Don't know if this is enough for a thread, but Rose of Montague seemed to call for it :p (might have been irony but i wasn't in the mood to figure it out)
Anyway, this is a discussion thread for the literary movement known as New Weird with the most prominent author being China Mieville.
The idea is, as far as i have gathered, to take fantasy beyond the standard conceptions and tropes and breaking with preconceived notions. This means no elves, no dwarves, no meddling gods, no obvious good vs. evil, bad things happen to good people, and so on. Which i think is absolutely brilliant and very refreshing.
Some of you might very well be of a different opinion, so please, speak up everyone!
And of course the obligatory "Go read China Mieville because he is awesome!" (especially the scar). If nothing else, they will open new fields of inspiration for most settings.
To ensure that this thread doesn't get completely derailed into a Mieville thread please talk about any other fantasy/sci-fi authors you think fit into the New Weird genre.
Some would say its the "next step" in the evolution of fantasy literature, it goes past all the Tolkienian stuff and all that its accumulated through the years.
Good place to check it out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Weird)
This is the author I was speaking about (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steph_Swainston). Her work is fantastic. The world she built is both surprising and real. I really enjoyed her first two books (can't get the third) and would recommend them to anyone.
I started to read one of China Meiveilles novels, Perdido Street Station but couldn't stick with it. I've been meaning to give it another whirl but no chance lately. I would recommend Step Swainstons novels over his.
Try the Scar instead. The main character is a bit difficult to identify with as she is somewhat cold, but the locations and plot and concepts as well as the entire floating pirate-city of Armada are brilliant.
And did you get to the crisis engine parts in Perdido?
I don't believe so, the last thing I read was
[spoiler]the garuda guy (with the fake wings) talking to the scientist who could make him new wings I think[/spoiler]
I'll try the Scar soon enough, I'll have to make a visit the library.
Yeah, it's after that. But you should try Perdido again; it takes awhile before it really gets going.
I must admit i have a problem with Mievilles endings in both Perdido and the Scar (okay, can't quite remember the one in Scar, but i think i wasn't too happy with it). I might just not be used to endings being so gloomy.
I'll try Steph at some point; i put her first book on my list of books to read. :)
>>"The protaganist was too Cold"
Well her name IS "Bellis Coldwine". Haha :)
I was of the understanding that the New Weird was a distinctly dystopic conception of fantasy- one less about cute dragons and happy wizards who gallivant and cavort betwixt hedges, through green fields, and play amongst the clover; and more about the struggle of the common man, the proletariat (as expressed in Iron Council), or that of the heart of darkness within man and the destructive soul of the city (as in Perdido Street Station).
Although the thematic changes of "take fantasy beyond the standard conceptions and tropes and breaking with preconceived notions. This means no elves, no dwarves, no meddling gods, no obvious good vs. evil, bad things happen to good people, and so on" are a big part of the New Weird. I think that the reason it is a movement rather than just a genre is because of its philosophy and Mieville's manifesto; much like the Cyberpunk Movement was a way of looking at life, so too is the New Weird.
The new weird appears to be about danger lurking everywhere; within people's souls, within the city, and within your neighbors.
I like the New Weird; it brings new horizons to fantasy and allows for a great deal of invention. I just sometimes am a little annoyed at its relentless dystopianism; thus my new campaign setting Gloria (see signature ;))
Best, ~LD
PS: Mieville wrote a justification for his ending in Perdido Street Station that can be found on the internet (at least I found it about two years ago). Apparently his ending upset a lot of people. He also tried to defend the ending and explain how it was pro-feminist, I believe.
Well, thank you folks. I was hoping for some good links and a basic grasp of the genre/movement and you came through. I'll check it out sometimes, mayhaps. Although currently, my reading interests lie in old french existentialist texts.
Quote from: The Rose Of MontagueWell, thank you folks. I was hoping for some good links and a basic grasp of the genre/movement and you came through. I'll check it out sometimes, mayhaps. Although currently, my reading interests lie in old french existentialist texts.
Jeez, no wonder I agree with you so much. Existential Psychology was what I worked with primarily back in school.
While I like the dystopian elements of New Weird (a lot - Mieville is my favorite author, or one of them at least), what I find most inspiring about it is its message of breaking with the "normal" tropes that have become so well-entrenched in fantasy that they've come to dominate it. While a lot of New Weird does emphasize that danger and darkness are everywhere etc I think its more important contribution is simply its message of liberation from the "norm." It argues for a return to invention and creation, and wildly fantastic or bizarre creation, rather than the self-limitation and often laziness that has come to typify so much fantasy, much of it imitating Tolkien (usually rather poorly). Eragon and the Inheritence Cycle, a series I passionately despise, is the prime example, the diametrical opposite of the New Weird.
>>While a lot of New Weird does emphasize that danger and darkness are everywhere etc I think its more important contribution is simply its message of liberation from the "norm." It argues for a return to invention and creation, and wildly fantastic or bizarre creation, rather than the self-limitation and often laziness that has come to typify so much fantasy, much of it imitating Tolkien
I certainly agree with you on that, Steerpike.
I wonder why we have not seen much new liberating, inventive and imaginative fiction, even from within the New Weird authors themselves? Even given the new anthology "The New Weird" and individual releases, the genre hasn't exactly been very prolific- it's even rarer than Steampunk. It certainly is NOT the cyberpunk of this age.
It seems that fantasy took two separate paths back in the 1960s. There was the popular Tolkien/ Dungeons and Dragons path, and then the unpopular genre line of "Lewis Carroll "Alice in Wonderland", "The King in Yellow", HP Lovecraft, and even to some degree L. Frank Baum and Oz (If you look at the entire book series there are some decidedly strange things there) [I don't really count Gormenghast in this line... it only seemed to deal with the grotesque, Gorey style rather than the weird and wonderful. Perhaps I can be convinced otherwise, however.]
Hm... another aside. Tolkien and CS Lewis were both contemporaneous fantasists. And I think their split in style of writing reflects the later shift after the 1960s. Lewis wrote tales of oddity and weirdness (that Hideous Strength; the Perelandria Series; The Screwtape Letters) and the fantastic inspired by problems of faith and modernity; tolkien pursued elves and ancient ideas and mythology.
-TANGENTIAL NOTE:
On another line, invention within fantasy itself seems limited, but there is one author who constantly impresses me: Lawrence Watt Evans... Although his magic system bears some rememberances of Hardy's "Five Magics" , the style and way that he writes is quite unique and more straightforward and pushy than the often-overwritten standard fantasists like Tolkien and Jordan.
Quote from: 16pxunpopular[/i][/u][/size] genre line of "Lewis Carroll "Alice in Wonderland", "The King in Yellow", HP Lovecraft, and even to some degree L. Frank Baum and Oz (If you look at the entire book series there are some decidedly strange things there) [I don't really count Gormenghast in this line... it only seemed to deal with the grotesque, Gorey style rather than the weird and wonderful. Perhaps I can be convinced otherwise, however.]
../../e107_files/public/1237860664_14_FT65222_red_foreman.jpg[/img]
Really?
Unpopular in the sense that people are not copying the style in the market and writing new and original works in the same manner and fashion. There are many Tolkien want-to-bes, how many Carroll or Baum want-to-bes are there? How many Alice in Wonderland or Oz emulators (other than Wicked) have you seen?
And Lovecraft has an army of pastiche-writing creators, but no one has effectively become a "neo-Lovecraft" other than perhaps Mieville himself. To become lovecraft, one needs to create a world; too many seem to follow down the road of "one-offs" or just blatantly borrow Lovecraft's ideas and images... and not in a sense of "lovecraft has elves, so I will also have elves" but in the sense that they reference "my world has a mordor as well... and a sauron, and they're still evil!"
I have yet to find anything as creepy as "at the mountains of madness" ... except perhaps for the movie "John Carpenter's The Thing."
And the closest thing to the Dream Cycle of Unknown Kadath was ... sadly, Ursula K. LeGuin's Tombs of Atuan (to some degree. just for the degree of oddness and gloom... but LeGuin lacked the artistry of Lovecraft's tale.)
I found John Carpenter's The Thing hilarious.... :(
Light Dragon, do you think you could expand a bit more on what you mean by "neo-Lovecraft" please.
Having just read quite a bit of Clark Ashton Smith I'd say he might be seen as slightly neo-Lovecraft... obviously he wrote some straight-up Lovecraftian pastiche stuff, but Zothique is pretty original, but still "Lovecraftian" in texture.
It seems like there was a period of wildly fantastic fantasy writing in around the 1920s, exemplified in pulp magazines like Weird Tales, where people like Fritz Leiber, Dunsany, Lovecraft, Howard, Ashton-Smith, and the like are pioneering the genre. Then Tolkien comes along and most authors jump onboard the Middle Earth bandwagon. Michael Moorcock and Jack Vance seem to me to constitute a genuine divergent strain of fantasy, but tragically they're nowhere near Tolkien's popularity. I occasionally see Moorcock books in bookstores, but I always see Lord of the Rings, and I had to scrounge used bookstores and my uncles' old collections to track down Lyonesse (or, for that matter, Gormenghast, which I'd agree is more grotesque than fantastical/weird, though in my opinion still brilliantly written).
I would say that while New Weird isn't huge, that doesn't mean that there isn't good fantasy out there that can be counted New Weird. Jeff Vandermeer comes to mind; M. John Harrison; Mievile, of course; Scott Lynch is closer to George R.R. Martin than Mieville in some ways, but he might count (arguably Martin himself might be classed as New Weird - he describes himself as writing "weird stuff" and while he uses a fairly typical fantasy landscape in some respects, he subverts other elements hard, such as black/white morality). Does Neil Gaiman count as New Weird? Alan Campbell (Scar Night)? Gene Wolfe? Clive Barker?
On the New Weird: http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/the-new-weird-p-1.html
Quote from: Jeff VanderMeerI have a few comments and questions that I hope will be useful in some way. Some of the questions may be rhetorical in a sense. '¨'¨My post the other day, as MJH guessed was too quick and bit bloody-minded; when you are working on fiction, these other issues really do seem somewhat unimportant. And I agree with everything MJH says in his May 6 post re the complexity of the issue, the idea of a melting pot, etc., except the supposed defeatism of my initial response. In a sense, MJH says everything in that post, and eloquently, that needed to be said. '¨'¨I use the term New Weird below just to accept the terms of the discussion, not because I necessarily think it is useful. At heart, deep down, I would be reluctant to be associated with any term besides the ever useful and simple 'fiction'. '¨'¨'¨Jeff V. '¨'¨'¨Questions: '¨'¨(1) Is 'New Weird' a phenomenon unique to the United Kingdom? Several people posting to this thread seem to imply this. '¨'¨(2) Is New Weird really a kickback against jaded heroic fantasy (Steph's April 29 post)? Or is it more that, in China's case at least, it fulfills the expectations of the Epic in ways that most 'heroic' fantasy hasn't in recent years? (Jeff F's post) '¨'¨(3) Are Gormenghast and Viriconium really the core influences of the New Weird? Or do the New Weird writers reach back to the Decadents, the Surrealists, etc? Because surely if they rely on Peake or MJH influence, it's diluted from the source. (Steph's April 29 post, I think) '¨'¨(4) Is the New Weird really secular and politically informed? (Steph's April 29 post) Or does this just describe China's work? '¨'¨(5) Is there a danger in forming a kind of sycophantic cult around China as New Weird poster boy, even if he deserves it in part? (See several posts) Especially if we're then just defining what China writes? No'"don't answer that. '¨'¨(5) Is it wise to define New Weird by how it is in opposition to bad writing technique? For example, the idea that New Weird includes careful descriptions (Steph's post again, I think). Isn't attention to detail, the capturing of precise detail, the building block of all good fiction? '¨Surely saying New Weird isn't bad writing doesn't help us much. '¨'¨(6) Is it true that there are 'not many New Weird writers because it is so difficult to do?' (Steph's email) Wouldn't it be more correct that some writers have a certain mindset or pseudo-decadent/gothic/surreal way in which they view the world, which becomes part of how they express themselves in their writing? Otherwise, if it's a choice, then it's affectation. '¨'¨(7) Does 'mainstream Anglo-American fiction' really tend to be 'literal minded'? (MJP's April 30 post) Are writers like Denis Johnson an aberration or an example of a 'subgenre' in the mainstream that isn't 'literal minded'? Also, isn't 'literal minded'ness a disease commonly found in 'genre' fiction as well? Isn't this the main reason that so much of all fiction, regardless of genre, is boring and two-dimensional? '¨'¨(8) Is it really important that Atwood 'diss'-associated herself from SF? (Justina's April 30th post re Venn diagrams and circles) Isn't that a kind of guerilla tactic, too? Doesn't that mean that more people are going to read her SF book than if the SF label had been applied? If not being associated with New Weird would mean I had more readers, not less, then guess which I'd pick, as long as I didn't have to change my work. Isn't the 'name' of a work in a sense hardwired into its every word? Isn't it true that regardless of whether Atwood calls it SF or not, readers will recognize it as SF? '¨'¨(9) What's the logic behind this vaguely-expressed fear of mainstream taking over SF? (Justina's April 30 post) Doesn't this just mean that SF will be acceptable to the mainstream in any form? Are those of us in 'genre' being subsidized by somebody? Is that somebody going to subsidize mainstream authors who write SF instead? If the mainstream takes over SF doesn't that mean we all get a bigger audience? '¨'¨(10) Is there really a war between 'mainstream' and 'genre'? (Justina's April 30 post) And if so, who are the actual combatants? Is it authors? Publishers? The media? Universities? Is it some monolithic entity called The Mainstream that employs secret agents to undermine genre's value in the real world? '¨'¨(11) Are New Weird writers really writing about the present or are they in fact invested in the past as well? (MJH's May 3 post) Doesn't China's work partake of an antique Victorian steampunk sensibility in addition to the perhaps radical politics? Couldn't a reader ignore the Marxist subtext entirely and just read The Scar as a ripping good adventure yarn? '¨'¨(12) Are the readers of Laurell K. Hamilton and China Mieville truly as separate as we would like to believe? Isn't it somewhat snobbish to assume that there isn't some overlap, even if it is a small overlap? And isn't even a small overlap of importance in a field where 10,000 copies sold can make the difference between success and failure? '¨'¨(13) Is there room for humor in the New Weird? Isn't the lack of humor in much of the New Weird (whatever the New Weird is) a kind of failure of the imagination? '¨'¨'¨Comments '¨'¨Re the comment that 'the speed of reading is very important for action scenes''"I'd direct interested parties to the long, drawn out, utterly beautiful Flay versus Cook action scene in Gormenghast. '¨'¨Re Al's April 30 post re 'non-realist fiction' as 'fiction that's aware that it's not real.' Not true'"China's fiction is splendidly unaware it's not real. I think this is a confusion of 'non-realist fiction' and 'metafiction'. '¨'¨Re Justina's April 30 post yet again: This whole idea of this discussion being a 'war' disturbs me. Again we hear echoes of 'us' versus 'them', of mainstream versus genre. Again the argument seems false to me. There is already a meeting of minds, a gathering of individuals on the fringes of both traditional mainstream and of genre. Individual writers like Kelly Link, Carol Emshwiller, Lance Olsen, and Rikki Ducornet are one conduit for that. Anthologies that mix mainstream and 'genre' work are another. Mainstream writers are assimilating SF tropes and vice versa. A cross-pollination occurs that transforms both and creates beautiful mutations. I can't see that as anything other than wonderful. I can't see this as a war of us versus them. It reduces a complex issue to a simple one. (For one thing there is more and less resistance to genre from certain elements of the mainstream, and the same for certain elements of genre resistant to mainstream.) '¨'¨Re Henry's April 30 post: I agree with this entirely, re not reducing the New Weird to a movement or a school. (Look how quickly we pick up the term'"it's like a literary SARS, and perhaps just as deadly on a metaphorical level; which is to say, only somewhat.) '¨'¨Re Jonathan's May 1 post: A small group trying to label and sort what is happening in the genre is reductive itself and ignores the role of existing traditions. This makes a lot of sense to me. This work didn't sprout and take root in a vacuum. '¨'¨Re Cheryl Morgan's May 4 post: 'Justina has a good point in questioning whether the mainstream will understand what we do.' Doesn't this apply mainly to SF that uses a SF shorthand in terminology or trope? What does it have to do with the New Weird? '¨'¨Re Cheryl's May 6 post: I disagree about Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow being an example of a good way to 'bring people into a novel.' Russell jettisons most 'SF' elements in the first part of her story in order to lure mainstream readers in. However, by doing so, she also unbalances and destroys the integrity of her novel. I would also argue that China's success has been aided more by his ability to gain access to mainstream media outlets (like NPR here in the U.S.) than by his ability to gently guide the reader into his novels. For one thing'"he's still guiding them into a bizarre fantasy world. If he wrote magic realism in which an element of the fantastic entered the real world, I'd agree.
Wow that was fascinating... a lot of good questions there. I feel like just going through and trying to answer them (or some of them). Vandermeer is great.
This passage in particular struck me: [blockquote=Vandermeer]Also, isn't 'literal minded'ness a disease commonly found in 'genre' fiction as well? Isn't this the main reason that so much of all fiction, regardless of genre, is boring and two-dimensional? '¨'¨(8) Is it really important that Atwood 'diss'-associated herself from SF? (Justina's April 30th post re Venn diagrams and circles) Isn't that a kind of guerilla tactic, too? Doesn't that mean that more people are going to read her SF book than if the SF label had been applied? If not being associated with New Weird would mean I had more readers, not less, then guess which I'd pick, as long as I didn't have to change my work. Isn't the 'name' of a work in a sense hardwired into its every word? Isn't it true that regardless of whether Atwood calls it SF or not, readers will recognize it as SF? '¨'¨(9) What's the logic behind this vaguely-expressed fear of mainstream taking over SF? (Justina's April 30 post) Doesn't this just mean that SF will be acceptable to the mainstream in any form? Are those of us in 'genre' being subsidized by somebody? Is that somebody going to subsidize mainstream authors who write SF instead? If the mainstream takes over SF doesn't that mean we all get a bigger audience? '¨'¨[/blockquote]It seems to me that while Atwood's claim that Oryx and Crake isn't SF, while on some level a guerilla tactic to reach a wider audience/sell more books (and a transparent one in that practically everyone recognizes O&C as SF), reeks of condescension towards SF, which I think is the real tension between SF and the mainstream, or the "vaguely-expressed fear of mainstream taking over SF." I think this springs from the defensive nature of SF fans, who feel that SF is constantly being relegated to the status of something sub-literary. They don't want SF to be "rehabilitated" and treated as "mainstream" they want the literati to admit that SF is already literary, that it doesn't need to be reintegrated into the mainstream, doesn't need to be brought up out of its "low origins." Nasty comments such as Atwood's concerning SF are part of this generally demeaning attitude some of the literary elite hold for it, with the patronizing implication being that there's potential in SF, it just needs to be properly integrated, as if there was something inferior about it in the first place... at least that's my reading. I know no one was arguing the opposite - just my reaction to that part of the passage.
Thanks, Light Dragon, that was great!
First off, I love Mieville's work, as in, almost to the level of hero-worship. However, I'm not familiar with any of the works of other "new weird" authors, although I have been meaning, for some time, to get into them, particularly Steph Swainston and Jeff VanderMeer.
What I would like to say is that, as with any breaking-new-ground-type genre, literary or otherwise, there is always the danger of mistaking gimmickry for originality. Actually, perhaps gimmickry is too overt a term... Let me try to explain what I mean. Sometimes, when I am reading Mieville, I get the impression that he has done certain things, consciously, simply because they are not what is expected. An example would be, the phrase "men and women"... almost everywhere that phrase will put men first, but in Mieville's books, I always seem to see him write it as "women and men" more often than not. In a way, this is admirable, and necessary for the kind of thing he's writing, but were a lesser being than Mieville to do similar things, I might find myself feeling less forgiving, feeling more like I was reading an exercise in "look how unusual I am!" than a novel.
It's for this reason that I think I would, personally, avoid thinking in terms of the new weird genre were I to write a novel, as I hopefully will. Although I will certainly take a lot of influence from Mieville's works, and would be glad if there ended up being similarities, I think if I was consciously trying to write a new weird novel, I would find myself being different for the sake of difference, when, in my own work, at least, I would much rather embrace the odd cliché if it helped the story run more smoothly.
JVM's post was interesting, though such a wall of text is hard to read on a computer screen. One of these days I'll get around to reading Mieville.
Hmm, does anybody have any recommendations for VanderMeer?
Shriek: An Afterword was an amazing read. I tore through it, something I don't usually do with Vandermeer. I really, really want to read Veniss Underground but I'd need to order it.
Here's an online version of Dradin: In Love (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/dradin2.htm) which is the perfect introduction to Ambergris (Vandermeer's main city). It's from City of Saints and Madmen and is actually probably my favorite story in that collection. It's a long short story/novelette.
He's kind of like a more metafictional Mieville, with subtler supernatural elements. His stories are often creepier than Mieville's, I think, eerier anyway, though less horrific or shocking. Mieville's creepiest moments tend to be centered around monsters and grotesquerie, Vandermeer's around atmosphere and the unspeakable.
I'd also reccomend KJ Bishop's The Etched City for those that like New Weird. It's very, very similar to Mieville and Vandermeer in some ways.
This thread has inspired my term paper topic for my Book History/Print Culture seminar. It's going to be called "Taxonomy of the Weird" and talk about the emergence of genre and the divergence of the fantastic and the "literary" in the twentieth century.
I'm also writing on Perdido Street Station for another class, though I was planning on doing that before reading this thread. If people are interested I might post one or both of the papers here when they're finished...
Thanks for the link Steerpike. I'll get to reading that at some point : )
and could be interesting to see one of those papers.
(What is it that you are studying?)
On a second note, has anybody read the new Mieville book "the City and the City" yet?
I didn't think The City & The City was out yet?!?
And I'm studying English Literature, Cataclysmic Crow.
>>and talk about the emergence of genre and the divergence of the fantastic and the "literary" in the twentieth century.
Well you certainly have a lot of fodder to work with from the link I posted above (there are about 4 pages of discussion) and the wikipedia page has lots of good links as well; a lot of their discussion was about the divergence of the fantastic from the "literary". The book "The New Weird" by VanderMeer compiled some excerpts from that book.
There are also a few good China Mieville interviews on the internet that discuss some of his ideas.
I'd be interested in seeing what other sources you can gather and how deep into the research you delve.
Good luck!
---
Thank you also for the link to VanderMeer's story. I just get the feeling that he does not write nearly as well as Mieville. In fact, Steerpike, I think your excerpts are better than his. I read the first several paragraphs and found myself a bit annoyed by VanderMeer, as I did with his other works that I read. Reading him is like reading Dickens... but an unrestrained Dickens. Whereas, reading Mieville is like reading Moby Dick (Melville...a relative of his, I believe), a Poe, or a restrained Lovecraft or Dickens- much more manageable.
To answer Llum's earlier question:
Quote from: SteerpikeIt seems to me that while Atwood's claim that Oryx and Crake isn't SF, while on some level a guerilla tactic to reach a wider audience/sell more books (and a transparent one in that practically everyone recognizes O&C as SF), reeks of condescension towards SF, which I think is the real tension between SF and the mainstream, or the "vaguely-expressed fear of mainstream taking over SF." I think this springs from the defensive nature of SF fans, who feel that SF is constantly being relegated to the status of something sub-literary. They don't want SF to be "rehabilitated" and treated as "mainstream" they want the literati to admit that SF is already literary, that it doesn't need to be reintegrated into the mainstream, doesn't need to be brought up out of its "low origins." Nasty comments such as Atwood's concerning SF are part of this generally demeaning attitude some of the literary elite hold for it, with the patronizing implication being that there's potential in SF, it just needs to be properly integrated, as if there was something inferior about it in the first place... at least that's my reading. I know no one was arguing the opposite - just my reaction to that part of the passage.
Thanks, Light Dragon, that was great!
Glad you enjoyed it. Sorry for the wall of text, if you click on the URL link, you can read it formatted a bit better.
Oh, I have to say I agree with your reading both in terms of how it relates to the rest of the New Weird discussion on SF/the fantastic and to my own experience in life.
I was at a conference-retreat and on one of the "get to know each other" events it somehow came out that I was relatively well read in Science Fiction. A look of horror came over a compatriot's face who then proceeded to say "I thought you were smarter than that." After some prodding, he explained how he could not believe that someone who read the newspaper every day (WSJ) and the Economist and was informed about world events could have the time to "waste his life" reading "trashy junk." I have received this reaction several times. It also brings back memories of how in College there was absolutely no way any of my literature would ever be published by the school literary journal. In my final year I lived in a house with one of the Editors and he explained to me one of the reasons. "Oh, they don't read anything that has a dragon or a robot or space in it. It goes in the trash bin because it would make them look bad if they published it and because the majority of those submissions are trash."
I hope that your school's literary journal and department is more open-minded, Steerpike!
Thanks for the explanation Light Dragon. I wouldn't say Philipe Pullman qualifies, he really riffs of christianity. Its not so much a new mythology as it is a anti-C.S. Lewis-ology.
I'll agree that Fantasy/Science Fiction/other related genres have a bad rap, mostly because 95% of the stuff out there is utter junk.
The publishing industry doesn't help this at all, its terribad what they print (unless you know, your an aspiring author). The days of literary giants are by-gone in my opinion (small exception for the odd tween/teen craze).
A famous science fiction author (I forget who) once said something along the lines of "You can read a off the shelf science fiction novel every day for a year, and never read a decent novel".
Tangentally I find that books are becoming really "softcore" porn lately, at least a lot of the stuff that has been comming out.
>>Tangentally I find that books are becoming really "softcore" porn lately, at least a lot of the stuff that has been comming out.
Hm. I haven't read too much of the newer things; but some friends of mine had the same comment.
And the libraries are only buying "space romances" or things like Kushiel's Dart. I think what's happening is that in the 1950s through the 70s there were a bunch of chauvinistic male-oriented fantasies and sci-fi pulp adventure stories (including one absolutely wretched sci-fi tale that spent 40 pages on an intergalactic zoo-brothel with oddly augmented space-women; which I set aside after 80 pages wondering if I was reading a sci-fi tale or something from Playboy). It seems that those sort of tales died out by the 1980s/90s;
(Although the softcore always remained- Chris Bunch wrote some borderline things; as did Harry Turtledove)
But recently with the rise of women authors and historical/victorian romances and the interest of women in sci-fi and fantasy, more and more romance-fantasy and romance-sci-fi are getting printed that doesn't really focus on the ideas or the science or the fantasy- it just focuses on the sex or stereotypical female romance ideas rather than adventure.
It's cyclical... except now the bawdy stories are for females rather than males.
I could be wrong... I haven't read many of the books, but the ones in the library all talk about "love scorned" and "eternal bliss" and other female-oriented romantic copy.
Quote from: Light DragonBut recently with the rise of women authors and historical/victorian romances and the interest of women in sci-fi and fantasy, more and more romance-fantasy and romance-sci-fi are getting printed that doesn't really focus on the ideas or the science or the fantasy- it just focuses on the sex or stereotypical female romance ideas rather than adventure.
This isn't in itself a bad thing, my favorite conworlds were all made by female authors. There books are also quite good, but a romance novel doesn't need multiple sex scenes that go on for length. In my opinion at least :P
[blockquote=Light Dragon]I hope that your school's literary journal and department is more open-minded, Steerpike!
Light Dragon[/blockquote]It's OK. Right now I'm taking a student directed seminar on science fiction and the city (our blog (http://blogs.ubc.ca/sciencefictionandthecity/) - somewhere on it I actually have a very small story posted) and another class on near-future dystopias; other than these two courses I've never encountered science fiction there during my 4 year undergraduate. Awesomely, though, the library has all of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, which I've been renewing for nearly a year now, heh.
I'd put Moorcock forward as someone who has built a mythology from the ground upon more recent memory, even if Moorcock has been around for a long time.
It's true that Phillip Pullman riffs off Christianity. Mieville riffs off mythology a lot, too, he just does it more liberally, and chooses more esoteric mythology (at least, esoteric so far as the West is concerned).
And KJ Bishop is a woman and a great New Weird author; there's sex in her books (there's sex in a lot of good books) but its never pornographic or the central focus. At least in my opinion.
Oh, for the record, I was not saying that all women authors write romance-lit or sex-lit; just that with more women purchasing "fantastic romances" and interested in "space romances" that there are more romance authors making the transition into fantasy.
Fantasy has always had authors like Leigh Brackett and CL Moore (??) who wrote standard "male-oriented" adventure pieces.
Then there were Ursula K. LeGuin and Marion Zimmer Bradley who both wrote more straightforward fantasy. And of course Leigh Eddings helped David Eddings on all his pieces. And then there is the indomitable Margaret Weis... although her new "mistress of dragons" series borders on softcore lesbian issues at times... If I recall correctly, it is generally more restrained than some of Turtledove and Chris Bunch's pieces.
Quote from: SteerpikeIt's OK. Right now I'm taking a student directed seminar on science fiction and the city (our blog - somewhere on it I actually have a very small story posted) and another class on near-future dystopias; other than tehse two courses I've never encountered science fiction there during my 4 year undergraduate. Awesomely, though, the library has all of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, which I've been renewing for nearly a year now, heh.
Ah, well that's better than My University provided.
Although our library bizzarely had about 6-8 literary criticism books on HP Lovecraft- everything from the deCamp biography to the American Libraries collection, to other literary criticisms on his work, and other collectiosn of his work.
I'll have to check out KJ Bishop I suppose then. And you might be right about Moorcock.
Hm. Pullman might take ideas from Christianity but at least that's more inventive than the standard Tolkeinesque mythos. Maybe he is the neo-Lovecraft? Just not quite as good in creating worlds? I don't know and am not really too qualified to comment on him. I only read "The Golden Compass" and that was a long time ago.
Then you got the newly created part, and missed out on all the christianity bits :p
That sounds very interesting about your class steerpike. What is your reading list? I have to admit, I'm intrigued.
One of my dreams is to one day teach a community college class on literature of Utopias, Dystopias.
My design for the class was as follows:
1. 1984... George Orwell
- The classic dystopia. Straightforward. Introduction to the course.
2. Brave New World... Aldous Huxley
- The utopia/dystopia. More challenging.
Discuss: Feasibility, Philosophy, Being Human.
3. Future Perfect... AE VanVogt (In the Essential AE Van Vogt)
- A controlled future and love and being human.
BOOK REPORT ASSIGNED. Choose A book from the list provided.
4. That Hideous Strength... CS Lewis
- Technology, Science, and Humanity
- The most chilling and challenging of all the reads
SUPPLEMENTARY READS / ACCEPTABLE BOOK REPORTS
Heart of Darkness... Joseph Conrad
Utopia... St. Augustine
The Republic... Plato
Dante's Inferno... Dante Aligheri
We.... Zamyatin
My student directed seminar reading list:
We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
The City and the Stars - Arthur C. Clarke
The Atrocity Exhibition - J.G. Ballard
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Patchwork Girl - Shelley Jackson
Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
Dystopian Lit Course:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Watchmen - Alan Moore
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Thanks. There are a lot of interesting reads on that list that I will have to look into!
~LD
Going off on the earlier mentioned tangent about sex, I wonder if anyone else shares my opinion that it seems very hard to write sex well?
I suppose your definition of "well" might influence the answer... What I mean is, without it seeming either, well, somehow forced, or only there for the purposes of titillation.
If sex is not the focus of the story, then it seems to me that writing a sex scene at all is a bit pointless, especially when doing so tastefully seems to be a problem for so many authors (I know I couldn't do it)
And even when it is used as a plot element, although I suppose not so much if it's a central one, it's really only necessary for the reader to know that it's happened or is happening. Carnal details are, often, un-called-for.
Just my opinion, and I'm not saying I'm against sex in books, like Steerpike said, there's sex in a lot of good books, just that it seems to be something that's very difficult to write about well.
I totally agree, Kindling. I think the difficulties around sex really speak to something... odd about western culture. I agree that its difficult to write sex scenes, but I wonder why. I think some of the hang ups come from a sense of invading privacy. You see the same thing in a lot of films (see my Who Watched the Watchmen rant).
For example, how easy is it to write an action scene? I find it impossibly easy. Writing about carnage and gunfights and people getting their brains blown out seems to me distubringly easy to do; I could do it pretty much unflinchingly. In real life, sex is far more commonplace, far more socially legitimate, and usually far, far more important to most people than fighting/war/"action."
The old "gratuitous" arguement always kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and after hearing George R.R. Martin speak at a book signing for A Feast For Crows I always think of his answer... he said that if he "gratuitous" meant "not essential to the plot," and if according to that definition he cut out everything gratuitous from A Song of Ice and Fire then he'd be left with like 50 page books rather than 500-1000 page books. Youd lose the feasts and fights and the atmosphere and the colloquial dialogue and it'd all just be summary. And you'd lose the sex, or at least any description of the sex. So once you start adding back in the "gratuitous" (that is to say, enjoyable parts), after you've added the feasts and the duels and the rest of it back into A Song of Ice and Fire, why stop at the sex? Sex is so important for the development of most characters; even if the character is celibate then sex still plays an important role in a sense. In a work that strives to present detailed and developed characters it seems difficult to me not to include sex.
Quote from: Light DragonUnpopular in the sense that people are not copying the style in the market and writing new and original works in the same manner and fashion. There are many Tolkien want-to-bes, how many Carroll or Baum want-to-bes are there? How many Alice in Wonderland or Oz emulators (other than Wicked) have you seen?
I would like to say, for the record, that if i thought I was capable of producing consistently good Carrollian fantasy, I probably would be writing it exclusively.
So after beginning writing the paper I mentioned earlier ("Taxonomy of the Weird") I realized the topic was far too broad for proper treatment in an 8-12 page paper... I still may post my China Mieville here when I've finished it.
Here, however, is my first (ranting) draft of what was going to be my introduction:
Taxonomy of the Weird
Beowulf, one of the oldest surviving written works in the English language, involved a superhuman warrior slaying a demonic monstrosity, its troll-like mother, and finally a dragon. Hundreds of years later, in 1610, Shakespeare was penning
The Tempest, a play whose cast includes a magician, a sprite, and an evil witch. A little over a century later Jonathan Swift was writing one of the first proper novels,
Gulliver's Travels, in which the protagonist journeys through a series of surreal and fanciful vistas, encountering immortals, giants, and tyrannical, intelligent horses. In another hundred years Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein, a novel describing the reanimation of a human corpse and its subsequent struggles, was enjoying enormous popular success, with translations into French and dramatic adaptations already flourishing. A hundred years after that the magazine
Weird Tales was first published, dedicated to the publication of works of what we now call fantasy, science fiction, and horror but which in the twenties was described more commonly as 'weird fiction.'
All of the above works contain central supernatural, magical, or speculative technological elements (or, as I will term these elements, weirdness), and up until Weird Tales all are also unquestionably considered part of the literary canon. Yet in the twentieth century a strange rift seems to have emerged in the literary community. With the development of genre categories '" fantasy, science fiction, horror, and also mystery, romance, and historical fiction, etc '" the presence of the weird is abruptly abjected from the literary canon. A new category arises, 'literature,' that seems to exist on the same spectrum as works that might once have been called weird stories (if they were called anything other than simply 'fiction') and which now are called fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Weird fiction and literary fiction quite suddenly become distanced; if something contains weirdness, it cannot not be considered literature, with the tenuous exception of so-called magical realism, in which weird elements are ruthlessly subordinated to the needs of plot or allegory. Many authors, in a gambit to increase the perceived literary value of their fiction, frantically deny that their books have anything in common with science fiction or fantasy: Margaret Atwood, for example, refuses to admit that
Oryx and Crake, a novel about the artificial creation of a race of posthumans with the ability to photosynthesize (among other things) who live on a post-apocalyptic earth, is science fiction. Even more absurdly, works that clearly have much more in common with present day fantasy and science fiction than with present day 'literature' (including
Beowulf, The Tempest, Gulliver's Travels, and
Frankenstein) are nonetheless still doggedly labelled 'literature,' since their literary credibility is already too well entrenched for those works to be displaced into the decidedly non-canonical realms of weird fiction. In bookstores these classics are shelved not with the winners of Hugos, Nebulas, and Bram Stokers, but with Gillers, Pulitzers, and Bookers, even though if they were written today they would meet the criteria of the former but never the latter. Occasionally a strange grey area of overlap is discernable '" for example, the works of Edgar Allen Poe, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne are sometimes acknowledged both as weird and as literary '" but by and large the divisions are remarkably sacrosanct.
Why has this paradigm shift occurred? It clearly has nothing to do with the popularity of weird texts:
The Lord of the Rings has remained continuously in print since its publication in 1955, and the Harry Potter series has sold more than four hundred million copies, with the last book in the series selling more than eight million copies in the first twenty-four hours. Purely economic motives or dynamics of changing popular taste can thus be completely discounted: weird fiction still sells, and sells extremely well, but it has lost its literary credibility. This disparagement of the weird prevalent in academic circles can be attributed to the development of genre and the peculiar taxonomy of the weird and of fiction more generally, in which previously permeable boundaries are suddenly made rigid, classifications enforced, and the criteria for literary merit subsequently revaluated. If weird texts are treated critically at all they are often prefaced with a kind of embarrassed acknowledgement of the tension between the weird and the literary: as Lucie Armitt writes in
Theorising the Fantastic, 'it is traditional for the first page of an academic study of literary fantasy to gesture the reader in with a (direct or indirect) apology' (1). The question then becomes: how do genres emerge, and once they have been codified, how do they change the way we assign literary merit? How has the canon evolved, and why are its criteria so inconsistent and contradictory with regard to the weird? Can genre boundaries change, collapse, dissolve, or merge? Should they be abandoned altogether? Should the literary canon? Many of these questions cannot be suitably answered in full here, but in tracing the taxonomy of weird fiction and its particular relationship with 'literature' they can begin to be unravelled.a
I enjoyed the piece. I can see where you ran into the problem of length. You seem to be trying to cover all possible weird fiction that has been published, and it appears that each work referenced may necessitate a separate paragraph (or several).
And then this part "he question then becomes: how do genres emerge, and once they have been codified, how do they change the way we assign literary merit? How has the canon evolved, and why are its criteria so inconsistent and contradictory with regard to the weird? Can genre boundaries change, collapse, dissolve, or merge? Should they be abandoned altogether? Should the literary canon?"
Raises an entirely new line of questioning. there are a lot of ideas in your piece, just like there are a lot of ideas in VanderMeer's piece.
Good luck though if you ever decide to get a Ph.d and turn that into your thesis!
Also good luck on trying to narrow your topic.
I decided to do a paper on paratext in House of Leaves instead.
And thanks, I'm going to store the title away somewhere... you never know...
I think i've stumbled across a book that could be classified as New Weird even if it is in the slightly pulp-ish end of the spectrum. The Translated Man by Chris Braak (can be bought as a PDF over lulu) utilizes a dystopian fantasy city reminescent of New Crobuzon. The story is quite far from classic fantasy and involves some references to society and its faults although perhaps not on as deep a level as Mieville. Also includes some neat ideas like the Architecture War, "Knockers" who can project their (super-)hearing, and 12 different heretic sciences (although only half of them are mentioned). The writing is pretty decent, although i have seen better. But this is his first novel, and the story is pretty good. Makes me think of a combination of Perdido Street Station and the Haunting of Alaizabel Cray.
...
>>Baudrillard, Jean. 'Simulacra and Science Fiction.' Trans. Arthur B. Evans. URL April 23, 3009.
3009? :o :! Seems like a citation out of Dresden Codak!
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Surprised you did not mention the word-mashups (I forget the technical term) that are common to steampunk and neo-victorian work and which I recall, Mieville used a bit (But I am rusty on my Mieville). Although that may have been venturing too far afield. But it is interesting linguistically that those words, just like the 'mongrelization' of the New Crobuzon Remade and the genres and literary influences of Mieville are all combined.
I am not so certain I buy the assertion that the Weaver has to overcome anything. I did not see much self-consciousness until the Weaver needed to confront the Slake Moth. It seems you mentioned this in passing in the introduction, but it could have used some development, I think.
The discussion on the fRemade taking "ownership" of their condition and mongrelization is fairly interesting.
The story may also have benefitted from a discussion of Mieville's own mongrelization? You touch on this a bit, with his mongrel background exposure to Egypt.
Perhaps part of the story behind the "new weird" that is not really touched on in their dicussions is particularly how the genre itself is the crossroads; of fantasy, of literature, of supernatural, of old and new ideas.
That being said, on another topic... Mieville's concept of the Remade is one of the more disappointing things in his series. I never understood how it is necessarily a good use of the resources of the society or how it is actually a punishment when you replace someone's arm with a crab's arm... I suppose because the arm is useless and awkward that explains why it is a punishment; but some of the punishments actually seem more like augmentations that could be useful to harm enemies.
For the record, I personally did not pity the Remade. Still, I thought it was a waste of city funds, completely unnecessary and the terror of the remade did not work because there seemed to be hundreds of remade- it seemed more sadistic than anything else. Much more efficient would have been to have killed them all. In that sense, I pitied the city's government, for waste and sadism. Then again, that lack of understanding of Mieville's socialist worldview could be why I am writing Gloria :!
Quotetransmuted by the eclectic thaumaturgy of Miéville's wordcraft into the single, sprawling pastiche of The (New) Weird.
This was your process of connecting the essay to a larger issue, correct? I think it would have been useful to mention new weird somewhere earlier... but considering the class for which you wrote this piece; I think everyone knows Mieville is New Weird so it is fair to get away with. :) But if you publish it elsewhere, you may want to drop that reference into the introduction.
Some more musing... What you wrote made me think about how mongrelization might be one theme in the story, but also there appears to be the theme of "fixing"... for the better or for the worse. Fixing the Remade for their crimes; then fixing their souls through Jack's leadership. Fixing the garuda wings; fixing the Crisis Engine; fixing Lin at the end, who is forever broken. The weaver "fixing" the world to its liking. The fixing concept seems to also bleed through a bit in the Scar.
This was a bit shorter than I was expecting for a final essay, but I did enjoy reading it.
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Thank you for posting this!
~LD.
[blockquote=Light Dragon]For the record, I personally did not pity the Remade. Still, I thought it was a waste of city funds, completely unnecessary and the terror of the remade did not work because there seemed to be hundreds of remade- it seemed more sadistic than anything else. Much more efficient would have been to have killed them all. In that sense, I pitied the city's government, for waste and sadism. Then again, that lack of understanding of Mieville's socialist worldview could be why I am writing Gloria :![/blockquote]I think the idea is that its an attempt by the government to create a deterrent, but one that's subtler, less harsh, and more retributive/"karmic" than the death penalty. Much in the same way that public executions and mutilations played a key role in medieval societies but used up some resources (executioners were very well compensated because of the dishonour incurred from the profession, and it took a lot of training to become one); New Crobuzon's twisted (and yes, definitely sadistic) punishment system seems similar: deter would-be criminals from committing crimes by showcasing, in the most grotesque fashion, the consequences for such an action.
Thanks for the review - it was a slightly shorter paper than some of my final essays, which tended to run a few pages longer. The 3009 thing is hilarious, I'm embarrassed bu quite amused by it... it probably made it by accident into the copy I handed in. And Dresden Codack is awesome...
Just thought i would alert all the Neweirdies to this http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Weird-Ann-VanderMeer/dp/1892391554/ref=pd_sim_b_4
Haven't really heard of it, just stumbled over it.
Yes, I flipped through it in a store. Oddly, about 60 pages of it is available free online since 60 pages or so was an excerpt about how to define the new weird.
The reviews of the book were about average- it was allegely disappointing in that it wasn't really 'weird' enough. So I decided not to buy. I wanted more Mieville-like content and that did not seem to be what they were offering. In that way, it seemed about as frustrating as the new Cthulu anthologies... which just do not seem to "get it".
Quote from: Rorschach FritosI would like to say, for the record, that if i thought I was capable of producing consistently good Carrollian fantasy, I probably would be writing it exclusively.
Why don't you try some out here on the boards? Perhaps you can develop the skill. Perhaps tied to your world-creation. I seem to recall one cat-based monster you created a while back based on the chatbox... But beyond that (?)
I'd just like to mention, I started readin Perdido Street Station and got into it this time.
I'm reading China's new book "the City and the City". It's actually very nice, but quite different from his other works.
If I may way in on the sex discussion just briefly:
I kind of hope sex always remains at least a little taboo.
Because otherwise you couldn't have embarrassed and prudish people.
That's just too much funny to lose. :demon:
I think what bothers me about sex in media and literature is less that it's there and more that so many authors and directors think it is necessary in order to have a good work of art. You can have a great adult focused film or book and never have one bit of sex in it. Yet so many feel that if they don't cram it in somewhere then their creation won't be good.
Funny how this thread is winding down a few different roads, but still is true to the title.
I'd say there are a lot of things that don't need to be crammed into a work for it to be good.
Quote from: Lord VreegFunny how this thread is winding down a few different roads, but still is true to the title.
also funny that I just realized that you misspelled consciousness in your title.