From December 2017, updated for 2026.
A third quote from Wikipedia on "the New Weird":
Robin Anne Reid notes that while the definition of the new weird is disputed, "a general consensus uses the term" to describe fictions that "subvert cliches of the fantastic in order to put them to discomfiting, rather than consoling ends." [Boldface added.]
There's that word: subvert, as in the political act of subversion, in which the writer would attempt to make of himself or herself a radical or revolutionary, ready to tear down or overthrow the past. I don't know about you, but I'm skeptical of the possibility of subversion in literature, let alone as a goal for the writer.* Subversion implies that something is being tried that has never or seldom been tried before. It implies that writers of perhaps only middling ability and accomplishment possess great power, i.e., to do something new and to carry out a revolution. It also implies that the the writer is working behind the scenes to his or her own purposes and that he or she will soon surprise you with something. That's called suspense or a plot twist or a surprise ending. These are things writers do to keep you reading. Suspense, plot twists, and surprises work in all brands of fiction, including in the best literature. (A modest example: The Charisma Campaigns by Jack Matthews [1972], which is one of the funniest books I have ever read but which ends in a disaster for its protagonist.) There's nothing special about "the New Weird" in that way. Remember that the word weird is from a root meaning "to bend." So in weird fiction there are twists and bends.
If you think about it, O. Henry (1862-1910) more or less subverted the expectations of his readers and the conventions of the short story. O. Henry's stories were happy, though, or in Robin Anne Reid's words, "consoling." "The New Weird" supposedly deals in "discomfiting" endings. Does that mean that bad things happen in "New Weird" fiction? Or that there is little that happens that is not discomfiting? I don't know. Like I said, I'm not sure of the definition of this supposedly new genre or sub-genre or sub-sub-genre. I guess I should read some of it to find out. But does anyone really think that fiction that crosses or blends genres, or that defies easy characterization, or in which bad things, including unhappy endings, occur is something new? If so, has this person never read Greek mythology, Shakespearian tragedy, or the stories of Edgar Allan Poe? Has he or she never read Weird Tales in its original incarnation, or stories by the authors who contributed to the magazine, such as Strange Eons by Robert Bloch (1978), a book written by a protégé and friend of H.P. Lovecraft and published five decades ago when Jeff VanderMeer and China Miéville were still schoolchildren? In that story, Bloch let Cthulhu loose upon the world in an apocalypse beyond Lovecraft. In the movie Psycho (1961), based on Bloch's book, written before those two men were born, takes the most unexpected of turns when its heroine is . . . well, watch the movie.
Continuing from Wikipedia:
Reid also notes the genre ["the New Weird"] tends to break down the barriers between fantasy, science fiction[,] and supernatural horror. In comparing the new weird to bizarro fiction, Rose O'Keefe of Eraserhead Press claims that "People buy New Weird because they want cutting edge speculative fiction with a literary slant. It's kind of like slipstream with a side of weirdness." [Boldface added.]
It's getting to be an old tune, but I'll sing it again: fantasy fiction in all of its varieties is continuous, not discontinuous. It has been this way since Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote Gothic science fiction (or proto-science fiction), a seeming contradiction, walked the earth. There has always been a blending of and a crossing over from one genre to another. Any barriers between genres that have to be broken down were built recently and not very well. But then maybe the idea of barriers in genre fiction is the convention or tradition against which authors of "the New Weird" are rebelling. (As I have said, maybe they were attempting to create or recreate a supergenre.) Those perceived barriers may be between different genres of fantasy. They may also be between fantasy and what people consider serious or mainstream literature. Where exactly are those barriers, though? In American literature alone, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry James, Mark Twain, and on and on wrote what can be called fantasy. Their works are also in the canon taught in every high school literature class. So where are the barriers? I will admit that there is a real snobbishness in literary circles towards what people call fantasy, genre fiction, or pulp fiction. But isn't good writing good and bad writing bad, regardless of the form or genre? I guess I'm still not sure what people are getting at when they talk about "the New Weird." And here we are almost at the end of this series.
To be concluded . . .
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*In 2017, in my draft, I wrote: "I don't know about you, but I'm skeptical of the idea of subversion as a possibility in literature." Actually, I can think of a supreme case in which the author subverted the reader's expectations, and that is in The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles (1969), which goes from being fictional to being almost shockingly meta-fictional. Reading that book will give you whiplash. The publication of the late Mr. Fowles' novel was contemporaneous with that of New Worlds. Jeff VanderMeer was a baby and China Miéville hadn't even been born yet when it was published in 1969. And yet they and other writers of "the New Weird" claim subversion as something new and one of their hallmarks. I think instead of subversion and subversive as simply buzzwords. Writers like to comfort themselves with words like them, such as fierce, brave, edgy, and so on.
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| Cover art by Matt Mahurin. |
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