature. Does she not know that people slaughter each other whether they have religion or not? Does she not know that communists in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and elsewhere in the world were and are ostensibly atheistic--i.e., they have no religion--yet have killed countless millions and go on killing as we speak? Does she really believe in a perfect world in which there is no religion and nothing to kill or die for, as in John Lennon's execrable song? As Bugs Bunny would say, what a gullibull, what a nincowpoop.

Notes

(1) Abortion was legalized in 1967 in the United Kingdom and, if I interpret things correctly, in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Australia. The brain-eating, George Romero-type zombie, splatter films, death metal, and other blood-brains-guts-and-gore-related forms and genres are of about the same vintage as members of Generation X.

By the way, in old cartoon drawings a character who has died would have Xs drawn over his eyes. With that being true, maybe Generation X is an apt designation for a group of people, part of whom perished in and the rest of whom escaped from years-long mass killing. By the way, I covered some of these same points in November-December 2022.

(2) From "Dangerous Offspring: An Interview with Steph Swainston" by Jeff VanderMeer on the website of Clarkesworld, October 2007, at the following link:

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/swainston_interview/

Gardner Dozois (1947-2018) put together The Good Old Stuff: Adventure SF in the Grand Tradition, which was published in 1998. He was confused by "the New Weird." That, plus his editorship of a book whose title ties "Good" to "Old," might have classified him as part of "the old" against which "the new" was rebelling. Unfortunately for them, people still like to read "the old." Cover art by Ed Emshwiller, from 1959.

In its 25th anniversary issue of October 1974, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published Philip K. Dick's story "The Pre-Persons." (He wrote it in 1973, no doubt in the aftermath of Roe vs. Wade.) I have never read this story. Only now have I discovered it. (I write this caption on Easter Sunday, 2026, a most appropriate day for today's topic.) The subject is abortion and the story is pro life. With that being the case, I'm surprised we're allowed to read it anymore. I'm surprised that Philip K. Dick's second-place Locus Poll Award (1975) has not been revoked. There are certain things, after all, that cannot be permitted in science fiction opinion in the twenty-first century, one of which is any pro-life work or words. As a radical act of rebellion against a literally ancient belief and practice--Moloch is in the Old Testament, and exposure was a common practice in ancient times--we should all read and distribute "The Pre-Persons."

Here is the author himself on the reaction to his story:

In this, the most recent of the stories in this collection, I incurred the absolute hate of Joanna Russ who wrote me the nastiest letter I've ever received; at one point she said she usually offered to beat up people (she didn't use the word "people") who expressed opinions such as this. I admit that this story amounts to special pleading, and I'm sorry to offend those who disagree with me about abortion on demand. I also got some unsigned hate mail, some of it not from individuals but from organizations promoting abortion on demand. Well, I have always managed to offend people by what I write. Drugs, communism, and now an anti-abortion stand; I really know how to get myself in hot water. Sorry, people. But for the pre-persons' sake I am not sorry. I stand where I stand: "Hier steh' Ich; Ich kann nicht anders," ["Here I stand, I can do no other"] as Martin Luther is supposed to have said. [Boldface added.]

There are of course scads of pro-abortion people who read, write, and comment on science fiction. They will necessarily object to what I have written here. I'll just say: take it up with Philip K. Dick.

Original text copyright 2017, 2026 Terence E. Hanley

The New Weird-Part One

From December 2017, updated for 2026. I may have intended this four-part sub-series to have preceded the last one, but you can read them all however you would like.

Weird fiction and fantasy still offer a way out of the materialist dilemma. It is still possible in these genres to tell a story not informed in any way by politics. It looks, though, like the sands are running out. The revolutionaries are on the march, and it looks like they are laying siege to the various genres of fantasy in an attempt to make them into something more nearly Marxist, materialistic, atheistic, or nihilistic. Is or was the so-called "New Weird" such an attempt? I'm not sure. No one seems to know what "the New Weird" is or was or to be able to define it clearly and concisely. That might be the point for those promoting it as something "new." Jeff VanderMeer was one of the theorizers of '"the New Weird," just as his sometime bugaboo H.P. Lovecraft was a leading theorizer of weird fiction--or what we might call "the Old Weird"--in his own time. In any case, in this part of my series of series, I'll quote piece by piece from the Wikipedia article on "the New Weird," with notations omitted.

To begin:

The new weird is a literary genre that began in the 1990s and developed 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 or speculative fiction genres but who often cross genre boundaries. Notable authors include China Miéville, Jeff VanderMeer, K.J. Bishop[,] and Steph Swainston.

You might not know or be familiar with these writers. I know I’m not, for I have read only a little non-fiction (essays and interviews) from them and none of their fiction. I’ll go through them first:

• China Miéville (b. 1972) is an accomplished and award-winning British author of science fiction, fantasy, etc. He is also a Marxist and an adherent to one kind of critical theory or another. I point these things out not to harp on the topic of Marxism but because Mr. Miéville's political beliefs are part of a thread running through "the New Weird" as a theoretical concept. Here is a revealing quote and a quote within a quote from the Wikipedia article on him: "Miéville works to move fantasy away from J.R.R. Tolkien's influence, which for him is stultifying and reactionary. He once described Tolkien as 'the wen on the arse of fantasy literature.'" (The link to the original source of that quote is broken, or the website on which it appeared is gone.) In any case, I'll have more on Mr. Miéville later. Remember that word reactionary, though.

• Jeff VanderMeer (b. 1968) is not only an author of fiction but also an editor, reviewer, essayist, and critic. His wife, Ann VanderMeer, was the editor of Weird Tales from 2007 to 2012. She resigned her position shortly after Nth Dimension Media under editor Marvin Kaye took over the magazine. I have not read anything Ms. VanderMeer herself has written on the tussle she had with Marvin Kaye, but her husband sure wasn't happy with the situation. You can read about the whole thing in my series called "The Weird Tales Controversy" from 2015 (link to part one here). In any case, by appearances, Jeff VanderMeer is at the very least left-leaning. Some of what he has written on the Internet can be taken as anti-human. I can't say for sure what he believes or where he falls on any political spectrum. (Most political spectrums are pretty well useless anyway.) You'll have to puzzle all of that out for yourself. Here is a quote on him, though, again from Wikipedia: "[Mr.] VanderMeer's fiction is noted for eluding genre classifications even as his works bring in themes and elements from genres such as postmodernism, ecofiction, the New Weird[,] and post-apocalyptic fiction." Note, as in the Wikipedia article on "the New Weird," the attempt to separate genres into discrete and discontinuous piles: this goes here, that goes there, but where do we put "the New Weird"? As we have seen, though, the idea of discontinuity among genres isn't very useful and may be illusory--except for perhaps in science fiction.

• K(irsten) J. Bishop (b. 1972) is an Australian author, artist, and blogger. I haven't found an awful lot about her on the Internet except for what she herself has written. One primary source is from the website Strange Horizons, on which she was interviewed by David Lynton in 2004. (1) In that interview, Ms. Bishop refers to China Miéville. Jeff VanderMeer interviewed her for another website, Clarkesworld (2). In none of that do I detect any particular political opinion, belief, or stance. It's worth noting that she does not (or did not in 2008) consider herself a writer of "the New Weird."

• Steph Swainston (b. 1974) is a British author, archaeologist, and scientist. Here is a quote about her, once again, from Wikipedia: "While characterised [sic] by others as a member of the New Weird fantasy literary genre, which aims to reform fantasy literature by transcending its traditional boundaries, Swainston has argued against labeling writers--including herself--within genres, arguing that good fantasy and mainstream literature instead form a continuum." [Emphasis added.]

I have emphasized that last word--continuum--because, like continuity, it gets to a point I have made before and that I want to go on making, namely that the different genres of fantasy are in fact continuous (except for perhaps science fiction)--they can't be separated from each other--moreover that there probably isn't any such thing as a discrete, recognizable, and definable genre or sub-genre or sub-sub-genre of "the New Weird." Here again is a quote from the Wikipedia article of that subject: "The writers involved [in "the New Weird"] are mostly novelists who are considered to be parts of the horror or speculative fiction genres but who often cross genre boundaries."

Of the four writers mentioned here, only Jeff VanderMeer seems to fit into the category of "the New Weird" writer, a category that he seems to have created, perhaps in concert with others. The other writers listed here would seem to defy attempts to categorize them as of "the New Weird." That bears saying again: "the New Weird" appears to be a theoretical, academic, or critical concept--a supposedly new sub-genre (or like I said before, an attempt at a supergenre) that its practitioners say crosses categories and defies labeling, and yet "the New Weird" is a category, a branded product, neatly poured into a container designed, made, and labeled, seemingly by Jeff VanderMeer and his fellow theorizers of the so-called "New Weird."

So why this push for "the New Weird"? I can't say for sure, but I can speculate. (I'm always up for speculation.) One reason for the push is probably just boosterism. "Here I am, everybody, a new writer in a new genre. Please read my books, which subvert all of the conventions of fantasy and all of your expectations of what fantasy is or should be." Never mind that there is, as Ecclesiastes says, nothing new under the sun. Never mind that subversion is just a buzzword and not a serious idea. It's actually pretty sophomoric.

More to the point is, I think, the burning desire of the radical or revolutionary (real or self-imagined) to overthrow the past--to burn down all tradition, convention, and authority, including or especially the authority figures of the past. One writer of "the New Weird" after another expresses his or her dislike or disdain for those authorities. Those writers especially don't like J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft. Again and again, they use certain words--conservative, reactionary--to describe conventional fantasy. They want to create something new, not realizing, perhaps, that everything has already been tried and there cannot be anything new, except--significantly for the writers of the one genre, science fiction, which is perhaps discontinuous with other genres of fantasy--what is brought about in the real world by science and technology.

One last point: the radical or revolutionary in the arts, including literature, is often related to the radical or revolutionary in political terms. China Miéville may be the most conventionally radical or revolutionary among the four writers listed above. And yet he still lives and thrives by free-market institutions. I would argue that socialism and Marxism, being means of oppressing and enslaving humanity, are in fact extremely reactionary and as old as time. Human freedom and unalienable rights are actually far more radical ideas.

To be continued . . .

Notes

(1) Here is the URL: http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/interview-k-j-bishop/. 

(2) And here is this one: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kjbishop_interview/

Original text copyright 2017, 2026 Terence E. Hanley

Reactions and Reactionaries-Part Four

From December 2017, updated to 2026.

No natural science can hold its own in the struggle against the onslaught of bourgeois ideas and the restoration of the bourgeois world outlook unless it stands on solid philosophical ground. In order to hold his own in this struggle and carry it to a victorious finish, the natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist.

--V.I. Lenin, The Significance of Militant Materialism (1922)

In 2011, Marvin Kaye and his partnership Nth Dimension Media acquired the rights or license to publish Weird Tales magazine. The editor, Ann VanderMeer, stayed on, but not for long. She left in August 2012. I don't know what her reaction was to the whole situation, but her husband, Jeff VanderMeer, was obviously upset by it. I can sympathize. On the other hand, if he had wanted Weird Tales to be a certain thing--his thing--he should have acquired the rights or the license himself. Instead, Marvin Kaye took over. Unfortunately, he and Nth Dimension Media published only four issues of their new charge from 2012 to 2019. There weren't any issues at all in the period 2015 to 2018.

Marvin Kaye's acquisition of the Weird Tales, effectively removing it from the VanderMeers' control, can be seen as a counterrevolution, as a reactionary attempt to restore the ancien régime. The Cthulhu Mythos issue, published in Fall 2012, can be seen as a shot through the heart of the attempted revolution against H.P. Lovecraft, his work, and older forms in general, what has been called "the Old Weird." It might also be seen as a move against the dissolution of what the VanderMeers and writers in their circle had seemingly judged to be a cohesive genre, governed by tradition and convention. In the pages of Weird Tales at least, there would be no more radical attempts at remaking "the Old Weird" into the genre-crossing, genre-bending, anything-goes "New Weird." We should note that Marvin Kaye was born less than a year after Lovecraft died, and so there was a kind of continuity in the life, if there is such a thing, of weird fiction.

To her great credit, Ann VanderMeer made sure that Weird Tales was published year after year, for six years anyway, from 2007 to 2012 inclusive. During her tenure, it was an award-winning magazine. The late Mr. Kaye was less successful in those two ways. Is that evidence that a more conservative approach to genre fiction was no longer viable? Was a "New Weird" approach better in commercial or artistic terms? I don't know. But in 2023, the new, new editor of Weird Tales, Jonathan Maberry, put out a Cosmic Horror Issue, and though he used stories by "New Weird"-type authors, that issue fell back on old--even old and moldy--concepts, themes, and conventions (e.g., Vril). Remember here that cosmic horror is a synonym for Lovecraftian horror, and so Lovecraft and "the Old Weird" had come back. I wonder what Ann and Jeff VanderMeer thought of that. I wonder what relationship, if any, they have with Mr. Maberry, who relied on his friends to provide him with content, like Andy Hardy putting on a show. Mr. VanderMeer is not represented in the Cosmic Horror Issue, nor is his name in Mr. Maberry's list of authors who write or wrote cosmic horror stories. I have never read any of Jeff VanderMeer's fiction, so I can't say whether he has written in that sub-genre or not.

Charles Fort's complaint against science was that scientists had set their facts--their data--as separate and discontinuous from all other data. Those other data, then, were excluded. They were damned. Before he wrote The Book of the Damned (1919), Fort wrote science fiction stories, all of which he destroyed. Maybe he became a gadfly of science because of his own struggles with the nascent genre of science fiction. In any case, if scientists and science-minded people are correct in their worldview, and science fiction is the fiction of science, then it would follow that science fiction is discontinuous with all other genres. If science is purely materialistic, then any fiction based on science must also be purely materialistic. No fantasy, ghosts, spirits, or non-material forces of any kind, including psychic powers, allowed. And if V.I. Lenin, a thoroughgoing materialist, was right and the natural sciences must be Marxist in orientation, then from the Marxist point of view, science fiction can't be anything but Marxist.

Unfortunately for the science fiction author oriented towards Marxism, that would mean the end of his genre, for Marxism is demonstrably and has repeatedly been a failure of epic and murderous proportions. What artist--not propagandist but artist--would want any part of that? If writers of "the New Weird" or any other "new" genre or sub-genre or sub-sub-genre would hope to model their beliefs on Marxism or its offshoots, or perhaps on any codified a priori or gnostic system, then they, too, will fail in artistic or intellectual terms--and almost certainly in commercial terms. Editors, publishers, distributors, and sellers of books work for corporations. The vast majority of readers are middle class, in other words, part of the Marxist's hated bourgeoisie. Why would any of them want to read about how terrible they are or why they should be torn down and cast upon the ash heap of History? On the other hand, there are those who despise themselves and everything they have come from, including their own families, the middle class, Christianity, Western civilization, and the European-style nation-state. Maybe they like reading stories of destruction. Maybe that's why so much genre fiction is dark, depressing, violent, bloody, gory, and nihilistic. Even H.P. Lovecraft, a supposed materialist, spared humanity in "The Call of Cthulhu." He didn't hate us enough to destroy us just yet. And so people keep reading Lovecraft, despite his frequent darkness and pessimism. Meanwhile, "the New Weird" has grown old and gray. Maybe at this point it has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

Anyway, I would wager that any science fiction or other genre or sub-genre based on Marxist, materialistic, or atheistic ideas will wither and die because we as human beings have an undeniable non-material and spiritual aspect. It is a lie to say that we are merely material. Although lies can live, they are mortal, whereas the truth is eternal and imperishable--the truth will out, while lies can live only in the dark, including in the dark heart of the hateful, despairing, and vengeful Marxist.

Red Menace #47, "War-Maker," from a trading card issued by Bowman in 1951. Note the ape with a scimitar, wading in blood. This is not Poe's orangutan. If you're a Marxist, Mao Tse-tung is one of your buddies. You might as well own him. In this picture he has a green face, like Frankenstein's monster or Cthulhu or an alien from space. The unknown artist could not have anticipated the current Red-Green coalition that seeks to tear down Western civilization. Or maybe I should call it a Red-Green-Green coalition.

Text copyright 2017, 2026 Terence E. Hanley

Reactions and Reactionaries-Part Three

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.

--V.I. Lenin

Although H.P. Lovecraft was a materialist, his reach, especially in his own lifetime, was fairly limited. For example, he never had a hardbound book or collection published while he was alive. (He's lucky--maybe--to have had August Derleth as a friend and admirer, otherwise he might have been forgotten.) On the other hand, two of the most well-known and influential fantasies of the twentieth century, the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, were by distinctly Christian writers. Both men were also of course conservative, especially in the original, non-political or anti-political sense of the word.

If I had to summarize the difference between the Conservative and the Progressive, it might be that the former understands that we as human beings are fallen in our nature, while the latter believes that we and our society are perfectible. Whether you throw in religion, especially Judaism or Christianity, or not, conservatives tend to believe in the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute. Progressives, on the other hand, tend to believe in the relative, the arbitrary, the conditional, what they call "complex" or "nuanced" views of things. They see gray areas where conservatives tend to see only black and white. I have dated the first proliferation of genres to 1919 when the first specialized pulp magazines arrived on the newsstand. Well, British historian Paul Johnson dated the advent of the twentieth century and its moral relativism to 1919 when the Eddington experiment confirmed Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Another convergence--or a leaping-off point.

In the quote I used to close a previous entry in this series, Steph Swainston stated her non-belief in evil. Here is a long quote from an interview with China Miéville from The Believer #23, dated April 1, 2005, link here:

Pinochet is very likely to die in his bed surrounded by a grieving family. That's not fair. [Can you hear the whining?] Pinochet should be held to account. Kissinger should not be able to eat pâté de foie gras. You know, the worst thing that seems to have happened to Kissinger in the last few years is that his travel plans have become a little bit more complicated because he's worried about being tried, but the fact is he's likely to die in his bed. This is not a fair, moral world. [More whining.] Sometimes the guilty do get punished and the good do get rewarded, and that's fantastic and I'm always delighted when that happens, but I do want to try to make Bas Lag as socially realistic a world as I can and as morally realistic a world as I can. And the fact that I reject abstract morality doesn't mean that I'm immoral or amoral--I feel very moral--but it means that the morality is concrete and is related to politics rather than being a kind of schema that you slap on top of the world and then judge the world according to. I should say that I feel there is a danger in all this, in that I think there is sometimes a cheap gravitas to be accrued by being cruel to your characters. That there is a certain tendency in some kinds of fiction to say, "Look, I haven't rewarded the good and I haven't punished the bad. This must be gritty, realistic hard fiction." In fact, it can degenerate into a kind of aesthetic sadism. I am mindful that there is a line to be walked between really, really pat and fairytale and trite, and being sadistic and willfully unpleasant to your characters, and I don't want to get into a position of being spiteful to the characters just to appear to be unflinching. [Boldface added.]

Let's give the author credit for the sentiments he expressed in the last part of that quote. Now let's have another look at the first part:

And the fact that I reject abstract morality doesn't mean that I'm immoral or amoral--I feel very moral--but it means that the morality is concrete and is related to politics rather than being a kind of schema that you slap on top of the world and then judge the world according to. [Emphasis added.]

Morality is concrete and is related to politics. I take that to mean that, in Mr. Miéville's view, morality is relative rather than absolute because what is moral and what is not moral is decided not by God, nor by resorting to anything infinite, eternal, or absolute, but by individual human beings, who are by nature--whether he realizes it or not--weak, frail, imperfect, contingent, trapped in time, and sure to die. These people doing the deciding are actors in politics, the politically powerful, ultimately, I suppose, the State. I take it also to mean that morality, being concrete, is material and based on material ends or outcomes rather than on anything abstract or non-material. Is China Miéville being merely coy here? I don't know. There was no pussyfooting by V.I. Lenin, though. On the same topic, he said, "There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience."

Speaking of the founder of Bolshevism, Lenin died in bed. Is that fair or moral by China Miéville's standards? In the one hundred and nine years since Lenin and his followers seized power, tens of millions of people--perhaps 100 million or more--have perished under the system he created. Countless millions more have been imprisoned, tortured, enslaved, exiled, or otherwise tormented or made to suffer in one way or another under that same system. Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, the Khmer Rouge, and others under varying brands of communism and socialism have started and waged wars of extraordinary cruelty. (Two points: First, when it comes to developing brandnames, Marxists are as prolific as capitalists. Second, the surname Marx refers to Mars, god of war, and the Communist's flag is the color of blood and fire.) What of that? Why should Henry Kissinger be an especial focus for China Miéville's ire? Does he turn a blind eye to the sins and depredations of his co-religionists? If so, why? What moral system is it exactly that allows for such a thing?

Further questions: Why is the focus of the Leftist always on the ideological opposition? Why is Henry Kissinger a villain but V.I. Lenin is not? Why is it fair that one should die in bed but not the other? In this age of critical theory, we know the answer: it is because criticism against the opposition must be forever fierce and relentless. We on the near side of critical theory are absolved of our sins. You over there must forever be condemned. Remember that critical theory is a product of the Frankfurt School and an extension of Marxism. Although it came from Europe (It Came from Europe--sounds like a monster movie from the 1950s), critical theory developed in this country during the 1960s, the same decade during which academics began looking at and evaluating American popular culture of previous eras, including the pulp fiction-era. Critical theory is now rampant in academia, as is the study and exploitation of popular culture for political and propagandistic ends.

Still more questions: Why should China Miéville as a Marxist author write fantasies about anything that is non-material in its nature or being? Is it because he understands the limits of materialism and would rather not work within the constraints imposed by his own belief system? Or is it because he is secretly (or not so secretly) something more than a mere materialist? Put another way, why does any author who claims to be a materialist write anything other than science fiction of the strictest and most materialistic kind? Maybe Mr. Miéville isn't so strict in his views after all. Maybe he can allow for the non-material to operate in his works. (I assume here that there are non-material things in his works.) Then again, maybe he's up to something else: maybe he and certain other writers of the so-called "New Weird" are (or were) trying to expand materialism, atheism, and Marxism into genres where they had previously gained little traction. Maybe that is what was "new" about "the New Weird": a weird fiction--or more broadly, a literature of fantasy--previously dominated by conservatives, non-materialists, even Christians, now taken over by the political opposition. Maybe "the New Weird" and related movements and trends are the train carrying the revolutionary across an old and war-torn land, its final stop, the frontier and the Finland Station.

An anti-commie cover of the men's magazine For Men Only, published in May and perfect for May. Year and cover artist unknown. I don't know about you, but I think being an anti-commie is way more fun than being a commie. 

Original text copyright 2017, 2026 Terence E. Hanley

Reactions and Reactionaries-Part Two

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

[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.

--From "Dangerous Offspring: An Interview with Steph Swainston"

by Jeff VanderMeer, Clarkesworld, October 2007.

In Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the 1980s (1983), British historian Paul Johnson set the beginning of the twentieth century in the year 1919 and a single event: the Eddington experiment, which confirmed a prediction made in Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity regarding the deflection of light caused by gravity. The late Mr. Johnson's thesis is that relativity passed from physics into other realms of thought and practice--that Einsteinian relativity became transformed into moral relativism--and thereby the central idea of the 20th century was formed. Just as there are no fixed points of reference in space-time, there are now no fixed morals, i.e., no moral absolutes. What is moral for one person might be considered immoral by another, but it doesn't matter. All viewpoints are equal. All morals are relative, or they don't exist at all, and so every kind of depravity and atrocity is permitted. To put it another way, "'Evil' is just a strong word for something you don't like."

Here is a much longer quote, a passage, from The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (1942). It opens Chapter VII. The devil Screwtape addresses his nephew:

My dear Wormwood,

I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient [i.e., the human being on whom Wormwood is working] in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy [i.e., God]. The "Life Force," the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work--the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits"--then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that "devils" are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.

In emphasis: 

Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves.

If once we can produce our perfect work--the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits"--then the end of the war will be in sight.

If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.

In the Preface to The Screwtape Letters, the author put things more succinctly:

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race [i.e., the human race] can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. 

Disbelieving in the devil--and by extension evil--as a moral, intellectual, and spiritual pitfall is older than that. In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former communist (i.e., a materialist and a believer in "Forces") and a convert to Christianity (i.e., a believer in God and the spirit), traced it to the previous century. In "The Devil," in Life magazine, he wrote:

Baudelaire, that old flower of evil, was right: "The Devil's cleverest wile is to make men believe that he does not exist."

Baudelaire was of course Charles Baudelaire, the French poet and a composer of weird poems. I feel certain that Baudelaire had merely put into words an age-old insight among men.

The point in all of this is that any author, including authors of the so-called "New Weird," who disbelieves in evil; who believes instead in "Forces," including History; or who operates either as a materialist or a "magician," has fallen for wiles. He or she has been duped: supposedly smart and well-educated people, falling for the oldest trick in the book.

* * *

Anything old, and for that matter anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect.

--1984 by George Orwell (Ch. 8) 

Authors of "the New Weird" appear to be--or state outright--that they are against what they call "reactionary" authors of the past. Two or three meet their special ire: J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, and then take your pick: Robert A. Heinlein, Robert E. Howard, C.S. Lewis. (There seems to be less ire directed towards Lewis. Perhaps newer authors see him as gentle and non-threatening. But maybe he was fiercer than he appeared. I wonder what they might make of Flannery O'Connor.) Reactionary is sometimes a useful and descriptive word. But in the mouth of the radical or revolutionary leftist or Marxist, it is a pejorative, and one of the worst, though not as bad as "Nazi" or "Fascist."

To some people, I suppose, reactionary also means old. Maybe any difference doesn't matter to the person who is trying to tear down the past. After all, the goal is to start with zero. That means everything has to go onto the ash heap of History if we are to have a better and happier world. Taking away starting-at-zero as a goal, we are permitted to hold onto some things from the past. We can't get rid of Marx, after all. He's the granddaddy of all of our ideas. But just how old does something have to be before the people defending it are called "reactionary"? Rousseau is from the eighteenth century, but his ideas are considered fresh, while the younger U.S. Constitution is called outdated. We have to continue to believe in the perfectibility of man and society, as well as in the State as the expression of the general will of the people, but the rights to speak freely, to question, to dissent--these and more are problematic, if not disposable. Poverty, oppression, and political murder are as old as time, but they are to be respected under Marxism. Look at how leftists in America and their media lapdogs (or maybe it's the other way around) see Cuba right now. (I write in April. Maybe by May, Cuba will be free. May 1st would make a nice day for it. Update: It hasn't turned out that way, but it will happen soon, I think.) Meanwhile, newer and far more radical ideas--Christianity, unalienable rights, human freedom, including economic freedom--must be suppressed if not extinguished. We have to get rid of old-old things, but we have to raise up and hold on to new-old things, for example, ideas from "the New Left," policies and institutions from "the New Deal" and "the New Society," as well as the British New Wave as a model of the so-called "New Weird." The youngest of these "new" things (except for "the New Weird") is now more than sixty years old. So are many of the authors of "the New Weird."

I harp on Marxism because China Miéville, born in 1972 and one of the originators of "the New Weird," is a Marxist, necessarily a materialist. Marxism is, I think, an attempt to bring back the glory days of feudalism, before there was a middle class (the Marxist bourgeoisie) to usurp the power of the monarch (our current or aspirational State) and the aristocracy (our current élite or clerisy). Feudalism is old, old. It goes back at least to the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire. If it isn't literally ancient, it is very nearly so. And Marxists want it back.* Karl Marx was like a Scooby-Doo villain. His scheme would have worked--he would have been recognized as a great man, an Übermensch, and would have been able to lie around all day, doing as he pleased, lazing in luxury and wealth while Beulah peeled him a grape--if it hadn't been for those meddling bourgeoisie.

Even if feudalism is only new-old, systems and practices of political murder, oppression, impoverishment, and slavery are old-old--they go back many thousands of years. If you hate old things--if you consider yourself a progressive, radical, or revolutionary--why would you want to go back to them? Isn't that actually reactionary? Isn't the truly radical idea the Christian idea that we are free and equal because God made us so? (I remember the motto of the old Indianapolis Star: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.") That there are moral absolutes established not by men but by God and no moral relatives at all? That the State is not an absolute authority on anything? If these things are true--if tyranny is as old as time but freedom is ever new and radical--then who again is the real reactionary? Who wants to overthrow the radical revolutions of Christianity and human freedom and return to the glorious past when the State or king was a kind of god and an aristocracy ruled over the benighted masses?

* * *

I'll close part two of this sub-series with the words of a socialist on the subject of socialists. From The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell (1937):

The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism, in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting. This last type is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps been taken over en bloc from the old Liberal Party. In addition to this there is the horrible--the really disquieting--prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

And:

To this you have got to add the ugly fact that most middle-class Socialists, while theoretically pining for a class-less society, cling like glue to their miserable fragments of social prestige. I remember my sensations of horror on first attending an I.L.P. branch meeting in London. (It might have been rather different in the North, where the bourgeoisie are less thickly scattered.) Are these mingy little beasts, I thought, the champions of the working class? For every person there, male and female, bore the worst stigmata of sniffish middle-class superiority.

Finally:

But is it? Sometimes I look at a Socialist--the intellectual, tract-writing type of Socialist, with his pullover, his fuzzy hair, and his Marxian quotation--and wonder what the devil his motive really is. It is often difficult to believe that it is a love of anybody, especially of the working class, from whom he is of all people the furthest removed. The underlying motive of many Socialists, I believe, is simply a hypertrophied sense of order. [. . .] The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to regard the book-trained Socialist as a bloodless creature entirely incapable of emotion. Though seldom giving much evidence of affection for the exploited, he is perfectly capable of displaying hatred--a sort of queer, theoretical, in vacua hatred--against the exploiters. Hence the grand old Socialist sport of denouncing the bourgeoisie. It is strange how easily almost any Socialist writer can lash himself into frenzies of rage against the class to which, by birth or by adoption, he himself invariably belongs.**

Now I will observe that China Miéville is one of the bourgeoisie--he, like his mother, is a writer and a teacher--and that he is related in one way or another to British barons, so in that way he is aristocrat-adjacent. The people who edit, publish, distribute, sell, and read his books are also of the bourgeoisie. As for Jeff VanderMeer, he, too, emanates from the middle class, as does probably every other supposedly liberal, leftist, socialist, Marxist, Labour- or Democrat- or Green-oriented, progressive, radical, or revolutionary writer, editor, academic, scholar, or critic, whether of "the New Weird" or not.

Silly.

-----

*Sacrifices made to Moloch are older still. Marxists and their fellow-travelers want those back, too. Abortion and infanticide are two examples. Transgenderism is another. Whitaker Chambers began to turn away from communism when the party demanded that his wife have an abortion, for it understood that if she were to have a child, he and she both would have loyalty to something other than the party. Marxists see the family as a threat to their belief system. They want only to destroy it. Marxism is, after all, a jealous god.

**I'm glad that George Orwell was a socialist, and that he was a Briton. If he had not been a socialist, socialists would have dismissed him as a reactionary. If he were alive today, they would cancel him, just as people on the left have tried to cancel J.K. Rowling, who is no conservative at all except that she understands that a man can't be a woman. And Britain needs Orwell more than we do. He can speak to the people of the United Kingdom as one of their countrymen. If he had been an American, they would easily have shut him out. They need to hear him, though, and heed the warnings that he provided them in his writings, especially in 1984 (1949), which was, as we know, not intended as an instruction book.

By the way, earlier this year a British video game character named Amelia escaped from her creators to become a tempter of young men away from the State that wants to prevail over them. (If the society created by the overarching and controlling state is Eden, then let there be no Eve.) In that way, Amelia plays the same role as Julia in 1984, LUH 3417 in THX 1138 (1971), and I-330 in We (1924). There have since become German, Dutch, and other versions of Amelia. I wish them all success, even if they have faded from the news. (Stay tuned for more on Amelia, as well as Joy Division and Starship Troopers.)

A Signet edition of 1984 by George Orwell, with cover art by Alan Harmon.

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley

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