There are people who believe in cycles of history, including American history. If there are cycles of history, then a historian might discover them. If there are not cycles of history, a historian can still impose his predetermined theory or system upon the facts of history and make it look like there are cycles. He can interpret or bend the facts to fit his ideas. That's always the hazard in postulating theories and systems, for we as human beings don't live our lives by such things. A person who lives his life by a system is likely to be frustrated and unhappy. He is also likely to punish his fellow human beings for not going along with him or it.
Knowing these things is not going to stop me from speculating on possible cycles of genre fiction.
If they exist, the cycles of genre fiction are of science fiction and its alternatives, which include weird fiction, horror, fantasy, and Gothic-Romantic fiction. For simplicity's sake, I'll lump those last genres into one called weird fiction. In science fiction, we're in control of our lives and we use science as our ultimate tool, the Swiss army knife by which we treat and solve all problems. In weird fiction, we're not in control of our lives, and there may not be any solutions. We lack most tools. Problems may go on and on.
Generally speaking: science fiction is Apollonian. It is linear, plot-driven, novelistic, modernistic, and progressive or forward-looking. In science fiction, there is a satisfactory resolution to the story. Generally speaking: weird fiction is Dionysian. It is more often weblike or oceanic and is not generally plot-driven. It more often focuses on mood or atmosphere and may be more character-driven, or the emphasis is on the human individual. Weird fiction is Gothic-Romantic. It is conservative and backward-looking. Its main form is the short story or tale because effects of mood, atmosphere, and emotion, as well as the suspension of disbelief and immersion in a story are sustainable for only so long, i.e., as long as it takes to read a short story in one sitting. Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce wrote short stories and eschewed the novel for a reason (assuming that reason was not sour grapes). Weird fiction is not modernistic. It may even be folkloric. In weird fiction, there may not be any resolution at all to the story, or the resolution is ambiguous or only for the short term.
Science fiction would seem fitted to positive, optimistic, and prosperous times, but that's not always so, for science fiction offers hope even in hard times. Weird fiction would seem fitted to hard times, but even in good times there are doubters, naysayers, doomsayers, gadflies, cynics, and skeptics. Jeremiah, Gloomy Gus, Eeyore, and Ambrose Bierce live everywhere.
If genres arose and were then divided at around the time of World War I, then cycles of genre fiction may have begun only then. Even if they didn't, the era of weird fiction in America may have begun in the 1870s or '80s and extended until the late 1930s or early 1940s. Weird Tales began in March 1923, less than five years after the war had ended and at a time when the horrors of war had already come home. Amazing Stories began in April 1926, but science fiction seems to have taken awhile to develop. The 1920s and early to mid '30s were a time of weird fiction and Weird Tales, for monster movies and horror movies.
Weird Tales changed hands in 1938. Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft were gone by then. Of the Big Three, that left only Clark Ashton Smith, who never had the following that his fellows did and never would. Also in 1938, the new editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr., initiated what was, in retrospect, known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Weird Tales lasted another sixteen years (it even published science fiction stories), but the 1940s, '50s, and early '60s were a time for science fiction. The same things were true at the movie theater: again, movies about monsters and horror were very popular in the 1920s, '30s, and early '40s. Science fiction movies took off after World War II and were very popular in the 1950s.
Weird fiction, including the Gothic Romance, made a comeback in the 1960s. That was due in part to nostalgia, and we should never underestimate the power of nostalgia in causing the cycles of pop culture to turn. There was also a questioning of science fiction, or a reevaluation of what it is or what it might be or should be. There was even the question of whether science fiction was dying. The British New Wave, which seems to have shared some characteristics with weird fiction and Gothic-Romantic fiction, arose in the 1960s. Science fiction seems to have become more negative, pessimistic, skeptical, or Dionysian at that time. On the other hand, there was the positive and optimistic example of Star Trek. On the other, other hand, Rod Serling began the 1960s as host of the science-fictional Twilight Zone. Ten years later he was host of the weird-fictional Night Gallery. Remember that the gallery of paintings is a convention in the Gothic Romance.
In thinking and writing about the Gothic Romance of the 1960s, I also thought of Harlan Ellison's story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," published in IF: Worlds of Science Fiction in March 1967, which can be seen as a haunted house type of story. The place in which its human characters are trapped is not a haunted house, but they are nonetheless trapped and tormented by an entity that is indistinguishable from the monsters or ghosts of weird fiction and supernatural horror fiction. There isn't any escape for them. Science and technology are of no help to them. In fact, science and technology are the cause of their problems. Their being trapped is not a physical condition. It is in fact existential.
Science fiction was again popular in the 1970s. That culminated in the Star Wars phenomenon. Star Wars isn't actually science fiction, but it looks like science fiction. It spawned all kinds of things, including Battlestar Galactica, The Black Hole, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Star Trek was still very popular in the 1970s and '80s. That popularity led to the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which survived in one form or another into the current century. The Black Hole is a Gothic science fiction. The spaceship Cygnus, a great Crystal Palace in the sky, is like a Gothic house, a haunted house, complete with secret inhabitants. It was released the same year, 1979, in which Alien, a science-fiction horror story, was released, also the same year in which "Cars" by Gary Numan came out. The video of "Cars" is science-fictional, but it's also slightly scary and paranoid. In other words, it is negative and seemingly against the main idea of science fiction, which is that science and technology will make our lives and the future better.
Cyberpunk, influenced by and named after genres of music, came along in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is a sub-genre of science fiction, but, like New Wave, it has things in common with weird fiction or Gothic-Romantic fiction. Horror movies and psycho-killer/slasher movies were also popular in the 1980s. There were lots of vampires, then zombies in popular culture. Vampires and zombies were especially popular in the 1990s and early 2000s. Music turned more pessimistic or negative, or at least more emotional, in the 1990s. Emos and goth girls arrived. (I will soon write about goth girls.) There was even horror in music videos. I wrote about some of that earlier this summer. The supposed "New Weird" was also a development of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The supposed "New Weird" appears to have been an attempt at a fusion of science fiction and weird fiction. It was in explicit imitation of the British New Wave of the 1960s.
I don't know where we are now.
So are there any patterns in all of that? Are there actually cycles in genre fiction? Well, possibly, at least at first. A half-turn of a cycle of weird fiction ran from 1923 to 1938 or 1940-1941. That was followed by a half-turn of science fiction that ran from 1938 to at least 1960. Weird fiction made a return then, and came to influence (I guess?) science fiction. The 1970s-1980s seem to have been a time for science-fiction. And then weird fiction came back again. I don't know what is the current state of science fiction. Popular culture--or our whole culture and society--now seems very dark, negative, pessimistic, and even nihilistic. That kind of culture cannot sustain a plausible science fiction, at least of any pure kind, if there is such a thing. Once weird fiction got into science fiction in the 1960s, it may have stuck, possibly for good in or after the 1980s or 1990s. I don't sense the existence of any great, soaring hope, optimism, innocence, affirmation, or aspiration as in the science fiction culture of the 1920s through the 1940s and '50s. There are no longer new worlds, and the future doesn't look very bright. Unlike Timbuk 3, we won't need shades. (And now, after reading about that band, I find out that there is such a thing as gothic country music.) The current state of AI--or fears about AI--indicate that "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" may be what awaits us.
If there are cycles in genre fiction, are cycles of weird fiction shorter than cycles of science fiction? Do cycles track with generational changes in readers? Do cycles track with economics and politics, especially with war, with science fiction being more popular during good economic times or during times of prevailing liberalism, and weird fiction during hard times or more conservative eras? I don't know. Like I said, the idea that there are cycles may be just that, an idea, with little or no basis in reality or history.
And now I feel like Indiana Jones: after all of that effort, I realize that what I have done here may not make any difference at all.
Anyway, these are just things to think about for three days until something else appears in this space.
Happy Constitution Day, America!
Text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley
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