New Weirdness

“New Weird” is a term blithely applied to an apparent proliferation of poly-genre works in recent years. Although rooted in science-fiction and/or fantasy, writers contributing to the accretion believe that literature should transcend the genre in which it is written. This has sparked a controversy in the literary community, with a minority of critics arguing that the integrity of the work's foundation is diluted or weakened when its boundaries are blurred with those of another genre. Convenient categorization of any work is impossible, in my opinion, and blurring said boundaries is a necessary part of writing.

It seems that the philosophy has already gained an inexorable impetus, and no amount of debate will stop it. At this point, I think the bigger concern should be the name itself.

“New Weird” is an egregious misnomer;
this approach is neither new nor weird. It has a long history dating back to Horace Walpole, one of the creators of “gothic” literature, whose epistolary preface to the 1764 edition of The Castle of Otranto added a dimension to the burgeoning genres of science fiction and fantasy. His inclusion of reportage as a narrative strategy to augment a text was a precursor to the verisimilitude of many fin de siècle novels of the nineteenth century, and an
ancestor of the “New Weird” movement.

But there are many periods marked by such an accretion of trans-genre works rooted in science-fiction and/or fantasy. In particular, I’m thinking of the 50’s and 60’s, which saw the publication of such genre-defying masterpieces as The Manchurian Candidate and Slaughterhouse-Five. Although the authors of these works are now, in fact, old and weird, I refuse to accept that older swells of multi-genus works should properly be called “old weird.”

While many could argue that the term “New Weird” is at least as effective in conveying its meaning as the “modernism” permutations of last century, I think that if the perceived need for a contemporary sci-fi/fantasy subgenre persists, we should create a term better than the non-committal “New Weird.”

Maybe Walpole v1.3.

ALL POINTS BULLETIN: Find Siouxsie Sioux

Have you seen this woman? She was last seen walking off toward the sunset in the company of a rare male Banshee named Budgie. Left in a precarious state of mental health after a particularly nasty encounter with a bat and a robin, they have gone into hiding and will only answer to the name “The Creatures.”

Several hits collections have recently been added to the group’s discography, and their first four albums, The Scream, Join Hands, Kaleidoscope, and Juju, have been remastered and will be released as single-disc editions with bonus tracks, but Siouxsie and the Banshees have produced no original material for more than a decade.

Their 30-year career encompassed punk, gothic rock, and new wave genres. One of the most successful groups to emerge from the punk rock movement of the late 1970s, they have sold nearly 50 million records worldwide. In the U.S., their career reached its zenith with the release of Superstition in 1991. The album reached #65 on the Billboard 200, and spawned three singles, the first of which, “Kiss Them for Me,” climbed to #23 on the Billboard Hot 100, #8 Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, and #1 The Modern Rock Tracks chart. In the wake of this commercial success, Siouxsie and the Banshees were given the dubious honor of having a track, “Face to Face,” included on the soundtrack to the accursed Batman & Robin. Their subsequent album, The Rapture, was a commercial failure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees effectively closed up shop.

Siouxsie and the Banshees are not the only ones to suffer from their affiliation with Batman & Robin; that movie was a miserable vortex that basically ended the previously successful careers of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chris O’Donnell, Alicia Silverstone, and Coolio. The only person to escape the carnage relatively unscathed was the mystically-protected lothario George Clooney. Even Uma Thurman’s career stalled after the movie’s release; were it not for Quentin Tarantino and his fondness for long legs, Uma Thurman might have been perpetually stuck in the six-year rut she was in before the Kill Bill franchise revived her career. Hopefully, Siouxsie and the Banshees will be similarly rejuvenated through their affiliation with Sophia Coppola and the inclusion of one of their earliest songs, “Hong Kong Garden,” in her movie about Marie Antoinette.

Siouxsie and the Banshees, we miss you.

How Stellar Awards Got Their Groove Back

Congratulations to Matthew Fox whose work on Lost garnered him this year’s Saturn Award for best actor on television, and Joe Haldeman whose Camouflage won the Nebula Award for best novel. Perhaps more importantly, I think congratulations are in order for the Saturn and Nebula Awards themselves; with the announcement of these winners, these two stellar awards have begun the long, arduous task of reclaiming respect from wayward fans.

For most of its ten-year history, the Saturn Award judges for best male actor in a TV series had successfully evaded the responsibilities shared by their competitors by foregoing the recognition of talent in nominees. Rather, they had fashioned the award as a popularity contest, probably at some point in the voting process even creating focus groups consisting of teenage girls armed with the latest issue of Tiger Beat. While the faces of David “Brooding” Boreanaz and Ben “Botox” Browder may translate well to posters and stickers, their “acting” (read creative squinting) does not deserve to win any award multiple times, and certainly not one that should aspire to greatness.

Similarly, the Nebula Award has recently begun waging a war against its own mediocrity; it is voted upon by the active membership of the organization and this is the third time in five years that they have proven their ability to resist the urge to make their award a chintzy addendum to the Hugo. They are well on their way to making up for that really, really bad stretch between 1970 and 1987 during which they plagiarized the Hugo 13 out of 18 times!

Despite their recent stumbles, I love these awards and would like to see them live long and prosper (sorry, I couldn’t resist). I’d also like to see Julian McMahon receive the credit he deserves for his incredible work on Nip/Tuck and Ian McDonald get some recognition for his riveting, ambitious novel, River of Gods.

Son of… Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Stargate SG-1

1. Don’t accept food from alien women unless you’re willing to marry them.
   
2. Of all the delicious flavors of Jell-O Gelatin, blue is the best!
   
3. Mother Nature sometimes moonlights as a diner waitress.
   
4. If you’re Sam's boyfriend/love interest, make sure your will is up to date.
   
5. Always hide one of your ion cannons for a rainy day.
   
6. If at first you don't succeed try try try try try try try try try again.
   
7. Never hide your feelings during a lie detector test given by the Tok'ra.
   
8. Never look a crystal skull in the eyes!
   
9. If Daniel has long hair, it’s probably a dream or a flashback.
   
10. Always remember to set your VCR before leaving for Antarctica.
    
11. You don't have to know the meaning of the word "insolence" to be good at it.

The Truth About Ridicule

On this day in 1810, Lord Byron swam the Hellespont, in emulation of the romantic myth of Leander's swims to visit his beloved Hero. He came upon the narrow strait in northwestern Turkey while in the midst of his two-year tour of the Mediterranean. Byron was twenty-two and not yet famous for his poetry or his excesses, although he had just finished the first draft of Childe Harold, and had just ended, while in Malta, his first serious affair with a married woman. In spite of this, the poem Byron wrote after the Hellespont swim shows him capable of ridiculing not only Romanticism but himself.

Recently, the life of a B-list "celebrity" has paralleled that of Lord Byron's by imitating a mythic event then chronicling her exploits. Nicole Richie, now twenty-four and famous only for her excesses, has written The Truth About Diamonds, a book that describes how Richie, like the infamous Trojan Horse, has been entered by hordes of men. Richie reportedly hadn't read much of anything before writing her book because she "always thought people who wrote books were supersmart, so I figured you had to be supersmart to read books, too; but now that I've written one, I know better." When she was asked if the plot was autobiographical, Richie retorted, "Of course. Who else's autobiography was I going to write?" It seems that Richie shares more with Byron than a reckless desire for meaningless sex; she, too, is capable of poking fun at herself, albeit inadvertantly.

I Get "Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother" All the Time

This beta program offers something for the narcissist in all of us; it scans your photos and determines which celebrities you most resemble. Admittedly, it's not terribly accurate. Different pictures produce different results. While some of mine were suspiciously flattering, others were just... puzzling.

Al Pacino (70%) – Hoo-ah!
Jared Leto (68%) - Sure, I’ll take it.
Dan Simmons (62%) - Who?
Pele (61%) - Cool! I look like a black athlete?!
Gary Oldman (60%) - I can’t complain.

and... Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon?! Twice! (70%, 68%). It’s still better than Angela Lansbury (48%).

Oddly, I got “Gary Oldman” and “Angela Lansbury” as matches for the same picture. Does this mean that they are also matches for each other?

The six pictures I submitted of my wife generated wildly varied matches. Of the sixty results, only a handful were duplicated; Kate Beckinsale (73%, 62%, 55%), Renee Russo (73%, 60%), Marcia Cross (73%, 55%), and Tata Young (62%, 60%).

Sadly, there were no matches for our Boston Terrier, who bears a striking resemblance to Don Rickles in a unitard.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Stargate SG-1

1. When traveling to other planets, remember your home address.

2. Beware of strangers with glowing eyes.

3. One stuns. Two kills. Three removes the evidence.

4. Don't say "Ka" until you've tried it.

5. Candy bars go a long way towards building new friendships.

6. Call your team every morning to make sure you're wearing the right color uniform.

7. Whenever you agree with what someone has just said, say “Indeed.”

8. When in trouble, five bucks says Carter has a theory.

9. Juggling is a good skill to master.

10. Never give Richard Dean Anderson a prop, he'll just play with it.