PC trashing of Weird Fiction

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

There are lots of different venues and different circles. Does it count as a blacklist when one editor refuses to publish a certain writer on grounds other than their writing?

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by James

I think there is a real problem with political correctness and shallow identity politics in the weird fiction community, and I am sympathetic to Samuels as I can totally 100% believe he would lose out on certain opportunities for his beliefs, but he does sort of obscure his points with the high doses of paranoia and a flat out lack of research regarding Marxism. I do think if he were better known (only a matter of time) he would be blacklisted from many anthologies for his views. His indignation isn't entirely groundless. I just wish he'd learn to focus it instead of believing in some global leftist conspiracy, which in the wake of Trump and Brexit doesn't hold any water.

There's so much I could say about this, if only I were free to speak. But... I hear a noise at the door as of some vast, collective body of the indoctrinated lumbering against it. God, that hand! The window! The window! The Overton Window!!!

I don't really enjoy this topic of discussion and will try to avoid it in future. I always feel like I'm turning everybody against me, as I agree and disagree with both sides.

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by James

I don't really enjoy this topic of discussion and will try to avoid it in future. I always feel like I'm turning everybody against me, as I agree and disagree with both sides.

I hope that's not on my account.

I still probably use insufficient smilies for purposes of tone.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Quote Originally Posted by James

I don't really enjoy this topic of discussion and will try to avoid it in future. I always feel like I'm turning everybody against me, as I agree and disagree with both sides.

Is it really just two sides though?

[Robin Davies]

Quote Originally Posted by Justin Isis

I maintain that this term in its current sense is nothing but a marketing category that has presumably made a fair amount of money for certain anthologist/editor/promoter types

I'd have thought it had very little marketing value. Outside of its fans I doubt that anyone has even heard the term, yet everybody has heard of horror or ghost stories.

Quote

In terms of this site, "horror" and "ghost stories" would usually be better terms for what it seems people are talking about. I think if you're discussing Benson, Saki, etc. you might as well just say "Edwardian ghost stories," just as if you're talking about books by Caucasian fathers containing generally realistic narratives with "literary" character development contrasting with some kind of uncanny or intrusive supernatural elements (i.e. the 3Ps: paleness, paternity and pareidolia), you're in fact talking about White Dad Fiction.

I actually prefer a broad term like "Weird Fiction" because it can encompass a wide range of writers. "Horror" doesn't describe a lot of what Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen or Robert Aickman wrote and "ghost stories" presumably have to have a ghost in them which even cuts out some of M. R. James' work.

[Hidden X]

People will complain how strict genre conventions are damaging artistic freedom and creativity in one thread, and will then claim how "weird fiction" is too broad and unspecific term in another.

Quote Originally Posted by Robin Davies

Quote Originally Posted by Justin Isis I maintain that this term in its current sense is nothing but a marketing category that has presumably made a fair amount of money for certain anthologist/editor/promoter types I'd have thought it had very little marketing value. Outside of its fans I doubt that anyone has even heard the term, yet everybody has heard of horror or ghost stories.

You'd be wrong here. It's pretty hard to avoid it online these days, and it has been like that for some time now. Plus there are those peaks in popularity that appear every time you have new mass-popular TV show with weird fiction connection being made, like say "Strange Things": all of a sudden, "weird fiction" is the coolest thing, every other pop culture/speculative fiction/whatever blogger is mentioning it, every other guy online is into it...

My preferred term is ghostly stories rather than ghost stories. It's all about the mood for me rather than the presence of spectres. I'm more interested in stories with ghostly atmospheres with no ghosts (L. P. Hartley's The Travelling Grave, for example) than stories with ghosts containing no ghostly atmosphere.

[Acutely decayed]

Quote Originally Posted by qcrisp

God, that hand! The window! The window! The Overton Window!!!

Venetian blinds can have that effect