More on the "New Weird"-Part Two

Weird fiction came into its own during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I don't know who came up with the appellation, nor when it was first used. There were lots of books from the late 1800s with weird in their titles. I feel certain that Jacob Clark Henneberger fell back on those books from his childhood when he was casting about for the title of his new magazine. Thus Weird Tales.

H.P. Lovecraft seems to have been the principle theorist of weird fiction. Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales from 1924 to 1940, should be given his due in the development of weird fiction, too. I think of weird fiction as its own genre or sub-genre, separate from science fiction to be sure, but separate from supernatural horror and fantasy, too. Weird Tales published a broad range of genres and sub-genres, which included weird fiction. The best example I have of a distinction that may be made between weird fiction and stories of supernatural horror or fantasy is in Herbert J. Mangham's brief story "The Basket" from the first issue of Weird Tales, March 1923. "The Basket" is a weird tale but does not have any supernatural elements, nor is it a horror story or fantasy. "The Basket" as weird fiction relates, I think, to the original meaning of the word weird as a noun, something like "fate" or "destiny."

The term science fiction was first used in print, at least during the pulp era, in 1929. Before that, Hugo Gernsback, a real booster of a then-nascent genre, called it Scientifiction. Maybe we can say that weird fiction was more organic in its growth and development, whereas science fiction, at least as a term, was invented. There may be some significance in that distinction. What I mean is this: boosters, hucksters, or insiders--people who have something immediate to gain--may be motivated to invent and name and brand a thing for their own benefit or aggrandizement. On the other side are critics, observers, or outsiders who do not stand to gain so much. Their interests may be more intellectual, scholarly, or academic. For example, the term film noir did not come from the Americans who made movies in the style of what we now call film noir. Instead, it was coined by French movie critics Nino Frank and Jean-Pierre Chartier in 1946. The film noir style evolved from what we should probably consider romantic sources, on one hand, the crime and detective stories of American pulp magazines, and on the other, German Expressionist moviemaking.

So what about the "new" movements of the late 1950s and early 1960s? Well, I guess nobody knows very well how the term bossa nova came about. It seems to have evolved rather than to have been invented. The French New Wave, or Nouvelle Vague, may have been more nearly an invention, but if it was, it was a slow invention carried out by several filmmakers, as well as by critics and academics. The term New Wave as applied to British science fiction of the early 1960s was apparently an invention. According to the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, it was first used by P. Schuyler Miller "in his regular book-review column 'The Reference Library'" in the November 1961 issue of Analog. Miller is supposed to have been inspired by the French filmmakers' New Wave, but there may also have been inspiration in the title of the British science fiction magazine New Worlds. So was it an invention or an evolution? Either way, it was made by a critic and an observer or outsider, not by someone from within the movement itself.

The "New Weird" as a term was first used in print by British author and critic M. John Harrison (b. 1945) in his introduction to China Miéville's novel The Tain (2002). In my first part of this series, I speculated that the "New Weird," even just by the sound of it, is meant to evoke the original science fiction New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s. Well, as it turns out, Mr. Harrison worked as literary editor of New Worlds from 1968 to 1975. I think the association of the terms "New Weird" and New Wave is real and unavoidable. In any case, the "New Weird" as a term appears to be a hybrid: a more nearly self-conscious invention and only partly a product of evolution, its origins discreet and traceable to a known date and place but coined by a critic rather than an insider. Jeff VanderMeer and Ann Kennedy VanderMeer, two insiders, applied Mr. Harrison's term to their later anthology, The New Weird, published in 2008, perhaps in a boosterish sort of move in favor of their supposedly new, preferred genre.

And here is where a quote I just discovered seems appropriate. It's from New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American Literature (1974) by British-born critic and professor of literature David Ketterer (b. 1942). Professor Ketterer was referring to the word apocalyptic when he wrote this, but it could easily apply to any amount of academic or critical theorizing on any number of topics:

It is perhaps a moot question as to whether such usage is of any real worth or just another flashy and confusing tag popularized by attention-seeking critics. (p. 4)

At this late date, there is still nonsense about Francis Stevens and her supposed invention of "dark fantasy" going about on the Internet. As the saying goes, the Internet is forever. Once a bad idea gets out into the digital world, it's hard to get it back.

* * *

One of the things that seems to be lacking in any talk of the "New Weird" is a coherent theory behind it or body of criticism about it. For example, here is a link to an online thread from April-May 2003:

https://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/the-new-weird-p-1.html

The source is the website of Kathryn Kramer. The thread was started by M. John Harrison with these questions:

The New Weird. Who does it? What is it? Is it even anything? Is it even New? Is it, as some think, not only a better slogan than The Next Wave, but also incalculably more fun to do? Should we just call it Pick 'n' Mix instead? 

These are my thoughts exactly: What is it? Is it even a thing? Is it really new? Isn't it really just a recombining of genres and sub-genres after their long (and possibly very artificial) separation? Anyway, there is plenty of talk following Mr. Harrison's questions, but nothing, as far as I can see, that's very conclusive. The language is imprecise, unfocused, in some places vulgar. There are typical twenty-first-century mishmashed buzzwords and nonsense, signifying mostly nothing. One man converts "umbrella" to a verb. There are other offenses, too. So who writes this way? Who thinks this way? The thread is long but nothing much is accomplished. It's also difficult to read in that it looks like a long string of computer code. Written by people who are presumably artists, it has a decidedly unaesthetic appearance. Again, if this is any indication at all, no one seems to have written about the "New Weird" with any great coherence or at any great length. Mr. Harrison's questions seem to have gone unanswered.

Three things seem clear in discussions of the "New Weird": First, proponents don't seem to like high fantasy. Second, they don't seem to like heroic fantasy. And third, they are fond of the words "subvert," "subversion," and "subversive." These are cute words, used, I think, by people who are play-pretending at something. They are the words of adolescents, issued from the bull session or the college dorm room, the words of people trying to shock the world with something they believe to be new. I'm not singling them out, but Jeff VanderMeer is fifty-four years old. China Miéville is fifty. It might be time for the proponents of the "New Weird" to forget about subverting anything. It might be time for them to disregard theories, ideologies, and pseudo-academic talk of genres, sub-genres, and so forth, and instead concentrate on their art. Besides that, "subverting" the reader's expectations already has a name. It's called "the plot twist" or "the surprise ending." If you want to see subversion in a novel, read The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, published in 1969 when Mr. VanDermeer was an infant and Mr. Miéville was still in the womb, if that. Then ask yourself, is there really anything new under the sun? Besides that, you could say that subversion has already won a completely one-sided victory in our culture, a prime example being that this year in the United States a man was selected by a well-known newspaper and news website as its woman of the year. If there is anything left to subvert, it is subversion itself. Let someone do that. We'll wait . . .

While we're waiting, consider what Huey Lewis sang: It's hip to be square. Or, as I-330, a female character from Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We says:

"And why then do you think there is a last revolution . . . their number is infinite . . . The 'last one' is a child's story."

The true revolutionary is the one who overthrows the revolution. The true rebel is the man who goes against the current regime of lies and oppression. The truly radical and subversive ideas are that human beings are autonomous individuals worthy of respect and dignity, that we are and by rights free, that we are made this way by our Creator, that what he has done cannot be undone by any person or persons. Consider this: that socialistic, atheistic, and materialistic ideas are, to use (ironically) one of H.P. Lovecraft's favorite words, puerile, and come over to the good side of things. You're welcome here.

A Polish advertisement for the film The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), from the novel by John Fowles. If you're seeking a work of fiction to subvert your expectations as a reader, look no further than this one. The image here makes me think of "Shambleau" by C.L. Moore.

Original text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley