Weird Fiction discussion

This topic is created for in-depth discussion of the VanderMeers' anthology, The New Weird, or any of the stories therein.

The first story is M. John Harrison's "The Luck in the Head." It's 24 pages long and hard for me to understand. The protagonist, a poet, has a recurring dream and then gets an assassination assignment. I had the feeling I was walking in during a longer story and leaving before the end. Harrison has wonderful command of the English language and uses many obscure words in a beautifully artistic manner. The characters in the story have startlingly original names.

I researched the story a little online and see that it was taken out of a volume of stories of a similar setting and probably the same characters called Virconium Nights. Maybe with more context I'd enjoy the story more, but it was presented as an isolate. It doesn't work at all that way, at least not for me. I hope the other stories in this book stand on their own better.

I've read a few Harrison novels; the last one I had no idea what I read.

I see you read his Empty Space trilogy giving him 4, 3, and then 1 star!

The second story in the anthology was 33 pages long, a short story called "In the Hills, the Cities" by Clive Barker. It is one of his Books of Blood that came out in the mid-1980s. It was wonderful. While Harrison's story only got two stars from me, I give this one a strong four, maybe five; I'm too close to it still to decide.

Now this is the second story from the 1980s in our anthology. If you have been paying close attention, one feature of New Weird literature's definition you know I've been making in this group is that it should be no earlier than 1990. So, what gives? Well, this story is from a section of the book the VanderMeers titled "Stimuli". In other words, it's not New Weird proper, but (to borrow a term from science fiction) rather proto-New Weird. No, I don't want to invent a third sub-genre. The stories are definitely Weird, but they're starting to lean towards, to look like, what will become New Weird.

This brings me to Clive Barker's work as a whole. I remember in the mid-1980s that he was widely considered to be the up and coming horror writer, that he had all the talent and ability to become as big as Stephen King. Many of us expected to see that, yet it never quite came to pass. I had always assumed it was because of his coming out as a gay man and placing that fact prominently in his writing, as in this story. Coming out as gay in those intolerant times was a sure way to kill a public career. It had for Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Rock Hudson, Joe Jackson, and a number of other celebrities not coming to my mind as readily as they should.

Among the celebrities who bit the dust, or at least never achieved his due share of fame, in this way, I always assumed, was Clive Barker. But that may not be the full reason. Maybe his stories weren't as good, as some claimed. However, his identification by the VanderMeers as someone who was writing an early form of New Weird, starts me to thinking there may be even another explanation. Was Barker ahead of his time? Was he writing New Weird type literature before an audience for it really existed? Questions to ponder.

On the story itself, it is a real surprise to me. Given the civil wars that broke out in the Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s which came down to neighboring cities fighting one another, Barker's setting here is incredibly prescient. But in terms of the story itself, I've never read one anything quite like it. I love the way he assumes something that's impossible and then just writes it like it is not only possible, but happening, assuming we the reader can know this can happen, and therefore offering no explicit explanation. It's a stretched metaphor, I feel, yet it can't quite be pinned down what it's a metaphor for.

One thing that troubles me about the story is that I read a summary of it in Wikipedia here (the last entry of Volume 1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_o... Did whoever wrote that summary read the same short story I did? There are some key elements of it that are the same, but the summary spells out or assumes so many things I didn't find in the version of the story I read. The version I read described events, but left many particulars ambiguous. Did Barker revise or alter the story for the New Weird anthology, I wonder. Am I reading a later version? If the Wikipedia summarizer and I both read the same story, then he or she read it as a horror reader and added to it things that weren't in Barker's writing of it, maybe to make better sense of the story for him or her. As New Weird readers, hopefully we can handle the ambiguity, leave it in the story, and better appreciate the story in the way it's written.

Dan wrote: "I see you read his Empty Space trilogy giving him 4, 3, and then 1 star!"

The third book was completely incomprehensible. I'd recommend the first two as stand-alone reads.

"In the Hills, the Cities" is one of several stories that I feel mark Barker as a true original, and made me think to myself that tiresome and undying question asked of all writers, "where do you get your ideas?" While he may not have achieved King-levels of success, he's still a bestseller and hardly obscure. I don't think it had anything to do with his sexuality. I do think he was ahead of his time, and still is. He could also be very cerebral (while at the same time being visceral.) The truth is, most people want the same old same old and don't want to have to think too hard. What did you think the Wiki writer got wrong? I've read the story a few times but don't remember every detail.

Edit: Upon a rereading of the story, I think my first reading more at fault than the summary. I'm deleting my post that pointed out inaccuracies in the summary because there were more inaccuracies in my post.

It does seem like the Wiki writer was careless with his summary (you should edit it!) so I'll take your word for most of that, but I did always get the impression that the colossi were the entire population of each city. If I remember correctly, there were even children in them. Barker may not have stated it explicitly, but I think there's enough evidence to draw that conclusion.

There is one aspect of the story I'm pretty sure I get. In the West we live as individuals with rights, and we try to make the world better individually or at most for our families. Our responsibilities to any wider community are vague and nebulous, usually shrouded in ideals in the clouds. In a communist (or more accurately totalitarian) system, the state was supposed to be supreme. Individuals were expected to devote their lives not for themselves, but to the state. Therefore, the state is of more central importance than the individual. I think Barker is having some fun with that idea by making it literal.

I still think Barker's choice of Yugoslavia, Serbia actually, to set the story in was brilliant. Nowhere does conflict better break down to city vs city than there, except maybe also in Chechnya and the Caucasus in general, but we knew so little of that part of the world in the 1980s.

Barker's fiction is very difficult for me to read and I don't know why that is. I'd be embarrassed to say how many times I had to read "Twilight at the Towers", a werewolf story from Book 6, before I got a handle on what even literally happened, much less try to ferret out a meaning.

I have read "Twilight at the Towers" but it was a long time ago and I don't remember it. I think all his Books of Blood are brilliant, the first three making an especially deep impression.

I'm not one who looks for other meanings in stories but your theory of communism vs. individualism is an interesting one.

The third story in the collection is "Crossing into Cambodia" by Michael Moorcock. What an odd choice the VanderMeers made in choosing this story. It's in the proto-New Weird section, but even still I see little in it I would characterize as Weird. It's more like straight science fiction. It's unfortunate the VanderMeers offer nothing in terms of what their thought processes were for including it, not even an introduction in italics to the author before the story begins as is customary in an anthology.

The story reads as though it were written in the 1970s when the Cold War was still on, but is set in the near future, one where the Soviet Union, United States, and Australia are allies and needing to occupy the southeast Asian peninsula for some reason. The story quickly focuses in on a Soviet division that's in Vietnam and is preparing to cross a river to invade Cambodia. The Soviet division is actually a Cossack division that rides on horseback but uses modern weapons including tanks and helicopters. They are attempting to get actionable intelligence out of Vietnamese locals and employ brutal tactics. The protagonist is a liaison officer attached to the division, not a Cossack but a communist party functionary there to ensure party loyalty and adherence to government goals, although that part goes unstated. He is an outsider trying to fit in, educated, and supposedly above (too humane for) the brutal methods of the Cossacks, yet he acts in ways that are ethically complicated, let's say.

This story was an excellent study in character. Trying to figure out what type of person the protagonist was and what his ethical boundaries were from the actions described was the heart of the story. That might sound dull, but the way Moorcock writes and portrays the characters was so real, so in keeping with our understanding of the way the Soviet military actually worked and interacted with one another, that it becomes fascinating. The events that test the protagonist's character are riveting as well, and I'll just leave it at that, trying to head not too far into spoiler territory by going into the events.

The story reads well, four stars minimum, and clearly stands on its own, unlike the earlier Harrison story. Nevertheless, it's fairly obvious that there's more to it. Moorcock would not create this rich background for the story to exist in if it were not at one time a part of a longer work. When I finish this collection, I'll do some research to find out what other stories or novel Moorcock set in this world in order to read them too. These are amazing characters and a very interesting situation set in a part of the world (southeast Asia) that frankly has heretofore been of no interest to me.

EDIT (note to self): This Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Opi...) describes the origin of this short story. It looks like Earl Aubec and Other Stories best collects the four stories set in this world.

Moorcock has a whole huge multiversal tapestry that he writes in, which I guess is what you are referring to... to be honest it is a bit over my head and I just try to take it story by story, book by book, when I read him.

This story works well by itself. I just like the characters, especially the protagonist, who wasn't named in this story, and would like to read the three (I think) other stories Moorcock wrote that feature him: "Casablanca", "Going to Canada", and "Leaving Pasadena".

I suspect most of Moorcock's work doesn't depend on knowing about his "multiversal tapestry" to enjoy it, but that knowing something of it might add to the enjoyment.

I've read most of the Elric books (the first six plus one he wrote later) and yeah, you can just read them as straight fantasy novels. Same with the Hawkmoon novels. There is one point in in each where the various Eternal Champions gather and team up, but otherwise they stand on their own just fine.

Don't forget Corum. I might have liked him the best, although Hawkmoon was good, too. I didn't 'like' Elric much, although the stories were some of the best. He was better than Cornelius, though. For some reason I could never get into those books. I should try them again.

I have the first Corum book and hope to get to it soon.

I haven't read them in decades. Let me know how they hold up today, please.

I bought my first Michael Moorcock book in over twenty-five years today: Tales from the Texas Woods. It's truly a beautiful cover. Written in 1997, Moorcock had been living with his wife, Linda, in Texas for only a few years then. In the forward, he explains that he had been writing stories about the American west and cowboys during his teens from London never having seen the U.S. I glanced through the first story, about fifty pages, and am amazed how authentic his portrayal is.

His second story was short, just three pages, in which he explains his concept of the multiverse. I knew a little about the many worlds side by side idea, but not that they could be made to intentionally collide somehow. Fascinating stuff.

Michael Moorcock has no respect for genre. In fact, he actively disparages it, and his works often transcend it, yet most of his fiction is speculative. I start to see why the VanderMeers consider him a Weird writer.

For any interested to know more about his career, the back inside dustjacket contained this blurb on it:

"London born Michael Moorcock is one of the most prominent, prolific and popular writers in the Western world. As the editor of New Worlds, Michael was a primary motivation behind the 1960's "New Wave" literary movement. His prodigious output includes rock songs, comics, screenplays, essays, and over seventy novels. Perhaps best known for his interlocking heroic fantasy series, Michael's recurring characters include Elric, Corum, Dorian Hawkmoon, Jerry Cornelius, the Eternal Champion and others. A multiple winner of the British Fantasy Award, Michael has won the Guardian Fiction Award (Condition Of Muzak), the World Fantasy Award (Gloriana), John W. Campbell Memorial Award (Gloriana), Nebula Award (Behold The Man [Mojo Press]) and was a finalist for the Whitbread Prize (Mother London). He currently lives with his wife Linda in Lost Pines, TX."

Over seventy novels! I had no idea.

Next story.

The next story in The New Weird is by Simon Ings, titled "The Braining of Mother Lamprey" (1990). Judging from his Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Ings) it's his first published work. However, isfdb.org (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1324) reveals it's actually his ninth published short story. He published his first shortly after turning 18 and this one when he was not quite 25. That's impressive.

The story is early urban fantasy. The protagonist is an apprentice who seeks to become a warlock. The world is a London-sized city called Godsgate in which magic has come back because the Age of Science is over and something of God's power revealed itself on Earth, especially in Godsgate. What we're presented starts out as "A Day in the Life of..." story, in which we are introduced to the protagonist, his friends, his enemy, and we get an idea of what he is trying to accomplish. Suddenly we realize there is much more at stake and we transition into a coming of age story for the apprentice.

All of this is well and good, except the setting is absolutely disgusting. A lot of the magic works through collecting piles of excrement and smearing it over oneself, gouging eyeballs, removing body limbs and allowing them to fester, etc. It's the seamiest imaginable urban decay type Weird where the ooze never stops dripping in gangrenous technicolor. Yuck! Just yuck!

The setting of the story and the lens it was told through was unique and imaginative, however disgusting, but the overall plot was nothing special. 3 stars I give it.

I read an Ings novel a couple years back called Wolves and it was one of those stories that I liked while I was reading it but at the end I didn't really know what it was all about.

I skimmed some of the reviews of Wolves. People are all over the place on it and generally confused, which is what you might expect if a book is labeled science fiction but written in New Weird style. It takes a readjusting of expectations, including granting an author more latitude, to read New Weird.

I'm not sure that I would have called it weird, and apparently (re-reading my review) I didn't even really consider it SF or fantasy, but just shelved it under fiction.

Next came Kathe Koja's "The Neglected Garden." It was about a man wanting to break up with a woman. She preferred to work on the relationship and to wait until the man came around to her point of view. She took being hard to get rid of to a new, horrifying level. This story was cute, in its way, and as short as it needed to be to get the point across. 4 stars.

Looking up Kathe Koja, I see she has been writing steadily for almost thirty years now. Her first ten years (1990s) she wrote mostly for adults. Looks like it's almost all Weird/horror, and very interesting looking at that. Then maybe she mellowed, because most of her writing this century appears to be for kids. I'd like to try out some of her earlier work.

Next up was Thomas Ligotti's "A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing." Unlike with Kathe Koja, I have heard of Thomas Ligotti. He is a horror writer, who also featured in Weird Tales often in the 1980s and 90s, especially his wonderful art. He is a polarizing writer, like Lovecraft. Those with an opinion of him have a very positive or very negative one. This was nevertheless the first time I took the time to read one of his stories. I had to read it twice because I failed to pick up the symbolism (on the first read) I knew had to be there for the story to make sense.

Despite starting to grow tired of lately having to read stories more than once to understand them, I liked the story and would give it four stars even though some would say little to nothing happened in the events depicted. Read the title of the story again for an indication of just how action-packed it is. I believe the story is about a terminally ill boy dying. Ligotti is trying to put a positive spin on this sad event by writing about an afterlife and rebirth cycle--that's my interpretation, and I could be wrong. It's a dense, highly philosophical read, okay for a short story, but I'm not sure I would want to spend novel length time with this kind of writing.

And this finishes the first quarter of the book, the stimuli section, what the VanderMeers seem to consider proto-New Weird. Next comes the "Evidence" section, the true New Weird material kicked off by China Mieville's "Jack." I've tried on two occasions to read Perdido Street Station, but never gotten far before getting confused and giving up. I wonder if this smaller dose of Mieville will prove more palatable.

Dan wrote: "Next up was Thomas Ligotti's "A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing." ..."

That story originally appeared in a 1997 book that came with a soundtrack CD by Current 93. C93 is a band that many people I respect like, but which I personally don't "get". Anyway, you can listen to the soundtrack here:

https://current931.bandcamp.com/album...

I have that book and CD (In a Foreign Town, in a Foreign Land) around somewhere, though I can't find it at this moment.

Ligotti is one of those rare people with extreme talent in a number of media. I had read about Ligotti being a musician. The webpage even tags the music link you provided alternative, experimental, gothic, gothic rock, and Hastings. However, I would not call it music, but rather a weird audiobook. The audiobook is not of the story I read, though it had a few lines in common. Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Edit: Youtube had some more musical Current 93 content available. Sounds like Pink Floyd to me, only even more pretentious, but not completely devoid of merit. I could see this band coming up with a one-hit wonder some day.

PostEdit: Current 93's "Crowleymass Unveiled" grew on me. Okay, this band is pretty cool. Going to listen to more.

I really liked some of the Koja works I read years ago. I'd recommend Bad Brains, The Cipher, and the collection Extremities. However when I read other works some years later I didn't enjoy them. I am not sure I would like her stream-of-consciousness style at all now.

Dan wrote: "Current 93's "Crowleymass Unveiled" grew on me. Okay, this band is pretty cool. Going to listen to more...."

That wasn't my intention! But if you like it, go ahead.

Their music is often described as "apocalyptic folk". Something about it just doesn't sit right with me. Maybe it is just David Tibet's voice. But I like people who have collaborated with them, Like Steven Stapleton, Christoph Heeman, Edward Ka-Spel, etc.

Scott, what we have noted about Kathe Koja is summed up pretty well in this article: https://www.tor.com/2014/07/25/summer... I am skeptical of the no plot criticism though. My case sample of one, the story I read, certainly had a strong one. One of her 1990s books might make a good New Weird group read one of these months.

Dan wrote: "Scott, what we have noted about Kathe Koja is summed up pretty well in this article: https://www.tor.com/2014/07/25/summer... I am skeptical of the no plot criticism though. My c..."

I feel similarly to the writer of that article. Bad Brains blew me away; I had never read anything so psychologically dark. Same feeling for The Cipher. But I didn't read Skin until many years later and I didn't think it aged well. The types of body modifications described in it were probably extreme when it was written but now would be considered tame. I did not like Strange Angels at all, and unlike the earlier books, the lack of plot was not made up for by satisfying psychological exploration.

Arriving very late to this party, I just started reading the M John Harrison...

Better late than never! I am only a little more than one third through myself.

On the M. John Harrison piece, about the wider Viriconium world stories it's taken from, I just learned today they're considered an important example of the Dying Earth sub-genre. Just like next month's Zothique.

Dan wrote: "Scott, what we have noted about Kathe Koja is summed up pretty well in this article: https://www.tor.com/2014/07/25/summer... ..."

Thanks. I knew nothing about her. In a strange synchronicity she has a blurb on the back of the comic I'm about to read: Beautiful Darkness.

I am halfway through the book now on cruise control. You know how you read in many story collections how there were some great stories and then other stories that were meh, and a few downright bad ones. Well, the meh to bad ones are in the middle, I think. I hope.

Here's a list with my ratings which I'll update from time to time. I had more to say about the earlier stories than I do the more recent ones I read.

Introduction
“The New Weird: ‘It’s Alive?’ Jeff VanderMeer - 5

Stimuli
M. John Harrison “The Luck in the Head” - 2
Michael Moorcock “Crossing into Cambodia” - 5
Clive Barker “In the Hills, the Cities” - 5
Simon D. Ings “The Braining of Mother Lamprey” - 3
Kathe Koja “The Neglected Garden” - 4
Thomas Ligotti “A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing” - 4

Evidence
China Mieville “Jack” - 4
Jeffrey Thomas “Immolation” - 3
Jay Lake “The Lizard of Ooze” - 3
Brian Evenson “Watson’s Boy” - 2
K .J. Bishop “The Art of Dying” - 1
Jeffrey Ford “At Reparata” - 2
Leena Krohn “Letters from Tainaron” - 2
Steph Swainston “The Ride of the Gabbleratchet” - 2
Alistair Rennie “The Gutter Sees the Light That Never Shines” (original) - 1

Discussion
“New Weird: The Creation of a Term” - 4
Michael Cisco “‘New Weird’: I Think We’re the Scene” - 4
Darja Malcolm-Clarke “Tracking Phantoms” - 4
K. J. Bishop “Whose Words You Wear” - 4
“European Editor Perspectives on the New Weird” (featuring the views of Michael Haulica from Romania, Martin Sust from the Czech Republic, Hannes Riffel from Germany, Konrad Waleski from Poland, and Jukka Halme from Finland) - 3

Laboratory (Original round-robin story)
“Festival Lives”

Preamble: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
View 1: “Death in a Dirty Dhoti” Paul Di Filippo - 3
View 2: “Cornflowers Beside the Unuttered” Cat Rambo - 2
View 3: “All God’s Chillun Got Wings” Sarah Monette - 3
View 4: “Locust-Mind” Daniel Abraham - 2
View 5: “Constable Chalch and the Ten Thousand Heroes” Felix Gilman - 2
View 6: “Golden Lads All Must…” Hal Duncan - 2
View 7: “Forfend the Heavens’ Rending” Conrad Williams - 3

Recommended Reading - 5
Biographical Notes - 4

China Mieville “Jack” - 4
Reviews I read say this story makes little sense shorn of its Perdido Street Station origin. I didn't find that to be the case at all and think this stands up well on its own. I like the prejudice against remade concept, the narrator's voice, and would be interested in reading more of the world depicted. This is the first time in years I've found a desire to try Perdido Street Station again.

Jeffrey Thomas “Immolation” - 3
Expansion on Mieville's concept, only this time about prejudice against and poor treatment of clones, but not as crisply written.

Jay Lake “The Lizard of Ooze” - 3
Another, let's create a strange world that operates on different principles story. The main problem I have with it is that the parameters are barely explained and the scientific justifications for them aren't dealt with at all. People in a strange world are given a mission or quest, encounter some small problem, overcome problem, the end. It's not enough.

Brian Evenson “Watson’s Boy” - 2
I could write the same paragraph for this story as I did for the last story. This one was even worse for its focus on ashes, dust, rats, and fishing line. The protagonist has daddy issues, but we have no reason to care. This story could have been a meh, like the above one, but was so vague with goals poorly defined it ended up with a 2 like the first one (Harrison's).

So far I've read the first 4 stories, so I'm still in the "Stimuli" section and haven't made it to the New Weird proper.

The Moorcock was great, although like Dan I was baffled by its inclusion in this anthology. I enjoyed reading the discussion of it here too. I clearly haven't been paying attention, because I had no idea that Moorcock had been writing cowboy stories. Thanks for the tip.

Clive Barker... sigh. I know I ought to rate him, but I don't. He has some great ideas but I dislike the way he executes them at the level of prose style. I've never managed to get through Books of Blood, simply for that reason.

As for the Harrison and Ings, I hated them both.

I love a convoluted plot and a good dollop of far-out world-building. Ings and Harrison's stories certainly had both.

But for me the world and plot also have to be based on some exciting intellectual ideas and/or an underlying world view. You get that with Ligotti (I disagree 100% with his world view, but he leaves you in no doubt that he has one), and you get it with Moorcock (the multiverse itself is the big intellectual idea), and IMO we got it with Zelazny in our other group read this month.

But I didn't find it in either of these, and they struck me as affected and silly. All froth and no body. (I feel that way about the vast majority of contemporary fantasy in general, though.)

I'll keep reading into June to get the book finished. I'm particularly curious about Koja, whom I've never read, and she's up next.

Guys, I'm not much for short stories, and I also have about 8 books to read for other groups this month if I count buddy reads. So I am just going to have to see you guys in July

The Haunted Vagina is not a short story, but I don't think it will take long. If you download Clark Ashton Smith's work from the link I provided, yes, it's sixteen short stories and some odds and ends, but they read a lot like chapters in a novel of 119 pages, though each page is at least as long as two modern pages, maybe three, so more like 357 pages. I've read or started all six books so far in this group. Zothique is my favorite of six good reads. The plots and writing, particularly the vocabulary, are truly incredible. Critics might say the plots are Howard Light, the writing Lovecraft Light, but for me he incorporates much of the best of both.

Merl, glad you joined me for the New Weird read. I was worried I might be the only one to like the Moorcock story and would have members saying, "It's all just leadup to one ugly event. What's so special about that?" The story is more than one scene or the sum of its parts, but I'd be hard-pressed to explain why it works so well.

I agree about Barker's prose being hard to understand. Upon third or fourth reading I usually get it, then wonder why I ever had difficulties. Barker almost always really rewards upon rereading because his underlying ideas are so rich. Strange how that happens.

I don't find Barker hard to understand. I find his prose style a bit leaden and clunky is all.

I thought Barker's earlier work had a poetic or literary quality to it, though it was always clear. Sadly, the quality of his writing has dropped off quite a bit.

We’ll, I just read the Kathe Koja and completely loved it. Such strong imagery, and beautifully written with a superb climax. Very happy to have made KK’s acquaintance this way!

By coincidence, I just read the same Ligotti story a couple of weeks ago in Teatro Grottesco. Anyway I already know that I adore his work, I’m a total fan.

Still plenty more for me to explore at leisure in this volume. Thanks for the group read folks.

Ligotti's style reminds me somewhat of Clark Ashton Smith's. I suppose that fits. They're both talented storytellers in more than one media. I look forward to reading more by Ligotti in the future.

I finished the "evidence" section and am astonished at just how bad it is. See message #33 above for my ratings of stories there. The section would be aptly named if by it the anthologist meant the crime being perpetrated against classic Weird by this dead end of a new direction.

I can see how some people might think this great writing. There is nice paragraph formatting and some clever and unusual word choices, but that's all I can say that's positive about these stories.

They do depict worlds that are very different from ours, but that difference is for the sake of difference, not to make a point, or show a reader anything meaningful by that difference. The stories have little to no plot, no protagonist whose struggles we care anything about, no purpose for having been written, and sometimes are offensive (waxing on positively about death in one case, pointlessly profane as a 12-year-old in another) maybe to highlight or foreground the sections of the story that are less offensive by way of contrast. These gems got a 1 from me for actually being negative reading experiences, instead of 2's for being utterly pointless and therefore merely boring. Unlike bizarro these stories are as humorless as a maggot-ridden corpse falling apart before our eyes. The authors take themselves and the drivel they write very, very seriously.

I could go on about just how bad these stories are and why, but see no purpose to further negativity.

The next section, judging by the article headings, is why these "writing artists" think what they're doing is so wonderful. Oh boy. Just a hundred more pages to endure.

Dan wrote: "I finished the "evidence" section and am astonished at just how bad it is...."

You seem to have at least liked the Mieville story. I would like to read that one, but my library doesn't have this book.

They do have another VanderMeer collection called simply The Weird, as opposed to "the New Weird". It has stories from both older and newer weirdos. Maybe I'll get to it someday....

I have just concluded The New Weird. I rated thirty items a total of 93 points to give the book a 3.1 GR rating which rounds to a three. If I rated only the fiction stories, it still comes out at 2.7, which also rounds to a three. There were two great stories in the collection: Michael Moorcock's “Crossing into Cambodia”, and Clive Barker's “In the Hills, the Cities." There were only three more stories I liked: Kathe Koja's “The Neglected Garden”, Thomas Ligotti's “A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing”, and China Mieville's “Jack”. For the other seventeen stories, the challenge was figuring out the degree of suck.

Now, I am stepping back and from an overlooking perspective trying to figure out what went so horribly wrong. I certainly wanted to like these stories more than I did. Was their lack of plot, character, theme, and meaningful story structure a function of the fact that most of them were excerpts taken from longer works? This is a possibility. To know for certain I will probably need to read the entire book or novel that some of these stories were excerpted from. Until then, I can't be certain.

However, I suspect that I would not like the full length novel much if any more than I appreciated the excerpt. This is because an anthologist could take out a piece of an Edith Wharton novel, a Tolstoy novel, an H.G. Wells, and a Victor Hugo novel, and in such a way choose that excerpt well enough that it would make itself into a pleasurable short story reading experience, one with a beginning, middle, end, a theme for the excerpted part, and interesting characters. If it could be done for them, why couldn't it be done for the authors the Vandermeers excerpted?

The Vandermeers see themselves as providing the logical extension of the growth of New Weird from the new direction China Mieville took Weird fiction. That may be. If so, this group might need a new moderator because I can't see myself agreeing to read much more of this direction.

My hope is that the Vandermeers' work represents only one direction Weird took after 1990, and that it's not the only one, or even widely considered the best one being tried. The Vandermeers and their many correspondents banded together to call this direction "New Weird." I'm happy to use that label for this kind of fiction.

What I prefer to read going forward is something I'm going to call "Modern Weird." I consider Modern Weird to be the logical extension of what Weird Tales would be publishing if it were still publishing today. Modern Weird encompasses New Weird, but New Weird only as a subgenre, one that values world-building and creative language use, while devaluing story structure. Other Modern Weird writing values not only world-building, good writing, and genre bending, but also values plots, characters, interesting situations, having themes for audiences to ponder greater meanings, etc.

Good examples of Modern Weird (in my opinion) are the Moorcock and Barker stories, Koja, Ligotti, and even Mieville--the Vandermeers can't claim him exclusively for New Weird! I think the Blake Crouch novel we read for April is another excellent example of Modern--but not New--Weird.

I'm down for exploring Modern Weird, but less enthusiastic now about New Weird. That said, whenever the group wants to go in a New Weird direction, far from trying to criticize or cut it off or anything like that, I plan to facilitate. I believe in democracy in groups, that this is the members' group, and that I just help administrate. We all have a voice in the direction. I just might be quieter and stay more in the background when New Weird choices get nominated and selected. I definitely won't be as vocally negative about any future works we read as I've been with this one. A moderator should not be a Debbie Downer.

I shouldn’t worry about it too much Dan. I’m sure that as the group evolves our reading choices will be shaped by our diverse tastes as members, not by the contents of one book the Vandermeers edited ten years ago.

Dan wrote: "A moderator should not be a Debbie Downer."

That made me think of a play that was performed here recently: "Kill the Debbie Downers! Kill them all!". Weirdly enough, it was based on Chekhov.

I like the concept of "Modern Weird."

For me, examples of high quality "Modern Weird" would be:

-- the ghost stories of Reggie Oliver and Steve Duffy
-- uncanny, Aickmanesque stories by Simon Strantzas and Rosalie Parker
-- the action oriented cosmic horror stories of Laird Barron
-- occult stories by Richard Gavin and Thomas Ligotti

The above have a continuity with classic weird writers such as M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Aickman, Daphne DuMaurier.

Thanks for that list of authors to consider for Modern Weird, Ronald. Sounds like some great writers. Are they all strictly on the horror side? Do any cross over genres into SF and fantasy on occasion too, I mean write with those elements in their work?

On your list of authors I am familiar with Ligotti's work and have heard favorable things of Laird Barron's that make me want to read him. I'd love to explore the five other authors you mention as well.

I think of Blake Crouch as in many ways a quintessential Modern Weird writer in his blending of genres and his unpredictability in terms of plot. I have the feeling the Vandermeer crowd would not want to include him because he doesn't toss aside story structure the way they want to. It makes him highly accessible and commercially viable, rather than literary perhaps, which I imagine they'd consider another strike. For me, I'm interested in exploring in that direction. Crouch has a circle of writers like him that he sometimes writes with as well, people like J.A. Konrath, F. Paul Wilson, James Rollins, and John Connolly, all of whom might be Modern Weird writers as well.

I really really like Crouch, whether he's weird or not

I've read two of Laird Barron's collections and I've found him very unsatisfying.