The Campaign Builder's Guild

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

This is the author I was speaking about. 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.