What’s New in Weird Fiction?

[Evans]

Who and what is the new big thing, the new paradigm, in Weird Fiction? When I was last involved it was Laird Barron and Scott Nicolay, with latter coming into his own and developing a subset of dedicated followers. I know some people have had their works optioned for Netflix series but that's about it.

[ToALonelyPeace]

I don't know what is next after the New Weird but they surely can come up with a better name.

In terms of horror literature the genre has become significantly decentralised in terms of its branches, so there is no clear Ligotti or Barron successor, despite more choice of decent horror fiction than there has been for quite some time. There are countless good horror writers out there now, so people aren't only flocking to the same two or three as they used to.

"Weird fiction" is bigger than the pulp horror tradition and includes the lineages of Kafka or Borges, so I'd point people to Can Xue as probably my favourite weird fiction author still writing it, but it's hard to create a full picture without more translations, and working on a time scale of translations instead of initial releases skews my sense of artistic chronology.

[Evans]

Quote Originally Posted by Miss Happy Die Happy

In terms of horror literature the genre has become significantly decentralised in terms of its branches, so there is no clear Ligotti or Barron successor, despite more choice of decent horror fiction than there has been for quite some time. There are countless good horror writers out there now, so people aren't only flocking to the same two or three as they used to.

I wasn't really speaking so much about the individual talent of the writer as much as their game changing capacity. I agree there doesn't appear to be any new figures like them - I wonder if it's inevitable given the "genrefication" of it, the literary equivalent of an ever decreasing gene pool. I sort of had the impression it had become a game of where can the writer transfer cosmic horror to next.

(I'm not saying it has to be like that mind)

Quote Originally Posted by Miss Happy Die Happy

"Weird fiction" is bigger than the pulp horror tradition and includes the lineage of Kafka or Borges, so I'd point people to Can Xue as probably my favourite weird fiction author right now, but it's hard to create a full picture without more translations.

I'd dispute that if only because the descriptor becomes so wide as to cease being very helpful (it could encompass signifiant portions of Symbolism, Surrealism and Expressionism and High Modernism)

Borges' is closer though the term "philosophical fables" would be better for him.

I see Borges as weird fiction, but genre labels are slippery things it's impossible to objectively argue for. You do you.

[Evans]

I tend to support an Accelerationist stance on Weird Fiction.

[Michael]

My literary "Trinity" has always been Ligotti, Kafka, and Borges. Maybe that's my idiosyncratic brain but for some reason all 3 always seemed to fit so so well.

[ToALonelyPeace]

Quote Originally Posted by Evans

I tend to support an Accelerationist stance on Weird Fiction.

You mean vis a vis Nick Land?

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I know that Nicolay is quite influential through his podcast/convention panels but was his writing?

I see a growing amount of bizarro crossover, which could be interesting. The stereotypical bizarro stuff doesn't appeal to me much but I think there's huge potential.
I've often thought that more people saw the "weird" label and brought their own expectations to it that may have had little or nothing to do with the weird tales era, this could be a good thing?

I'm hardly an expert but I'm not sure New Weird had much influence on the core weird writers, as it seemed more to do with Science Fiction/Fantasy.