So what, exactly, is a "Weird Tale?"

[Desdichado]

I like that concept of New Weird. I think you may have a point there, although that's still pretty vague as a genre definition. At least for a splitter like me.

 

[takyris]

Yo, JD,

No kidding. Currently, starting a topic on the New Weird on a writing messageboard is a conversation-starter roughly akin to arriving at ENWorld and posting something like "Hey, I'm not sure I like the ranger... I wanted him to be like Drizzt, but isn't two-weapon fighting kind of weak in this version of D&D?"

You've got people saying that the New Weird is overrated, trying to be self-consciously cool and different when, in fact, they couldn't exist without the Old Weird -- and instead of being actually new and different, they're just coming up with new ideas and then ramming them into old stories. You've got people saying that the New Weird is making fantasy the new "Literature of Ideas" (and if New Weird is the Ranger-discussion of writing boards, "Literature of Ideas" is the "roleplaying or rollplaying" discussion of writing boards). You've got people saying that it's an attempt to represent social concepts that couldn't be represented by traditional "white people, with elves and dwarves instead of non-white people" fantasy. You've got people saying that New Weird is fantasy that breaks the rules of fantasy. You've got people saying that New Weird is fantasy that turns fantasy into a science rather than a faith system.

Really, the New Weird is this blurrily defined area of land. Some people seem to be definitely inside it, some people seem to be definitely outside it, and some people keep yelling that the line is totally over there and that everyone else is just too stupid to understand the line in the first place.

So yeah. If you get a definition that works and that can be objectively applied, go for it. The SF&F writing community has gotten into enormous arguments about what Space Opera is and is not, and what qualifies as Space Opera these days -- and Space Opera, to my mind, is a heckuva lot easier to define than New Weird.

 

[Desdichado]

Just out of curiousity, where's a place I might have these oh so fun discussions on the new Literature of Ideas? Any and all of those descriptions of New Weird sound like something fun to check out.

 

[takyris]

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.publishing.tangent-online&from=9335

SFF-Net Webnews. Unthreaded, which is a pain, and that links to the Tangent newsgroup, home to a fair number of cranks who tend to react to disagreement by informing you that you've misunderstood them or are inadequately grounded in the genre. They also tend to condescendingly assign you reading lists when you poke holes in their arguments.

"You haven't heard my proof that Red is Blue? I didn't think I had to explain that. Please check out my article in (Snobby SF Literature Magazine I'll never find) for more information on the subject, and then read XXXX, YYYYY, and ZZZZ. Honestly, I can't really have a conversation with you if I have to keep explaining things."

I know, I know -- I'm really selling it well, aren't I? I usually keep track of it for a few days and then angrily declare, "Son of a... I could have been writing stories during that time! That's time I'll never get back!"

EDIT: Also, check out China Mieville's website, or perhaps some of the... very emphatic... people over at Gabe Chouinard's messageboard:

http://pub44.ezboard.com/bdeadcitiesver3o19082

But really, that's only as a last resort. Really. Last. Dead last. Dead-dead, no-rez-possible last resort. They're very into the bad boy idealogy over there.

 

[Desdichado]

Is the ttapress site down and not mirrored or copied anywhere? That seems to be the discussion on New Weird.

 

[Tom Cashel]

Ah, the rare but patented Dyal Thread...wherein a question is posed and each reply is shot down only moments after it is posted.

Don't worry, he'll "know it when he sees it."

This thread is a Weird Tale.

 

[Desdichado]

Not that rare!

I mean, really, I don't ask questions about things I know nothing about, so I can usually sift through the first wave of replies until we really get to the deeper discussion afterwards.

 

[barsoomcore]

Maybe a useful point of discussion is to list some works that may or may not be New Weird.

I'll happily nominate Perdido Street Station, as long as New Weird can include crap.



I think I'd include Jeff Noon's Vurt and Pollen, and as I also add Richard Calder's horrifying trilogy Dead Girls, Dead Boys, and Dead Things, I start thinking to myself, "I bet those Brits have been on to this for a good long time."

Anyone who hasn't read Dead Girls should try it. You may not make it through -- it is one of the most horrifying books I've ever read, only outdone by the subsequent volumes (I actually haven't been able to finish the third one because the second one freaked me out so much I just start to shudder when I listen to that voice again). His view of a society that can create utterly realistic artificial people is chilling and makes you want to go wash yourself.

But back on topic, New Weird. What else fits?

I don't think Steven Erikson does, though he seems to tread close...

 

[Desdichado]

Y'know, I saw those Dead XXX books at the store earlier today and I have to admit they caught my eye somewhat. I'm not likely to buy books on impulse, because it's hard to find time to read something like that unless I really want to, but I have to admit they seemed quite interesting.

 

[barsoomcore]

They are interesting. Boy can write, that's for sure. Boy's got a sick and twisted imagination.

Here's a footnote:

Primavera's 'hemline neurosis', as explained by Dr. Bogenbloom, was less a result of 'strange exhibitionism' (the title of his contribution to the festschrift 'Semiotics of Anthropophagy') than of 'strange loops', the paradoxes that translate a grande fille into an idiom that is one long scream of feedback. Said the Bogey: 'For a hemline to reach that coveted elevation where bifurcation of thighs meets at that satin-gusseted apex we might call the "quantum-chaos crack", that same hemline, however vertiginous, must be hoisted halfway, then halfway again, always having to rise half of the remaining distance of its journey...' And thus never, to the regret of the doll, revealing the smallest gasp of netherness. I remember that wet season in 2070, when the phantasmata of the Weird's oneirotic, ruttish streets sported Zero G specials, pink-painted labia pouting from cutaway hose. And Primavera each night anxiously adjusting her skirt towards some elusive zenith of venereal vanity, each adjustment vanishing into a fractal gravity well, a doll doomed to an unremitting, if wholly relative, modesty.

He knows big words, too. And he's funny:

The cheaper the femmes, the cheaper the fatales.

Apologies to Eric's Grandma if that was too much, and I would be happy to edit. But I think it's okay.

The book would definitely NOT be okay with Granny.