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The Past and Future of Weird Fiction
In my attempts to define the nature of weird fiction, I found myself tumbling down a well that seemingly had no bottom. What I discovered on the way down was that few definitions offer a clear appreciation of what weird fiction is. We can only truly know by experiencing it, and it is only through this empirical journey that we come to love or hate it. Rarely will any intrepid adventurer feel ambivalence.
Any useable definitions lie within the history of weird fiction, harking back, perhaps, to the ancient tales told around the campfire by wise bards in medieval halls. For example, those of Welsh origin, collected together as the Mabinogion in around the 12th century. These and many other stories from multiple cultures anchor us to the present, providing the blueprints for all literature to come. From them arise the archetypes that bind humanity together, often exploring the mundane in fantastical ways.
The supernatural and otherworldly aspects of these folk tales could certainly place them firmly in the weird realm.
A great deal of fiction is, therefore, weird. But is all fiction weird fiction?
Clearly not. So what is it that puts the weird into weird fiction?
Weird fiction is a profoundly hybrid form. It draws on the gothic tradition of the mid-eighteenth-and nineteenth century with writers including Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley. It draws on elements of classic horror, the cosmic horror of Lovecraft, and elements of science fiction and fantasy. The ghost stories of writers, including Algernon Blackwood and M. R. James, can also be considered weird.
Literary critic S. T. Joshi argues that crucial to weird fiction is its capacity for the “refashioning of the reader’s view of the world.” Definitions, therefore, are perhaps constrained because of our current perceptions of reality.
Weird fiction writer China Miéville stresses the origin of the weird in the experience of “awe, and its undermining of the quotidian”.
In other words, the weird is when something strange or unusual makes us feel amazed or surprised, and it challenges what we consider normal or ordinary. It’s like when we see something so different that it makes us question our everyday reality.
