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The New Weird

Ann VanderMeer (Editor),

Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads Author) (Editor),

Jay Lake (Contributor),

Jeffrey Ford (Contributor),

Sarah Monette (Goodreads Author) (Contributor),

Paul Di Filippo (Contributor),

Michael Moorcock (Contributor),

China Miéville (Goodreads Author) (Contributor),

more…

3.74 · Rating details · 1,248 ratings · 99 reviews

This avant-garde anthology that presents and defines the New Weird—a hip, stylistic fiction that evokes the gritty exuberance of pulp novels and dime-store comic books—creates a new literature that is entirely unprecedented and utterly compelling. Assembling an array of talent, this collection includes contributions from visionaries Michael Moorcock and China Miéville, mod ...more

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Paperback, 403 pages

Published February 1st 2008 by Tachyon Publications (first published January 1st 2008)

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· 1,248 ratings · 99 reviews

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Sep 11, 2020 Mir rated it liked it

Shelves: books, fantasy, ideas, short-stories, horror

This is a very valuable endeavor, putting together this volume. I enjoyed it very little.
That's a matter of taste, obviously. I certainly appreciate the VanderMeers work in editing this.

There are sections. The contents are listed below.

1) Short stories. I only really liked the first one, by M. John Harrison. Every time I read Harrison, I think, "This is great! I should read more Harrison!" But then I don't. Very well written, very weird. I had read most of these authors before liked several of t ...more

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Mar 11, 2008 Michael rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Michael by: Peggy

Shelves: collection-anthology

This may be the best collection I've read in a decade.

I'd been through Mieville and Vandermeer, cut my teeth on Lovecraft, a pile of slipstream, Barker, but I didn't feel as though I had much of a handle on what "New Weird" was or why I was drawn to it. Boy, I loved every story in this volume, including the oddly vulgar Rennie story at the end. Perhaps if slipstream makes you feel 'a little strange' (and the _Feeling Very Strange_ anthology would make a nice companion to this book), New Weird ma ...more

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Jan 21, 2011 Althea Ann rated it liked it

Overall, not a bad anthology, mixing elements of horror, sci-fi and fantasy. Most of the stories are not original to this book, so if you're a fan of the authors, it's likely you've read them before. They tend toward the dark, extreme and often grotesque and disgusting, so if that's not your scene, you probably won't enjoy.
My main issue with the book is its tendency toward navel-gazing. It should have just stuck with presenting the work, rather than going on and on about how to define the term " ...more

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Oct 18, 2008 Ross Lockhart rated it really liked it

I’ve been reading The New Weird lately, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s recent Tachyon collection of the sort of bizarre, visceral, urban fantasy that’s had the placard card reading “New Weird” hung about its neck for the past few years.

If anything, this collection seems a younger sibling to the 2004 Thunder’s Mouth Press anthology New Worlds. New Weird certainly owes a debt to the New Wave (the inclusion of M. John Harrison’s “The Luck in the Head” makes this undeniably clear), and it is M. John Harr I’ve been reading The New Weird lately, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s recent Tachyon collection of the sort of bizarre, visceral, urban fantasy that’s had the placard card reading “New Weird” hung about its neck for the past few years.

If anything, this collection seems a younger sibling to the 2004 Thunder’s Mouth Press anthology New Worlds. New Weird certainly owes a debt to the New Wave (the inclusion of M. John Harrison’s “The Luck in the Head” makes this undeniably clear), and it is M. John Harrison himself, in the included Web discourse “New Weird Discussions: The Creation of a Term” who suggests “New Weird” as “a better slogan than The Next Wave.” But whereas the New Wave SF that appeared in New Worlds was unified by publication in a single magazine, The New Weird draws from the wide world of SF publications, including stories that appeared in Flytrap, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Interzone, among others.

The stories included in The New Weird comprise a grand, audacious mix, as is its arrangement. The book strives wildly to create a definition for the subgenre. From the first section, “Stimuli,” which includes the aforementioned M. John Harrison story, Clive Barker’s “In the Hills, the Cities,” Simon D. Ings’ “The Braining of Mother Lampry,” and Thomas Ligotti’s “A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing,” the bar is set high, though Kathe Koja’s “The Neglected Garden” seems more lit-fic “weird” than “New Weird” and Michael Moorcock’s “Crossing into Cambodia” seems an odd choice considering its Cold War-era post-apocalyptic setting. In my opinion, Moocock’s “London Bone” would have been a far better choice to represent the postpagan sensibilities of the New Weird.

Beyond that, the next three sections, “Evidence,” “Symposium,” and “Laboratory” offer mixed results. China Méiville’s “Jack” is every bit as good as it was in Looking for Jake. Jeffrey Thomas’ “Immolation” seamlessly joins the standard SF tropes of clones and offworld colonies to the urban grotesqueries of the New Weird. And K. J. Bishop’s “The Art of Dying” connects elegantly to the fin de siècle grace of her 2004 novel, The Etched City. Any of these stories alone would be worth the price of admission. Jay Lake’s “The Lizard of Ooze,” like many of his Dark Towns stories, seems a punny and punishing one-joke punch (though that joke is a reversal of Swiftian proportions) in search of a purpose. Perhaps a tale set in his City Imperishable would have better suited the collection.

The gathering of criticism comprising the “Symposium” is perhaps the most valuable element of the The New Weird, inviting repeated readings and critical analysis for years to come. The “Laboratory,” on the other hand, is best described as forty pages of filler. Reminiscent of “The Challenge from Beyond,” a round-robin Weird tale by H. P. Lovecraft, C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long, “Festival Lights” is a rambling mess with plenty of star power, but little cohesion. Missing from the collection is anything from Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergis, an editorial decision which makes me wonder if perhaps another editor could have assembled a more comprehensive collection.

For many, perhaps even most, Science Fiction is robots, rockets, and rayguns; movies and television programs with the word “Star” in the title (Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica); or conventions where comic-book caricatures of comic-book geeks run rampant in Dr. Who and Klingon costumes. But for those who dare to look a little bit deeper, Science Fiction is a literature of ideas, in fact, a continuum of ideas, blending philosophy and a sense of wonder. It is the intersection of the fantastic and the human. As Damon Knight once asserted, “Science Fiction is what we point to when we say it.” As a SF subgenre, New Weird bears the same characteristic DNA. What is New Weird? Why, it’s what we point to when we say “New Weird.”

In short, The New Weird is an attractive volume examining a burgeoning SF subset. Though it attempts to be a definitive word on the subject, it falls a bit shy of such lofty ideals by declaring the movement over, though its best may still be yet to come. “New Weird is dead,” writes Jeff VanderMeer in the introduction. “Long live the Next Weird.” Bollocks. Long live the New Weird. ...more

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Jun 25, 2019 Merl Fluin rated it did not like it

Shelves: dark-and-strange-fiction

DNF. You say "new weird", I say "dreary urban fantasy", let's call the whole thing off. ...more

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Feb 18, 2021 Paul rated it it was ok

Shelves: reviewed, non-art-photo, lit-post-2000, literature, lit-sff

The VanderMeers have become deeply annoying to me. Who made these untalented people authorities on anything? Is there literally a worse genre name than "The New Weird"? Will Jeff ever manage to write a book as semi-decent as Area X again, or will he just keep publishing landfill? Can someone explain to me why Ann's fantasy anthology included stories by Tolstoy and Nabokov? Also, what is this shit? ...more

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Aug 16, 2010 Tomislav rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, anthology, fantasy

20 August 2010 - ****. The anthology is made up of four sections.

"Stimuli" contains short New Wave and New Horror fiction pieces which the anthologists consider precursors of New Weird. These are almost all quite good.

* The Luck in the Head, by M. John Harrison
* In the Hills, the Cities, by Clive Barker
* Crossing into Cambodia, by Michael Moorcock
* The Braining of Mother Lamprey, by Simon D. Ings
* The Neglected Garden, by Kathe Koja
* A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing, by Thomas Ligotti

"Evidenc ...more

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Apr 01, 2008 John rated it liked it

I enjoy Lovecraft, Mieville, pulp sci-fi, so I thought I would love this volume and was eagerly awaiting its publication. Alas, I am somewhat disappointed. Though I appreciate (on an intellectual level) the tortuous hand-wringing that accompanies the authors' attempts to define or simply talk about a genre that could be called "New Weird" (there is an entire section of the book devoted solely to a discussion among various authors about what New Weird is, whether it needs a name, and why), the st ...more

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Aug 09, 2018 Rodney rated it really liked it

I'm going to read this, Interfictions, and Feeling Very Strange back-to-back and write a longer review for all three, but I will say about this one that it seems to focus on genre stories that have eccentricities that tilt them into the literary realm. Yes, the characters and plots are very odd, often with no connection to any human reality, but the prose itself is very pulpy, intentionally and self-consciously so. Most of these are not much more capital-w Weird than the stories I grew up with i ...more

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Oct 05, 2018 Adam rated it it was ok

Shelves: weird, short-stories, ebook

I didn't quite finish every piece of this but certainly enough to make a fair assessment. I consider myself a fan of the New Weird in general, though I guess in retrospect I've only read a few novels I would class as such. A surprisingly small fraction of this book is actually dedicated to presenting a wider palette in that genre beyond Mieville, Swainston, and VanderMeer.

Only one of five parts is composed of New Weird shorts, and while some of these are plenty good, I just found the selection I didn't quite finish every piece of this but certainly enough to make a fair assessment. I consider myself a fan of the New Weird in general, though I guess in retrospect I've only read a few novels I would class as such. A surprisingly small fraction of this book is actually dedicated to presenting a wider palette in that genre beyond Mieville, Swainston, and VanderMeer.

Only one of five parts is composed of New Weird shorts, and while some of these are plenty good, I just found the selection generally underwhelming. I think Swainston has an enviably cool narrative voice, and Mieville's always a pleasure, but even those two stories feel somehow more like fragments of a novel than independent short stories. I skipped the Krohn excerpt, since I'd already read the whole thing and disliked it. And the Bishop, Thomas, and Lake stories were all to a greater or lesser degree plagued by the same problem I had with Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha (the only book I've read that would class as New Weird that wasn't mentioned in this collection). That is, they are full of punk and noir attitude and densely creative world building, but somehow fall short in the execution and end up feeling like those genre defining traits are the tail wagging the dog. They feel like standard world building dump genre fiction with a wider palette. The Rennie story is entertaining enough but not enough; it was also maybe closer to Caleb Wilson's bizarro weird than the New Weird proper.

Brian Evenson and Jeffrey Ford are both authors I've been reading up on outside of this collection around the same time, and in general I'm not sure I would even group them in this genre. At Reparata is alright but far from Ford's best. Evenson's Watson's Boy is maybe the best inclusion in this whole collection, with a compellingly sparse world in the vein of Kafka or Borges that serves as a nice palate cleanser between the exuberance of the other authors. Also not one of Evenson's best, though, in my estimation.

The second section is a good idea for a collection like this but also an even less enjoyable collection a fiction on its own merits. It represents the editors' best guess of the precursors of the New Weird genre. Some of the connections are clearer than others (I'm not sure I get why this specific Moorcock story was included) and some of the stories are better than others, including some that were new to me, like the Ing and Koja. I didn't like this Ligotti any more than I've liked most of his stories, and I'm beginning to get a bad feeling about Harrison too.

The rest of the book is something I find quite annoying, though. Both the introductory essay by Jeff VanderMeer and the forum discussion printed seemingly in its entirety are simply handwringing about the definition and validity of the genre label. As an adherent of cultural evolution, the nature of the problem seems a bit more straightforward to me, and the kinds of answers you would want to find are not really represented in this discussion. But what I really found annoying about this was simply the fact that the existence of this collection settles once and for all the very same question it spends so many pages litigating. Some people might find this candid discussion among professional authors interesting for other reasons, but I found it mostly tiresome.

The collaborative story in the final part was something I just didn't have the patience to engage with right now. Better stuff to read. ...more

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Dec 18, 2018 John rated it really liked it

One of the best anthology collections I've come across for some time. This is almost Dangerous Visions level for me with the sheer number of excellent writers in here. This is an attempt to revamp HP Lovecraft's Weird Tales for the current century.

While not "Outsider Art", these are often literate pulp stories or at least bizarro fiction. It's got throughlines back to Jack Vance's Dying Earth, Mervyn Peake, New Wave Scifi and Horror. It can be traditional and avant garde (Lynchean but with books ...more

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Dec 31, 2008 Wizzard rated it really liked it

I like the book as a project but the stories in the book were not always very memorable. I liked them while I read them and I am glad that I read them but they were a mixed bag. Again, not mixed in terms of uneven quality because they all were very well-written. Just some of the stories didn't do much for me. I am changing my rating from three stars to four stars.

I liked the two new features of the book-- the selection of essays that ask "What is the New Weird" and includes authors and editors ...more

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Aug 23, 2009 Melanie rated it it was amazing

So far this anthology has some very interesting and disturbing stories in it. But here's the most disturbing thing: there are no significant women characters. None. There's even a story of a pair of lovers traveling through eastern Europe but, guess what? They are both MEN. What is up with that?

=============

Finished reading. This collection of stories is unique in my experience. Bizarre. Strange. Weird. New. It takes some getting used to but is well worth it. There are even a couple of stories a ...more

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Mar 13, 2008 Lane rated it really liked it

Shelves: fromfantastictoweirdtosci-fietc, shortstoriesnovellas

Ever since reading Perdido Street Station, I've been a sucker for anything described as New Weirdish. Sometimes my enthusiasm for the sub-genre/style/movement/whatever-the-hell-you-call-it has been more fervent than my appreciation for the examples of it I read. So it was nice to find that even the stories by authors whose novels I disliked (ah screw it, I'm referring to K.J.Bishop and The Etched City) I liked in this anthology. That said, none of the stories really quite reached the levels that ...more

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Sep 11, 2010 Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides marked it as decided-not-to-read

Shelves: science-fiction, anthologies-and-collections

I've never cared much for the horror genre*, and perhaps that's why I started reading each of the first four stories in this book and gave up and skipped to the next one before deciding to abandon the volume entirely. The intro informed me that one of the things that distinguishes New Weird from slipstream and interstitial fiction is influence from the horror genre, along with an eschewing of "postmodern techniques that undermine the surface reality of the text (or point out its artificiality)." ...more

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Jun 01, 2012 Cale rated it liked it

As with any collection, the stories are somewhat hit or miss. The precursor stories were actually weaker than the current examples; Watson's Boy was my favorite, though At Reparata was the most emotional. New Weird as a style is the fever dream of Fantasy and Science Fiction, focused on grotesque organics and oppressive places. A large section of the book is devoted to defining the style, which devolves to arguments about whether or not it's worth it to even try, but getting past that and you ge ...more

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Jan 02, 2009 Carla rated it liked it

I tried to read the whole anthology, I really did. However, I found the introduction to be less educational than condecending. I attempted to start several stories, but could finish none but China Mieville's Jack [which was the story that drew my attention to the anthology in the first place]. Perhaps I don't "get" the sub-genre, but I just couldn't engage with this material. ...more

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Apr 01, 2019 Shawn rated it liked it

This book is split into sections and this review focuses solely on the sections containing the short stories. What I can tell about this "genre" from the sampling here is that it gorges itself on bizarre details. These authors are shaping worlds and introduce so many new ideas often in so rapid a succession it all comes as much too much. Silly, futuristic sounding words and names are almost mandatory in these stories and become comical and predictable, like some sort of random generator was bein This book is split into sections and this review focuses solely on the sections containing the short stories. What I can tell about this "genre" from the sampling here is that it gorges itself on bizarre details. These authors are shaping worlds and introduce so many new ideas often in so rapid a succession it all comes as much too much. Silly, futuristic sounding words and names are almost mandatory in these stories and become comical and predictable, like some sort of random generator was being used too liberally. Otherwise it is anachronistic or techno garble that serves the set dressing for the tales.
"The Luck in the Head" is a moderate in its approach with silly names but its recognizable desolate future rings true and there is a good measure of body horror splashed in 3/5.
"In the Hills, the Cities" a grotesque, surreal story that slowly engages the reader is the most grounded in reality but delivers a potent punch 4/5.
"Crossing into Cambodia" is simply a fictional account of WW3 and was boring and unpleasant 1/5.
"The Braining of Mother Lamprey" was a story going crazy with the wordplay but is wildly creative and actually manages to be funny, in fact being the only story in this entire collection with that honor 5/5.
"The Neglected Garden" is another body horror story about a scorned woman turning herself into a plant. It's actually way creepier and much better written than it has any right to be 4/5.
"A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing" is a fantastic existential yarn with lasting imagery and a cold philosophical punch 4/5.
"Jack" possibly the best example of slowly mixing in the weird with the normal is told in a clever way and feels to me, one of the most soundly complete of these stories 3/5.
"Immolation" was a bit dull but nonetheless uses scifi as a means of examining that moral implications of yadda yadda 2/5.
"The Lizard of Ooze" was a too much story that I found embarrasing and un-creative 1/5.
"Watson's Boy" a rehash of one of my favorite Borges' stories manages to tease out the horror and inject a potent dose of David Lynch in for good measure 4/5.
"The Art of Dying" is not very good 1/5.
"At Reparata" was very entertaining and really left me wanting more even though the story itself ends satisfactorily 5/5.
"Letters from Tainaron" was an excerpt so I am skipping it.
"The Ride of the Gabbleratchet" suffered the most from the much too much syndrome and I found my eyes rolling even though a lot of clever ideas were presented 3/5.
"The Gutter Sees the Light That Never Shines" is hiding behind a lot of symbolism to appear deep here and yet struggles to appear like it's not trying to appear deep? Either way, annoying 2/5. ...more

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Nov 11, 2011 Nathan Shumate rated it really liked it

Taken as a whole, this collection of "New Weird" stories might be overwhelming in its surreal, boundary-breaking excess, but read little by little, these examples of "fantastic" writing which relies on no outworn traditions and tropes is refreshing. ...more

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Jan 01, 2019 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019

I liked some stories more than others. But then, that's to be expected from an anthology. I really appreciate how this was put together, especially the "laboratory" section. I wish more stories were written that way! It's a fun idea. ...more

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Apr 04, 2009 Ursula Pflug rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-i-ve-reviewed

My review of this wonderful book is up at The Internet Review of Science Fiction. IROSF has folded, sadly, but their wonderful archives remain online.

http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/1...

July, 2008
The New Weird
A Review of the Anthology
by Ursula Pflug

The New Weird
Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
Tachyon Publications,
trade paperback: 432 pp.,
US$14.95
ISBN-13 9781892391551

The New Weird begins with a ten-page footnoted introduction by Jeff VanderMeer. Later on, in the section entitled Symposi ...more

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Sep 07, 2018 Andrew rated it really liked it

Favorite stories in here:
“At Reparata” by Jeffrey Ford - A self-declared royal, rich from inherited pirate treasure creates a court of misfit wanders. Everyone has bizarre titles and plays castle until their leader loses the love of his life and falls into a deep depression. The healer they employ to cure the king takes them down a bizarre pathway that pulls in elements of Gormenghast and Perdido Street Station. But the tone is still dark comedy?

“The Lizard of Ooze” by Jay Lake - Trippy and does Favorite stories in here:
“At Reparata” by Jeffrey Ford - A self-declared royal, rich from inherited pirate treasure creates a court of misfit wanders. Everyone has bizarre titles and plays castle until their leader loses the love of his life and falls into a deep depression. The healer they employ to cure the king takes them down a bizarre pathway that pulls in elements of Gormenghast and Perdido Street Station. But the tone is still dark comedy?

“The Lizard of Ooze” by Jay Lake - Trippy and doesn't even pretend like it's going to bother explaining the backstory behind the savage inversions of the dark alternative United States, which is now full or dark cities that seem to consist of scary towns in vertical mineshafts.

“Jack” by China Miéville - A clever extension of a minor character backstory from Perdido.

I also really liked the seven-part experiment where different authors continued the same loosely connected story in a new New Weird city.

Perhaps best of all, this collection actually achieves what it sets out to do: engage in the literary history and argument about what the "New Weird" is or might be, or why. It even reprints a long discussion board argument with some of the writers who worked in the genre, and their back-and-forth really shapes the smokey lenses through which to read all the stories, as well as the Miéville books I've read.

If you're wondering what the New Weird is, exactly, well, this excerpt from that mid-00s discussion is illuminating:

Stephanie Swainston: The New Weird is a wonderful development in literary fantasy fiction. I would have called it Bright Fantasy, because it is vivid and because it is clever. The New Weird is a kickback against jaded heroic fantasy which has been the only staple for far too long. Instead of stemming from Tolkien, it is influenced by Gormenghast and Viriconium. It is incredibly eclectic, and takes ideas from any source. It borrows from American Indian and Far Eastern mythology rather than European or Norse traditions, but the main influence is modern culture ― street culture ― mixing with ancient mythologies. The text isn’t experimental, but the creatures are. It is amazingly empathic....

The details are jewel-bright, hallucinatory, carefully described. Today’s Tolkienesque fantasy is lazy and broad-brush. Today’s Michael Marshall thrillers rely lazily on brand names. The New Weird attempts to place the reader in a world they do not expect, a world that surprises them ― the reader stares around and sees a vivid world through the detail. These details ― clothing, behaviour, scales and teeth ― are what makes New Weird worlds so much like ours, as recognisable and as well-described. It is visual, and every scene is packed with baroque detail. Nouveau-goths use neon and tinsel as well as black clothes. The New Weird is more multi-spectral than gothic.

...more

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Jan 22, 2020 Sassa Margot rated it it was amazing

Shelves: short-story-collection, fantasy, new-weird, speculative-fiction

This anthology of short stories was recommended to me in a creative writing workshop on speculative fiction (upscale science fiction and fantasy). I'm really glad I followed through and read the book. I'm now reading other works by the authors collected here, from China Mieville who I knew from Perdido Street Station to Clive Barker, who seems to be famous for horror, which I don't generally read, but whose story in here I loved, so...I'm going to venture into new reading waters. And isn't that This anthology of short stories was recommended to me in a creative writing workshop on speculative fiction (upscale science fiction and fantasy). I'm really glad I followed through and read the book. I'm now reading other works by the authors collected here, from China Mieville who I knew from Perdido Street Station to Clive Barker, who seems to be famous for horror, which I don't generally read, but whose story in here I loved, so...I'm going to venture into new reading waters. And isn't that the purpose of a great short story anthology?

Starting with the introduction by co-editor Jeff Vandermeer, who I know of through my interest in steampunk, I found the collection to be a thoughtful and wide-ranging survey of the New Weird. The introduction is a great recap of the development of the New Weird, offering a look back to the "Old Weird" of Lovecraft and Poe and then tracing the more recent predecessors to the stories and writers collected here. If you are a student of weird fiction, meaning you want to write some and understand the movement and its antecedents and adjacent movements, then you need this book for the introduction alone. Although Vandermeer acknowledges "the pivotal 'moment' is behind us," he also notes that this moment has "already lasted much longer than generally believed, had definite precursors, and continues to spread an Effect, even as it dissipates or becomes something else." As he ends his essay: "New Weird is dead. Long live Next Weird."

With fifteen stories, the collection covers the range from horror to fantastical to punk-inflected, like a chocolate box with something for every taste. Even the stories that were not personal favorites were worthy examples, with distinctive voices, memorable characters, and original weirdnesses, standout weirdnesses in a genre dedicated to the twisted and strange. The editors also included further discussion of the genre partway through the book, with a Symposium section that included four individual essays on the movement capped by a round-table discussion by European editors on their views on the genre. The editors ended the book with a "round robin" of selected "views" by non-New Weird authors of note in the fantasy realm, who were asked to co-develop a story, through their individual "views" of the genre. I'm of a scholarly bent, and the stories plus the literary discussions made for a feast.

And yeah. You have got to read that Clive Barker story in here, "In the Hills, the Cities." ...more

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May 31, 2019 Cheyenne rated it really liked it

This was a very interesting examination of the New Weird as a genre movement (or potential movement?) The first two sections of the anthology included a variety of short stories, which of course are the main draw to the book. The stories were hit or miss for me; I liked most of them to some degree, although one of them (unfortunately the first story in the book, which made me hesitant initially) my brain just repeatedly rejected and I eventually had to DNF. That said, a few of these stories I'd This was a very interesting examination of the New Weird as a genre movement (or potential movement?) The first two sections of the anthology included a variety of short stories, which of course are the main draw to the book. The stories were hit or miss for me; I liked most of them to some degree, although one of them (unfortunately the first story in the book, which made me hesitant initially) my brain just repeatedly rejected and I eventually had to DNF. That said, a few of these stories I'd have given 5 stars, and the majority fell somewhere in the 3 or 4-star range of enjoyment. I'd imagine that there's something in here for everyone (unless you're really not into the idea of weird fiction, in which case, what are you doing reading this review in the first place, silly?)

The next section included and excerpt from an internet message board conversation that initially sparked the idea for the anthology as well as several non-fiction essays written by a various authors and editors discussing whether or not they believe in the New Weird as a movement in general and, in the case of a series from foreign editors, what their perception is of the New World's presence in their country. This I found interesting from the perspective of a writer, but if I didn't write I probably would have skipped it.

The last section is actually a "round robin"-style story where seven authors got together and took turns adding onto a New World story, telling their own mini-narratives within a world of their shared creation. I did not try to internally rate this section because it was more experimental, but the story was an interesting read, if unique in its structure.

In general, I think this book makes a good introduction to weird fiction (at least as it stood in the 2000's) and could also serve as a text of sorts for a writer interested in expanding their writing in that direction (keeping in mind that part of the argument of the non-fiction part of this book in the first place is that an over-emphasis on labels can be dangerous because writers shouldn't be writing to fill a specific genre but rather to tell a specific story). ...more

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Mar 17, 2021 Hannah rated it liked it

3 star rating an average of my ratings for each individual story, as follows:

* The Luck in the Head - ⭐️
* In The Hills, The Cities - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
* Crossing Into Cambodia - ⭐️ (Why is this even in here? Not weird enough to even be pre-weird if you ask me.)
* The Braining of Mother Lamprey - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
* The Neglected Garden - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
* A Soft Voice Whispering Nothing - ⭐️⭐️
* Jack - ⭐️⭐️
* Immolation - ⭐️
* The Lizard of Ooze - ⭐️⭐️
* Watson’s Boy - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
* The Art of Dying - ⭐️⭐️
* At Reparata - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
* ...more

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Jun 06, 2017 Sín Wellroth Lång rated it it was amazing

Most of these stories are wonderful and intriguing - some, not for the faint of heart, but that's not the case for me. I found weird with this book, and I love it immensely, even though a few stories are quite bland. But for the most part, these stories and authors are wonderful and attribute much with so little. ...more

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Sep 07, 2020 John rated it liked it

Like all anthologies, this is a mixed bag. Some of the stories are very good. A few are marginal. The genuine tragedy of this collection, however, is that fully a quarter of the book is given over to non-short stories. While writers writing about the genre of the New Weird has some interest to the reader, this reader felt the material took up entirely too much of the book.

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Jun 24, 2017 Eggp rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: x-short-stories, y-2017, haiku, auth-f

Folk up to no good
passive-aggressive lovers
sons and slaves rebel.

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Aug 11, 2018 Amber rated it really liked it

This collection gave me a good feel for New Weird in all its twisted, grotesque (old-timey sense, not gross sense. Although...) glory.

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Feb 15, 2019 Radovan Kopečný rated it liked it

This book was like sex. First much of tiresome work, then sweet orgasm (China Mieville), and then falling to sleep.

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Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Weird Fiction: "New Weird" Discuss Everything Spoilers	52	20	Jun 05, 2019 06:29PM
Weird Fiction: "New Weird" First Impressions No Spoilers	8	11	May 06, 2019 01:33PM
The Sword and Laser: Ann: The New Weird	24	247	Feb 05, 2015 08:28PM
June 2014 Discussion	1	4	May 22, 2014 07:12PM
Another good anthology?	2	8	May 17, 2012 08:43PM

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About Ann VanderMeer

Ann VanderMeer

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Ann VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press.

Her work as Fiction Editor of Weird Tales won a Hugo Award. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several year's best anthologies. Ann was also the founder ...more