Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is an American writer, editor and publisher.  He is known for his contributions to the New Weird and his stories about the city of Ambergris, in books like the City of Saints and Madmen.  Ann, his wife, is an American publisher and editor. She is also the editor of Weird Tales, which she has won a Hugo Award for her work. Ann is also the founder of The Silver Web magazine, which is a periodical that is devoted to experimental and avante-garde fantasy literature.

The New Weird

An 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.

The title of this collection of stories, essays, and online discussion threads refers to a subgenre of modern horror that has roots in New Wave literature and the off-kilter fantasy spawned by Weird Tales. In contrast to the eerie nostalgia of Bradbury or the haunting supernaturalism of Lovecraft, the New Weird more often leans toward grotesque urban noir and cross-genre experimentation. The contributors here constitute a multitalented lineup ranging from such veterans as Clive Barker and Michael Moorcock to rising stars, such as Jay Lake and Alistair Rennie. Kathe Koje’s “The Neglected Garden” follows the transformation of a spurned lover who takes revenge by crucifying herself on her ex’s wire fence. China Miévelle, whose celebrated Perdido Street Station (2000) epitomizes the subcategory’s visceral blend of fantasy and realism, contributes a gritty tale about the veneration and inevitable capture of an outlaw cyborg. In the anthology’s final section, an experimental collaboration between seven authors embellishing a plot hatched by Paul DiFillipo exemplifies the New Weird’s propensity for pushing the boundaries of literary invention. --Carl Hays

Interview with the VanderMeers

First of all, let’s start with a big question. Can you define what you mean by ‘Weird fiction’? Is it just a state of mind/mindset?

Jeff: “Weird fiction” can be a lot of things, including stories influenced by surrealism. “The Weird” is a more taxonomically precise label for certain types of supernatural fiction and also fiction allied with the supernatural that may achieve the same effect without a supernatural element. Admittedly, this last distinction is going to be controversial, but we found weird SF stories and weird ritual stories that gave us the same feeling as supernatural weird. Definitely, though, this is one of those areas where readers will differ on what they find “weird,” and that’s perfectly fine. It doesn’t mean there isn’t such a thing as The Weird—just that it can be slippery at times.

Ann:  I like the first paragraph of our introduction as an answer to this question...A “weird tale,” as defined by H.P. Lovecraft in his nonfiction writings and given early sanctuary within the pages of magazines like Weird Tales is a story that has a supernatural element but does not fall into the category of traditional ghost story or Gothic tale, both popular in the 1800s. As Lovecraft wrote in 1927, the weird tale “has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains.” Instead, it represents the pursuit of some indefinable and perhaps maddeningly unreachable understanding of the world beyond the mundane—a ‘certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread” or “malign and particular suspension or defeat of…fixed laws of Nature”—through fiction that comes from the more unsettling, shadowy side of the fantastical tradition.

To read the rest of the interview, click here: http://sffworld.com/interview/309p0.html