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.
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.
posted by A Gray at 10:18 PM
2 Comments:
Nice idea with this site its better than most of the rubbish I come across.
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Super color scheme, I like it! Good job. Go on.
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