The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [3]
The truth of this accessibility also resides at the sentence and paragraph level, which in Miéville's case house brilliant, often startling images and situations, but do not always display the same control as those past masters.* Yet, by using broader brushstrokes, Miéville created much more space for his readers, a trade-off that helped create his success. (Ultimately, Miéville would also serve as an entry point to work that was more ambitious on the paragraph level. In a neat time traveling trick, one of his own touchstones, M. John Harrison, would benefit greatly from that success.)
Quite simply, Miéville had created just the right balance between pulp writing, visionary, surreal images, and literary influences to attract a wider audience ― and serve as the lightning rod for what would become known as New Weird.
THE DEBATE
But Miéville wasn't alone. By the time Harrison posited his question "What is New Weird?" it had become clear that a number of other writers had developed at the same time as Miéville, using similar stimuli. My City of Saints & Madmen, K. J. Bishop's The Etched City, and Paul Di Filippo's A Year in the Linear City, among others, appeared in the period from 2001 to 2003, with Steph Swainston's The Year of Our War published in 2004. It seemed that something had Risen Spontaneous ― even though in almost every case, the work itself had been written in the 1990s and either needed time to gestate or had been rejected by publishers ― and thus there was a need to explain or name the beast.
The resulting conversation on the Third Alternative public message boards consisted of many thousands of words, used in the struggle to name, define, analyze, spin, explore, and quantify the term "New Weird." The debate involved more than fifty writers, reviewers, and critics, all with their own questions, agendas, and concerns.
By the end of the discussion, part of which is reprinted in this anthology, it wasn't clear if New Weird as a term existed or not. However, over the next few years, with varying levels of enthusiasm, Miéville (and various acolytes and followers) promulgated versions of the term, emphasizing the "surrender to the weird," but also a very specific political component. Miéville thought of New Weird as "post-Seattle" fiction, referring to the effects of globalization and grassroots efforts to undermine institutions like the World Bank.* This use of the term "New Weird" was in keeping with Miéville's idealism and Marxist leanings in the world outside of fiction, but, in my opinion, preternaturally narrowed the parameters of the term. This brand of New Weird seemed far too limiting, unlike the type envisioned by Steph Swainston in the original message board discussion; her New Weird seemed almost like a form of literary Deism, a primal and epiphanal experience.
The passion behind Miéville's efforts made sure that the term would live on ― even after he began to disown it, claiming it had become a marketing category and was therefore of no further interest to him. Despite Miéville's lack of interest, by 2005 the term "New Weird" was being used with some regularity by readers, writers, and critics.
That the term, as explored primarily by M. John Harrison and Steph Swainston, and then taken up by Miéville, has since been rejected or severely questioned not only by the initial Triumvirate but by several others speaks to the fact that most New Weird writers, like most New Wave writers, are various in their approaches over time. They are not repeating themselves for the most part.* Cross-pollination ― of genres, of boundaries ― occurs as part of an effort to avoid easy classification ― not for its own sake, or even consciously in most cases, but in an attempt to allow readers and writers to enter into a dialogue that is genuine, unique, and not based on received ideas or terms.
I myself reacted violently to the idea of New Weird in 2003 ― in part because it seemed that some writers wanted to claim it, falsely, as a uniquely English phenomenon; in part because I continue to champion artistic discussion