It's a Weird World
Fiction has always been strange: imaginary people in imaginary places doing imag inary things. This fiction is, well, weird. It's "fantastic' - and that means tough and real, not wispy and ethereal. It's subversive and strange, imaginative and challeng- ing, extravagant and brutal, but above all weird. And not just any old weird: New Weird. There is no denying that New Weird stems from Science Fiction/Fantasy, but anyone dis- missing this movement as run-of- the-mill Star Trek rewrites has a sur prise in store. Forget the endless Tolkein spin-offs, the elves "n' heroes with their magic rings. For- get even the good guys and bad guys - this is a genre where ambi- guity rules. Forget contemporary fiction, discard your penguin clas- sics and throw down your literary theory. The New Weird is the only modern fiction where reconsidering the genre is more important than following it, and where reinvention and reconceptualisation is the order of the day. All fiction evolves, and the New Weird is no exception; but its ori- gins are not so clear - there was never an Old Weird. There are influences, however, drawn from across the spectrum of literature and fiction: from the robots of Asi- mov and the bleak, brooding atmosphere of Peake's Gormenghast, to the cities, characters and scope of Dickens and Tolstoy, combined with the style, linguistic brilliance and lasting innovation of Shake- speare and Chaucer, and the cut- ting edge scientific theories of Hawkings. As I said, New Weird is weird, but also phenomenally good. New Weird authors are modern, really modern. Gormenghast is a key influence on their work, but Peake is not really a New Weird author. The ideas behind the New Weird movement are partly rooted in a wish to get Science Fiction/Fantasy out of its ghetto. There are two things commonly said about the
SF/F genre. First: that it's not one, but two separate genres, that "Sci- ence Fiction' and "Fantasy' are totally different things. Second: that Fantasy is a steaming pile of turgid dross - not to put too fine a point on it. An honourable exception has been granted for Tolkein in recent times, helped just a little by the runaway success that was the film trilogy. For the most part though, Science Fiction and Fantasy are viewed with some scepticism. The point the New Weird authors try to make is that both of these ideas are wrong. Fantasy is not all princesses, rogues and high adven- ture but can be dark, atmospheric and incredibly creative. It can be all of that in a pirate city hauled across the ocean (China Mieville, The Scar), or in an alter- nate England where the Industrial Revolution was powered on a sub- stance called "aether' which changed the world, but not entirely for the better (Ian MacLeod, The Light Ages). In these novels, Science Fiction cannot be separated from Fantasy.
So, who to look out for? I could give you all the titles and authors of the really good stuff around at the moment but, to avoid inunda- tion, I'll limit myself to three. The biggest name in the genre at the moment is China Mieville. Don't worry if you've never heard of him, when I say these authors are modern, I mean it. Mieville's first (riveting) novel, King Rat, was first published in 1998 and his fourth and most recent, Iron
Council, will be published later this year. It's not as popular as Harry Potter, but at the same time, it's not sold to children. Mieville writes fantastically well. Far from the cardboard cut-out characters and "join-the-dots' plotlines of bad fan- tasy writing, his creations not only live and breathe, but also walk off the page and into the world around you. The strange, alien setting and urban jungle of Mieville's city, New Crobuzon (Perdido Street Station and The Scar), is extraordinarily vivid. Mieville makes for compelling reading, memorable and mesmeris- ing.
Another key figure is M. John Harrison. Some of his work is older: Viriconium, the Pastel City is currently classified as straightfor- ward Fantasy. However Light, his most recent publication, is astound- ingly well written, and is definitely New Weird. With prose as dense and beauti- ful as poetry, it makes for a power- fully intelligent read. But the depth and power of the New Weird can't be experienced second-hand, and if you've read this far, go and read the blurb of one of these. Then read the whole book. You may do many things, but you won't regret it.
13th May 2004