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.

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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