Weird Fiction Old, New, and In-Between VII: Appendix – Rafe McGregor

The seventh of six blog posts exploring the literary and philosophical significance of the weird tale, the occult detective story, and the ecological weird. The series suggests that the three genres of weird fiction dramatize humanity’s cognitive and evolutionary insignificance by first exploring the limitations of language, then the inaccessibility of the world, and finally the alienation within ourselves. This post provides notes on a new series from the British Library, the cases of Kyle Murchison Booth, and the Southern Reach Quartet.

 

The Weird Tale: The British Library Tales of the Weird

Somewhat to my shame, I only discovered the British Library series while researching this series of posts. I really should have seen it sooner as it has been going since 2018 and published fifty-three titles to date (roughly one a month). The books are all sturdy paperbacks, with colourful, imaginative, and attractive covers and spines and cost £10 or less, depending on where and how one buys them. Each instalment includes a ‘Note from the Publisher’, which serves as a combined trigger warning and ethical rationale and which I reproduce here as exemplary practice:

The original short stories reprinted in the British Library Tales of the Weird series were written and published in a period ranging across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are many elements of these stories which continue to entertain modern readers; however, in some cases there are also uses of language, instances of stereotyping and some attitudes expressed by narrators or characters which may not be endorsed by the publishing standards of today. We acknowledge therefore that some elements in the stories selected for reprinting may continue to make uncomfortable reading for some of our audience. With this series British Library Publishing aims to offer a new readership a chance to read some of the rare material of the British Library’s collections in an affordable paperback format, to enjoy their merits and to look back into the worlds of the past two centuries as portrayed by their writers. It is not possible to separate these stories from the history of their writing and as such the following stories are presented as they were originally published with minor edits only, made for consistency of style and sense.

My only complaint, which prompted me to include this part of the appendix, is that there are no numbers on or in the books, meaning that it isn’t easy to read them in order. I’m sure there is a sound reason for this editorial decision, but all collectors and some readers will want a chronological list. There’s one on Medium compiled by Owen Williams, which is easier to navigate than the British Library’s and which I used as a guide in compiling my own:  

1. From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea 
2. Haunted Houses: Two Novels by Charlotte Riddell 
3. Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories
4. Mortal Echoes: Encounters With the End 
5. Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings
6. The Platform Edge: Uncanny Tales of the Railways
7. The Face in the Glass and Other Gothic Tales by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
8. The Weird Tales of William Hope Hodgson
9. Doorway to Dilemma: Bewildering Tales of Dark Fantasy
10. Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic
11. Promethean Horrors: Classic Stories of Mad Science
12. Roarings from Further Out: Four Weird Novellas by Algernon Blackwood
13. Tales of the Tattooed: An Anthology of Ink 
14. The Outcast and Other Dark Tales by E.F. Benson
15. A Phantom Lover and Other Dark Tales by Vernon Lee
16. Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City
17. Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain
18. Queens of the Abyss: Lost Stories from the Women of the Weird
19. Chill Tidings: Dark Tales of the Christmas Season
20. Dangerous Dimensions: Mind-Bending Tales of the Mathematical Weird 
21. Heavy Weather: Tempestuous Tales of Stranger Climes
22. Minor Hauntings: Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth
23. Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales of the Insect Weird 
24. Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End 
25. I Am Stone: The Gothic Weird Tales of R. Murray Gilchrist
26. Randalls Round: Nine Nightmares by Eleanor Scott 
27. Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights 
28. The Shadows on the Wall: Dark Tales by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
29. The Ghost Slayers: Thrilling Tales of Occult Detection 
30. The Night Wire and Other Tales of Weird Media 
31. Our Haunted Shores: Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles 
32. The Horned God: Weird Tales of the Great God Pan
33. Spectral Sounds: Unquiet Tales of Acoustic Weird 
34. Haunters of the Hearth: Eerie Tales for Christmas Nights
35. Polar Horrors: Strange Tales from the World’s Ends
36. The Flaw in the Crystal and Other Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair
37. The Ways of Ghosts and Other Dark Tales by Ambrose Bierce
38. Holy Ghosts: Classic Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny 
39. The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird 
40. The Lure of Atlantis: Strange Tales from the Sunken Continent 
41. Dead Drunk: Tales of Intoxication and Demon Drinks 
42. The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
43. Roads of Destiny and Other Stories of Alternative Histories and Parallel Realms 
44. Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites
45. Doomed Romances: Strange Tales of Uncanny Love 
46. The Undying Monster: A Tale of the Fifth Dimension by Jessie Douglas Kerruish
47. Fear in the Blood: Tales from the Dark Lineages of the Weird 
48. Out of the Past: Tales of Haunting History 
49. The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson
50. Deadly Dolls: Midnight Tales of Uncanny Playthings
51. The Human Chord by Algernon Blackwood
52. Eerie East Anglia: Fearful Tales of Field and Fen
53. The Haunted Trail: Classic Tales of the Rambling Weird

 There are three more titles due for publication, all by the end of this year:

54. The Weird Tales of Dorothy K. Haynes 
55. The Haunted Vintage by Marjorie Bowen 
56. Summoned to the Séance: Spirit tales from Beyond the Veil 

 

The Occult Detective Story: Kyle Murchison Booth

 In parts III and IV of this series, I praised Sarah Monette’s Kyle Murchison Booth occult detective stories and mentioned that some are, unfortunately, difficult to find. The eighteen stories have been published over a period of twenty years (2003-2023), during which two books have been published: The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth (2007; second edition, 2011), a collection of ten short stories, and A Theory of Haunting (2023), a novella and the most recent story. This is a chronological list of all eighteen, with the original date of publication in parenthesis and my suggestion for the easiest way to find them… 

1. The Wall of Clouds (2003) – The Bone Key
2. The Venebretti Necklace (2004) – The Bone Key
3. The Inheritance of Barnabas Wilcox (2004) – The Bone Key
4. Bringing Helena Back (2004) – The Bone Key
5. The Green Glass Paperweight (2004) – The Bone Key
6. Wait for Me (2004) – The Bone Key
7. Elegy for a Demon Lover (2005) – The Bone Key
8. Drowning Palmer (2006) – The Bone Key
9. The Bone Key (2007) – The Bone Key
10. Listening to Bone (2007) – The Bone Key
11. The World Without Sleep (2008) – Somewhere Beneath Those Waves
12. The Yellow Dressing Gown (2008) – Apex
13. The Replacement (2008) – Sarah Monette
14. White Charles (2009) – Clarkesworld
15. To Die for Moonlight (2013) – Apex
16. The Testimony of Dragon’s Teeth (2018) – Uncanny
17. The Haunting of Dr. Claudius Winterson (2022) – Uncanny
18. A Theory of Haunting (2023) – A Theory of Haunting 

…I only hope that there are many more to come.

 

The Ecological Weird: Absolution

Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy – consisting of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance, all published in 2014 – becomes a quartet tomorrow, with the UK release of Absolution in hardback, paperback, Kindle, and Audible. My original intention for this appendix was to provide a synopsis or summary of the trilogy for those who might not want to reread all three books before starting the fourth, but nonetheless need a reminder of the sequence of events. (This is what I wanted, in spite of having read the trilogy several times and having no doubt that I would return to it and the quartet in future.) To cut a long story short, I failed dismally, and will poach Mac Rogers’ reason: ‘There’s really no way to give the Southern Reach pitch without sounding high, so I won’t try.’ I do, however, recommend the first part of Adam Roberts’ review of the trilogy, which provides the best summary I could find with limited spoilers. (The second part is also worth reading, although it’s more interpretative than descriptive.) There was chatter some time ago about a prequel to the Southern Reach and it’s not quite clear whether Absolution is a prequel, sequel, paraquel, or some combination of these categories (reminding me of Heat 2, which nearly ruined one of my favourite films). Here is what VanderMeer himself has to say on his website:

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, the surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s blockbuster Southern Reach Trilogy.
When the Southern Reach Trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestsellers list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.
And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast—before Area X was called Area X—had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?
Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, there are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

I’m not sure that either more closure or more exposition are required or will enhance the trilogy as it stands, but I am confident that VanderMeer won’t ruin the masterpiece he created a decade ago. So far, there have been surprisingly few advance reviews: Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Scientific American.

 

More Recommended Reading

Fiction

John Hall (ed.), Five Forgotten Stories (2011).

Rafe McGregor, Eight Weird Tales (2024).

Rafe McGregor, Six Strange Cases (2024).

Nonfiction

Stephen Ellcock & Mat Osman, England on Fire: A Visual Journey through Albion's Psychic Landscape (2022).

Mark Valentine, The Thunder-Storm Collectors (2024).

Timothy Murphy, William Hope Hodgson and the Rise of the Weird: Possibilities of the Dark (2025).

Weird Fiction Old, New, and In-Between VI: Exploring the Ecology Within – Rafe McGregor

The sixth of six blog posts exploring the literary and philosophical significance of the weird tale, the occult detective story, and the ecological weird. The series suggests that the three genres of weird fiction dramatize humanity’s cognitive and evolutionary insignificance by first exploring the limitations of language, then the inaccessibility of the world, and finally the alienation within ourselves. This post introduces the register of the Real.

 

Hearts of Darkness

Notwithstanding very fine examples by China Miéville, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and M. John Harrison, the most critically and commercially acclaimed novel in what is usually called the new weird and I am calling the ecological weird is almost certainly Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation (2014), which is the first of his Southern Reach Trilogy (which will be a quartet later this month) and was successfully adapted to a feature film of the same name by Alex Garland in 2018 (poster pictured). I do not intend to summarise or review either Annihilation or the Trilogy here, because excellent reviews and review essays have already been published in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Textual Practice, and elsewhere. Instead, I want to sketch a literary (and cinematic) lineage for Annihilation in order to shed light on the definition of ecological weird fiction with which I closed part V. The ecological weird, like occult detective fiction, shares the primary features of weird fiction by exploring the limitations of language, the inaccessibility of the world, and the alienation within ourselves. The last of these is particularly important for and to the ecological weird (to the extent that it does or does not constitute a subgenre or subcategory of the weird) and is a development of the inaccessibility of the world (which I explained in terms of the world-without-us in part IV). In ecological (and other) weird fiction, we not only encounter the alien, but recognise it within ourselves and either resist or accept it (it is no coincidence that the third part of the Southern Reach is titled Acceptance).

I have, in consequence, represented what I take to be the lineage from which Annihilation emerged in a schematic (pictured). The link to J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World (1966) and, by extension, to ‘The Illuminated Man’ (published in Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1964), H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Color Out of Space’ (published in Weird Tales in 1927), and Algernon Blackwood’s ‘The Willows’ (published in his collection, The Listener and Other Stories, in 1907) is uncontroversial. The Crystal World is a revision and expansion of ‘The Illuminated Man’ and Ballard appears to have deployed formal (and substantive) elements of Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece, Heart of Darkness (1899), in the course of adapting his own work. There are two points to note about this lineage. First, the inclusion of ‘The Willows’, which is – as I noted in part I – widely acknowledged as the single best weird tale ever written, demonstrates that the themes explored by the ecological weird are not new to the genre, merely developed in a different format (typically the novel rather than the short story). Second, Heart of Darkness draws attention to the crux of the ecological weird: it is not only about the (encounter with the) alien and (our) alienation, but self-alienation. Though criticised for its use of language and adoption of attitudes that are now, with complete justification, regarded as offensive, the novella provides a critique of colonialism so robust that it would keep plenty of social media trolls busy for a long time (assuming they had the intelligence and patience to read it). Conrad’s insight is that colonialism is not only bad for the colonised, who suffer what we would now call genocide, but also for colonisers, for whom the remoteness and expansiveness of the colonies facilitates the flourishing of all that is vicious within them. Despite VanderMeer’s repeated and vehement denials that Andrei Tarkovsky’s feature film, Сталкер (1979, translated as Stalker), had any influence on Annihilation, I made a tenuous link in my sketch on the basis of both narratives being concerned not only with a place that is utterly alien to humanity, but with the effects of that place on the minds of the people who enter it. The latter is essential to the ecological weird, the recognition of the alien within ourselves to which we respond with either resistance or acceptance.

 

The Weird Within

Psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan (1901-1981, pictured) is an even more controversial figure than Jacques Derrida (whom I discussed in part II) because he is regarded by many as a cynical (rather than sincere) charlatan and because there remains no consensus on the value of the vast body of work he produced over a career of five decades. In contrast to Derrida (and Eugene Thacker, discussed in part IV), I make no pretence to understanding Lacan’s overall project or even his individual publications and seminars, but I do think that what is known as his register theory is useful for grasping the self-alienation typically explored by and in ecological weird fiction. Register theory is an account of the modes of human existence and, hence, an ontology (a study of what exists, the way in which existing things exist, and how best to classify and codify existing things). As an ontology, register theory identifies three distinct but intervolved modes of human experience or orders: reality that can be perceived, reality that is socially constructed by language, and reality that remains inaccessible. The Imaginary refers to the world that human beings understand perceptively and non-reflectively and to the way in which human beings understand both that world and themselves as infants, i.e. before they develop the capacity for language. The Imaginary is therefore an innocent and naïve mode of human experience in which human beings are reduced to their perceptual capacities.

The Symbolic refers to the socially constructed world, which human beings access by means of language. The rules of the Symbolic order are revealed by the investigation of the way in which both language and social relations function and Lacan draws on the classic structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure, whom I introduced in my discussion of Derrida in part II, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, a French anthropologist. The Symbolic cannot be grasped in its entirety, with the result that human beings remain unaware of structures, contexts, and exchanges which have a profound influence on their lives. The Real refers to the ineffable world, which is detectable by human beings indirectly through the unconscious. The ineffable transcends expression and exceeds language, making it very difficult to discuss and impossible to apprehend. The Real can nonetheless be conceived as an objective reality that is inaccessible to subjective and intersubjective perception and cognition, a kind of Kantian noumenon or thing-in-itself (see part IV). The primary means of conceiving the Real is the unconscious, which is why register theory is a significant component in Lacan’s metapsychology. What makes the three orders or registers useful for understanding the ecological weird is that they are not only a taxonomy of the types of thing that exist but also structure the psyche, i.e. human subjectivity. The structure of subjectivity thus consists of all three of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real and the Real is the alien – or weird – within, the part of ourselves that is impossible to apprehend and can only be conceived partially and indirectly. 

Future Weird

Weird fiction is thriving. Perhaps not quite as much as in its heyday, almost exactly a century ago, but probably in a healthier condition given that it is no longer tied to and dependent on a single format (the short story) or the success of a particular outlet (Weird Tales). I want to close this series with a couple of observations that draw on my short-lived but very enlightening (for me, if not my students) stint as a creative writing tutor. In part V, I discussed the importance of the development of the weird novel to the survival of the genre in the twenty-first century, citing S.T. Joshi’s discussion of the trend in what he terms the modern weird tale. Joshi identifies three ways in which authors have attempted to match literary intention with commercial demand by extending the tale to the novel:

1. Writing a fantastic narrative that has a real-world setting.

2. Writing a mystery narrative with supernatural element.

3. Writing a narrative that is structured around a complex supernatural situation.

He regards the first of these as difficult, although Harrison’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again (2020) shows how it can be achieved. The second is cheating in Joshi’s opinion and while I might agree if the supernatural element is superficial or gratuitous, I think the greater concern is that crime fiction itself is better suited to the novella format (as mentioned in part V). Nevertheless, Miéville and VanderMeer both show how this can be achieved (without cheating) with The City & the City and Finch: A Novel, both published in 2009. The third is Joshi’s recommended approach and assuming that Absolution doesn’t completely change the series’ narrative trajectory, it seems precisely what VanderMeer has done in the Southern Reach.

While I was researching The Conan Doyle Weirdbook (2012), likely in 2009 or 2010, I came across a short guide to writing new weird fiction and scribbled some notes in the inside cover of one of the key texts I keep on my writing desk. In spite of many hours – probably one or two days even – of searching, I’ve never been able to find the guide again. (I assume it was part of an introduction to an anthology, but I really should have found it by now.) There are three recommendations and I think they present a nice complement to Joshi’s list, albeit one focused on reinventing rather than transforming the genre. Based on my notes in the absence of the original, the recommendations are:

1. Extrapolating the internal logic of a speculative (or other) narrative.

2. Rewriting a particular narrative in a different genre.

3. Deconstructing a speculative (or other) narrative.

The first might be said to have been used by Kiernan in her extrapolation of her fascination with the figure of the selkie in The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (2012). I have heard Miéville’s King Rat (1998) described as a retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (c.1300), which is both accurate and an example of the second. I have already provided an example of the third in part III, with Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom (2016), although I suspect this method would be difficult to sustain to novel length. (I am also fairly sure that the guide was for writing new weird tales not new weird novels). Whatever form the future of weird fiction takes, I look forward to reading and watching more of it in TQF and beyond!

 

Recommended Reading

Fiction

Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2014).

M. John Harrison, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, Gollancz (2020).

China Miéville, The City & the City, Macmillan (2009).

Nonfiction

Jeff VanderMeer, Caitlín R. Kiernan on Weird Fiction, Weird Fiction Review (2012).

China Miéville, M.R. James and the Quantum Vampire: Weird; Hauntological: Versus and/or and and/or or? Collapse IV (2008).

Robert Weinberg, The Weird Tales Story (2^nd ed.), Pulp Hero Press (2021).

Weird Fiction Old, New, and In-Between V: The Ecological Weird – Rafe McGregor

The fifth of six blog posts exploring the literary and philosophical significance of the weird tale, the occult detective story, and the ecological weird. The series suggests that the three genres of weird fiction dramatize humanity’s cognitive and evolutionary insignificance by first exploring the limitations of language, then the inaccessibility of the world, and finally the alienation within ourselves. This post introduces the ecological weird.

 

New Weird? 

When I introduced the weird tale as originating in Gothic Romanticism in part I, I acknowledged that it was a contested claim and there is a similar dispute about the relationship between the new weird and the weird tale (or old weird). ‘New Weird’ was coined by M. John Harrison (b.1945), an author, editor, and critic associated with the New Wave of science fiction in the nineteen sixties and seventies. There are claims that the coinage first appeared in Harrison’s introduction to China Miéville’s (b.1972, pictured) The Tain (2002) and in an internet forum (where the date is usually given as 2003), but regardless of its precise source, Benjamin Noys and Timothy Murphy note that the term was initially used to refer exclusively to the work of Miéville (who rejected the label). Those who take Miéville to have inaugurated the new weird tale usually identify his Perdido Street Station (2000) as the first in the genre, which was established with the publication of the rest of the Bas-lag Trilogy, The Scar (2002) and Iron Council (2004). Literary critic S.T. Joshi, who has been almost single-handedly responsible for contemporary critical and academic interest in both H.P. Lovecraft and weird fiction also rejects the term, preferring ‘modern weird tale’. Joshi argues that there was no break between the old and new (and no in-between, as I suggest throughout this series), but that later authors simply breathed new life into the genre perfected by Lovecraft.

Part of the process of revitalisation described by Joshi involved the publication of successful weird novels. Lovecraft’s longest narrative was At the Mountains of Madness (serialised in Astounding Stories in February, March, and April 1936), which is approximately forty thousand words long, and his next longest The Shadow over Innsmouth (first published as a novella with a print run of two hundred in 1936 and then posthumously abridged for the January 1942 issue of Weird Tales), which is approximately twenty-seven thousand words long, placing both at the short end of the novella format. Joshi maintains that the weird tale is essentially a tale – i.e., a short story – and I agree that horror fiction in general is much better suited to the short format (and crime fiction to the novella format). The reinvigoration of the weird tale after 1940 saw the publication of novel-length weird tales such as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976), Ramsay Campbell’s Incarnate (1983), T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies (1984), and Clive Barker’s Weaveworld (1987). Crucially for Joshi, these exemplary weird novels have nothing in common (beyond, presumably, meeting the criteria for his definition of weird fiction), which is why he is reluctant to admit the birth of a new genre or even a transformation of the original genre. Roger Luckhurst prefers the idea of a Lovecraftian revival rather than a new weird, drawing particular attention to the work of Caitlín R. Kiernan (whom I discussed in part II).

Tales of the City?

Jeff VanderMeer (b.1968, pictured), who is one of the three authors most often associated with the new weird – along with Miéville and Kelly Link (b.1969, pictured) – favours the term and refers to Perdido Street Station as the first ‘commercially acceptable’ new weird tale (in virtue of its length). VanderMeer defines the new weird as urban speculative fiction that is based on complex real-world models, employs elements of the surreal or transgressive, and is acutely (if not overtly) aware of the politics of the modern world. In this sense, it is both a continuation and transformation of the weird tale’s pursuit of an abstruse and possibly even unattainable understanding of the supra-natural and the un-rational. Noys and Murphy regard the new weird as indicative of precisely such a transformation, although they trace it beyond Miéville to the nineteen eighties, locating its origin in the work of Thomas Ligotti, Barker, and Brian Evenson. Like me (see part II), they foreground Ligotti’s contribution, claiming that he ‘formulated a new and desolate conception of a fundamentally chaotic universe’. James Machin also supports the classification, but pushes the origins back further still, to New Wave science fiction, which began in the nineteen sixties, was characterised by a self-conscious appropriation of literary modernism, and was associated with the work of Michael Moorcock, Harrison, Harlan Ellison, J.G. Ballard (1930-2009), Ursula Le Guin, Samuel Delany, and Roger Zelazny.

Where, then, does this leave us…new or not, urban or not, Miéville or more? My view is that Noys, Murphy, VanderMeer, and Joshi are right to foreground the relatively recent development of the novel format in weird fiction. Without it, the genre is unlikely to survive much longer in the twenty-first century and there are unlikely to be repeats of 2018, for example, when three contemporary weird tales appeared on the big and small screen (discussed in my review of Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water). Which is not to belittle the wonderful short stories of authors like Link and Sarah Monette – the genre needs both formats. With that in mind, however, there has been an overemphasis on Miéville’s work in discussions of the new weird because he prefers the novel format and often writes very long novels – as opposed to VanderMeer’s, which are much shorter, and Link, who remains faithful to the short story. The focus on Miéville at the expense of others has also created the overemphasis on the urban to which VanderMeer falls foul in defining the new weird. Miéville’s predilection for the urban – in King Rat (1998), the Bas-lag Trilogy (2000-2004), Un Lun Dun (2007), The City & the City (2009), The Last Days of New Paris (2016), and other stories – has produced a misleading association of genre and setting. The urban is more closely aligned with the steampunk genre and the Bas-lag Trilogy more exemplary of that genre than of weird fiction (although the two are quite obviously related), perhaps even its most accomplished novels after William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine (1990). 

Weird Ecology?

Miéville is nonetheless rightly identified as one of the best authors of weird fiction in the twenty-first century, with his initial contribution being King Rat rather than Perdido Street Station. There is of course some irony in VanderMeer defining the new weird in terms of urban settings and themes because it was precisely his work – specifically, his Southern Reach Trilogy – which demonstrated that whether or not the new weird was new, it could function as well if not better in rural settings and with biological themes. Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance were all published in 2014, the cinematic adaptation of Annihilation (directed by Alex Garland) was released by Paramount Pictures and Netflix in 2018, and (as with so many successful trilogies) the Southern Reach will become a quartet with the publication of Absolution next month. VanderMeer’s well-deserved success has, in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century, shifted the initial emphasis on the urban to the rural and highlighted links to what is variously called eco-fiction, cli-fi, or climate change fiction, a category of science fiction (and, perhaps, literature) that probably began with Jules Verne’s Sans dessus dessous (1889, translated as The Purchase of the North Pole). VanderMeer’s bridging of the divide between eco-fiction and weird fiction has led critics to speak of his ecologically minded weird fiction and ‘weird ecology’, to describe him as the weird Thoreau, and to associate his work with global weirding.

Although I shall discuss the precursors to and origins of the Southern Reach Trilogy in more detail in part VI, I want to recommend two things here that will conclude my answers to the questions raised earlier. First, that the ‘new weird’ and its affiliation with Miéville and the urban be retired in favour of the ecological weird. If weird fiction (and, indeed, literature) is to, in VanderMeer’s words, remain acutely aware of the politics of the modern world, then it must reflect on the conditions of its own production in the Anthropocene and on the kind of issues I discussed in my essay on climate change culture, published in TQF76 in April. This does not restrict the category to stories with a rural setting or biological themes and reinforces the value of Miéville’s King Rat, which is outstanding ecological weird fiction. Replacing ‘new weird’ with ‘ecological weird’ also reveals what seems to me to be a clearer origin of the transformation of the weird tale, which I locate in Ballard’s four prototypical climate fiction novellas: The Wind from Nowhere (1961), The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World. Ballard was dismissive of The Wind from Nowhere, but aside from being his first published novella, Kate Marshall makes a convincing case for it anticipating what I am calling the ecological weird and what she calls novels by aliens. Second, as with occult detective fiction, the ecological weird is a category within weird fiction and, as such, requires only a minor revision of my previous definition: the ecological weird is philosophical in virtue of presenting or representing a fully-fledged and fleshed-out worldview, generically hybrid in character, and foregrounds the alienation within ourselves. It is to this (self-)alienation that I turn in part VI.

 

Recommended Reading

Fiction

China Miéville, King Rat, Macmillan (1998).

Kelly Link, Get in Trouble: Stories, Canongate Books (2015).

Jeff VanderMeer, Finch: A Novel, Underland Press (2009).

Nonfiction

Jeff VanderMeer, The New Weird: ‘It’s Alive?’, The New Weird, Tachyon Publications (2008).

S.T. Joshi, The Modern Weird Tale: A Critique of Horror Fiction, McFarland & Company (2001).

M. John Harrison, Wish I Was Here: An Anti-Memoir, Serpent’s Tail (2023).

Annihilation | review by Rafe McGregor

From New Weird novel to small-screen-feel alien movie.

The term ‘New Weird’ became popular in the first few years of this century, but has not been universally accepted. Nor is it clear whether New Weird denotes a new genre, related to but distinct from the (Old) Weird, or simply the way in which new authors have breathed fresh life into the old genre. S.T. Joshi, the critical authority on the Weird, has little time for the term and refers to the ‘modern weird tale’ instead (publishing a book with that title in 2001). Joshi defines the Weird as a retrospective category of speculative fiction, published from 1880 to 1940, that is essentially philosophical in virtue of representing a fully-fledged and fleshed-out world view. He regards H.P. Lovecraft as the exemplar of the genre, which includes Arthur Machen, Edward Plunkett (Lord Dunsany), Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce and M.R. James. He also sees the tradition as having been continued through to the present by the likes of Robert Aickman, Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti and Caitlín R. Kiernan. The New Weird was initially associated with China Miéville in the UK and subsequently Jeff VanderMeer in the US. Miéville’s first novel was King Rat, in 1998, and he began his Bas-Lag series with Perdido Street Station in 2000. VanderMeer was best known for his short stories and as an editor and anthologist, editing two definitive collections – The New Weird and Steampunk – with his wife Ann in 2008. He joined Miéville as the co-exemplar of the New Weird in 2014, when all three parts of the Southern Reach Trilogy were published: Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance.

Annihilation | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Fantasy/eco-horror film revels in uncertainty.

When Annihilation ended, the fellow next to me said, “I’m gonna need the CliffsNotes on this one.” I, too, was a bit confused by the film (directed by Alex Garland) and its message. However, further contemplation revealed that being comfortable with a lack of answers may just be the mindset the film advocates.