In 2017, when I wrote my forthcoming series on the so-called "New Weird," I was less skeptical than I am now about the whole thing. I think I was more willing to accept and write about the concept of "the New Weird" on its creators' terms than on my own. (I have since gone back and placed that phrase in what people call "scare quotes." Take that, all of you "New Weird" people.) Then, in early 2023, I looked more deeply into the meaning and origins of weird, culminating in an entry called "Weird vs. 'The Weird,'" dated February 2, 2023. (Click here.) In that series, I found that the word and concept weird seem to have begun as a noun and not an adjective, that weird, related to fate but not the same thing as fate, was originally a personification--Wyrd or Weird--of the workings upon us of life and the nature or conditions of our existence, of something above us and outside of us, of something beyond our knowledge, comprehension, or control. In short, weird and an awareness of weird predated fiction and literature.
Now to apply the process of calculatus eliminatus to find out some of the things that Weird or weird is not:
Weird is not quite the same as fate, even if the concepts are related.
Weird is not a person, nor a spirit or a goddess, nor a being of any kind.
Weird is not necessarily supernatural. With that being the case, a weird tale is not necessarily a fantasy. In other words, a work of straight or conventional fiction can be a weird tale and vice versa, although weird is obviously emphasized in weird fiction.
Weird is not necessarily punishment, nor judgment, nor retribution, nor law (like doom).
Weird is not a force, least of all the so-called "force" of history. Our lives turn, twist, and bend in unexpected, awful (or awesome), often cruel and seemingly arbitrary, but always necessary ways. We are not to know why. It is not in our ken.
We don't know what are the ways and workings of Weird. We are not to know why she does the things that she does.
Weird is not evil nor ignorant. It does no good at all to rail against her. We must accept her ways, for her decisions are unassailable, even if we cannot understand them. This is just how life is.
Weird surrounds us. We don't surround her. We don't and can't theorize about non-personified weird. Weird is a nonintellectual topic. We don't sense the presence of or apprehend weird through reason, at least of a later type. Weird and an awareness of weird predate reason and every written language.
Weird cannot be circumscribed. It is not an object, a mass, or a quantity. There is no "the Weird." The definite article does not apply.
Weird began as a noun. Only later did it become an adjective. I think that happened for want of a hyphen. That might be a little facetious, but . . . .
In Macbeth (ca. 1606) are the Weird (or Weyward) Sisters. They are of a type, I think, the type being the weird-woman of Scottish tales and Scottish literature. The three sisters in Macbeth are not weird in the way we think of as weird, as in, "I saw a weird guy at the store today." They are weird because they speak the weirds of Macbeth and Banquo. (Weird-woman is like milkman, weird and milk both being nouns. One is delivered by a woman, the other by a man.) There are other weird-women in Scottish literature. I encountered one late last year in "The Two Drovers" by Sir Walter Scott (1827-1828). In any case, if the term, type, and concept weird-woman had been hyphenated, we might have avoided the premature conversion of weird from a noun into an adjective, and our understanding of weird might have been better long ago and better now. That understanding would not have been derailed. In other words, a weird tale is not essentially about weird things. It's about the workings of weird upon the world and the lives of men. Only after understanding that is it acceptable, in my opinion, for us to use weird as an adjective. I'll add that it can be a really useful adjective.
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, there were those who tried to create something they called "the New Weird." I suspect those people were and are progressive in their worldview. They must believe that there can be new things. I think they were also trying to engage themselves in a critical and analytical exercise. I think they were attempting to make of themselves great discoverers, creators, or theorizers, equals to the great men and women of the past. What they failed to understand is that there is nothing new under the sun. They also failed to understand that cultural developments don't start from the top. A person can't decree from whatever high perch or post he imagines himself to occupy that a new form or genre shall come into being. Culture does not come from authority. It is naturally occurring and organic. It grows from below. It is more nearly evolutionary than revolutionary. Culture is not an a priori or gnostic system of thought.
One of the proponents of "the New Weird," China Miéville, is a Marxist. Marx, like Hegel before him, Darwin in his own time, and Charles Fort afterwards, believed that he had discovered an all-explanatory theory of nature and history. (1) We should not underestimate the powerful draw that such a thing represents to the modern and post-modern scholar, academic, theorizer, or intellectual (or pseudo-intellectual), for if he can discover a theory of everything, then he can make of himself a great man, greater of course than what he is in his current not-so-great life. (2) All-explanatory theories, or even theories that try to explain smaller things, usually fail, for life and history continue to confound us. We're not quite smart enough to impose our theories and structures upon them. Facts come before theories. It's not the other way around.
"The New Weird" isn't new anymore, but even when it was supposedly "new," it wasn't, for it seems to me that the idea was based on an old-new thing, namely the British New Wave in science fiction of the 1960s and '70s. [Reading Jeff VanderMeer's introduction to The New Weird (2008) confirms as much.] The construction is the same: "the" plus "new" plus a word that begins with "w," in this case weird, converted from its previous use as an adjective back into a noun again after however many decades and centuries. (At least there's that, even if "the weird" is a clunky and aesthetically unpleasing phrase and sound.) In short, the phrase "the New Weird" is, to me, in obvious imitation of "the New Wave," which was, truth be told, in imitation of the "new wave," or nouvelle vague, of French cinema of the 1950s. (Bossa nova, not quite literally a new wave, is of the same period. The French group Nouvelle Vague, which often performs in the bossa nova style, is of about the same age as "the New Weird.") I think the proponents of "the New Weird" were trying to hitch their wagon to a star--the star of the New Wave--even if that star had faded by the turn of the millennium. What was supposed to be new wasn't new after all. It's older still now.
In summary: "the New Weird" isn't and wasn't new; the definite article doesn't apply; and, although weird is more properly a noun rather than an adjective, the proponents of "the New Weird" used it in the wrong way, applying it, I assume, to a body of fiction of a certain type or sub-genre governed by a theory [or mission statement--see Mr. VanderMeer's introduction] rather than to the weird of pre-modern times governed not at all by men. They tried to throw a rope around it. What they didn't realize is that Weird is not roped.
Notes
(1) Marx considered history to be a science. One of his names for his system of belief was "scientific socialism," as opposed to "utopian socialism," which might also be called, by a stretch, "romantic socialism." Never mind that Marxism is also utopian and romantic, or irrational, in theory and in practice. I would add that Marxism is a kind of horror story for our age.
Update (Apr. 8, 2026): I have two ideas to add. One comes from someone else. The other comes from my own little brain.
First: This morning I read an essay called "Jane Fonda, 'Hail Caesar,' and the False God of History" by Grayson Quay. It's on the website American Greatness and is dated today. Mr. Quay covers a lot of ground in his essay. I'll pick out just one idea for quoting here:
For Marx, the end of history would come when the proletariat overthrew the bourgeoisie and established a classless society. He called the force that made this outcome inevitable "science" rather than "fate," but the effect was the same.
I hadn't thought of it that way before, but Marx must have believed that what he called History is actually the workings of fate, for both are irresistible and inevitable. By this idea, according to Marx it is the weird of the world to become a worker's paradise. The difference is that History is a material force and subject to intellectual understanding, with Marx himself as its sole interpreter and theorizer--only he could speak the weird of humanity--whereas fate and weird are non-material and beyond understanding. In the parlance of Marxism, I guess, they would be considered reactionary or obscurantist.
Second: We hear again and again about this thing or that "changing the course of history." The assumptions in that expression are that "history" has a course--a predetermined and previously unalterable course--and that somehow in defiance of "history," that course can be changed by a special kind of person, action, or event. (In science-fictional terms, would "changing the course of history" create an alternate future history or parallel universe in which the "true," unaltered course of history proceeds?) The implication is that what people call "history" is a force and that we are carried along by this force beyond our control. That may be a vaguely Marxist idea, but maybe it and Marxism come from the same place, i.e., the belief that "history" is a force that operates outside of us and is beyond our understanding or control. Is it too much to propose that there isn't any such thing as history?
Another overused expression these days is "making history," an expression applied to every little thing there is. "I am the first transgender person of color to stand at the highest point in Kansas, and so I have made history." Again, I think, there is the implication that "history" is an independent, objective thing that exists outside of our own minds and lives. Whether we observe it, record it, interpret it, or theorize on it, it nonetheless exists.
(2) I first saw this kind of thing for myself when I went with a group of aspiring young life scientists to a library in St. Louis and watched them gaze with awe and reverence upon a tome, shielded in a glass case, by Charles Darwin. I had the sense that they desired to make of themselves something extraordinary, if only they could, by discovering a theory or concept equal to his.
Text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley
