But what makes this 'weird' the New Weird? VanderMeer continues, noting that the often-political, almost-always experimental approach of the New Wave writers of the 1960s and 1970s(M. Back then, there were no rigidly-defined terms such as 'epic fantasy,' 'urban fantasy,' 'horror,' or 'hard SF.' Instead, in pulps such as Weird Tales, writers might mix elements of all of the above into an alchemical brew that would leave their readers feeling in turns fascinated and uncomfortable.Īll well and good, one might argue. Instead of splitting hairs let's do some acts of the countermundane.In his introduction to The New Weird anthology, Jeff VanderMeer addresses not just the history of this 'movement,' stretching back to and referencing the near-iconic old pulp magazine Weird Tales, but also the problems inherent in such a purposely vague and yet fitting term. Let's go out there, we might say, meaning, into this mainstream arena, and make readers uncomfortable.

Good fiction has an uncanny quality: and that's enough to make it 'fantasy' and 'mainstream' at the same time. The most painfully defamiliarising gesture is the most subtle. Good fiction should make us question our experience of the world not to say the means by which we scaffold that experience. John Harrison in his introduction to the PS Publishing edition of China Miéville's The Tain, 'China Miéville & the New Weird' written in October 2002: When I heard about Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's latest anthology project, The New Weird, I was reminded of a comment by M. From the beloved ruins of the Romanticists to the dank, dark corridors of an Ann Radcliffe, full of mysterious, odd, and quite possibly malevolent creations, to the rather unsettled end to the rather frightful 20th century, many writers have come to explore those boundaries that contain elements that both fascinate and repel humans. In fiction, there have been hints of 'weirdness' in the writing, places where it feels almost like a transgression to cross, because of its often alien and grotesque nature. Despite the seemingly precise definition cited above, 'weird' is something that resists pat explanations or cute labels it is just there, lurking at the peripheries, making the observers of it quite uncomfortable.

The weird vandermeer