The New Weird Read Free Page A

also such forebears as Mervyn Peake and the French/English Decadents). New Weird fictions are acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise, but not always overtly political. As part of this awareness of the modern world, New Weird relies for its visionary power on a "surrender to the weird" that isn't, for example, hermetically sealed in a haunted house on the moors or in a cave in Antarctica. The "surrender" (or "belief") of the writer can take many forms, some of them even involving the use of postmodern techniques that do not undermine the surface reality of the text.

    This definition presents two significant ways in which the New Weird can be distinguished from Slipstream or Interstitial fiction. First, while Slipstream and Interstitial fiction often claim New Wave influence, they rarely if ever cite a Horror influence, with its particular emphasis on the intense use of grotesquery focused around transformation, decay, or mutilation of the human body. Second, postmodern techniques that undermine the surface reality of the text (or point out its artificiality) are not part of the New Weird aesthetic, but they are part of the Slipstream and Interstitial toolbox.

THIS ANTHOLOGY

    We hope that this anthology will provide a rough guide to the moment or movement known as "New Weird" ― acknowledging that the pivotal "moment" is behind us, but that this moment had already lasted much longer than generally believed, had definite precursors, and continues to spread an Effect, even as it dissipates or becomes something else. (And who knows? Another pivotal "moment" may be ahead of us.)
    In this anthology, you will find a "Stimuli" section that includes both New Wave and New Horror examples, along with work by fence-straddlers like Simon Ings and Thomas Ligotti. You will also find an "Evidence" section that pulls New Weird examples from pulp and the literary mainstream, from dark fantasy and from foreign language sources. To highlight just a few of these selections, China Miéville's "Jack," stripped-down and gracefully gruff and ironic, revisits the New Crobuzon of his novels, in much the same way as Jeffrey Ford revisits a proto-Well-Built City setting in "At Reparata." Other highlights include the Brian Evenson's Beckett-Kafka-esque take on Gormenghast in "Watson's Boy," the unabashed decadence of K. J. Bishop's "The Art of Dying," and the frenzied post-New Weird grotesquery of Alistair Rennie's "The Gutter Meets the Light That Never Shines," a story original to this anthology that showcases the effect of combining New Wave and New Horror elements with pop culture and comics influences.
    The "Symposium" section preserves the beginning of the message board thread about New Weird begun by M. John Harrison in 2003, * along with Michael Cisco's essay from the year after, and three pieces written specially for this volume: scholar and writer Darja Malcolm-Clarke's "Tracking Phantoms," an exploration of her changing views on New Weird; writer K. J. Bishop's "Whose Words You Wear," her thoughts on the effects of labeling; and "European Editor Perspectives on the New Weird," which charts the influence and permutations of the term across several different countries. Finally, in "Laboratory" we asked several writers existing outside of or on the fringe of New Weird * to create a round-robin story that showcases, in fictional form, their own manifestation of the term. This section was never meant to be a complete story ― more a series of vignettes ― but the results are cohesive and fascinating.
    Ann and I still have reservations about the term New Weird, but in our readings, research, and conversations, we have come to believe the term has a core validity. The proof is that it has taken on an artistic and commercial life beyond that intended by those individuals who, in their inquisitiveness about a "moment," unintentionally created a movement. It is still mutating forward through the work of a new generation of writers, as