New Weird; because weird just doesn't do it for you anymore

[Steerpike]

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!

[Kindling]

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.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

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.

[Superfluous Crow]

Hmm, does anybody have any recommendations for VanderMeer?

[Steerpike]

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 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.

[Steerpike]

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...

[Superfluous Crow]

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?)

[Superfluous Crow]

On a second note, has anybody read the new Mieville book "the City and the City" yet?

[Steerpike]

I didn't think The City & The City was out yet?!?

And I'm studying English Literature, Cataclysmic Crow.

[LD]

>>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.

[LD]

To answer Llum's earlier question:

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!

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!

[Llum]

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.

[LD]

>>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.

[Llum]

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.

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

[Steerpike]

[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 - 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.