The Strange Edge: Have I Stumbled upon a New Idear?

In my reading, my searching out what's going on in fiction, I've run across a lot of unusual subgenres/movements/effects. Two in particular have caught my eye: Slipstream and New Weird.

For those who are unfamiliar, my brief overview. Slipstream is a style or effect in fiction that relies on cognitive dissonance to make the reader feel strange. This can come in the form of unreliable narrators who seem to give contradictory accounts of events or in the inability of a reader to distinguish whether the events in a story are real and magical or imaginary and mundane. Slipstream stories normally occur in a world not entirely distinct from our own. That is, typically only the events in the story itself--or those elements central to the story--are impossible, and the normal rules of existence seemingly apply to every other aspect of life. Slipstream may also use textual subversion while also relating surreal perceptions or events that operate on dream-logic. Slipstream generally deals more with epistemic, ontological or metaphysical uncertainty than social or political ideology. When it is social, it leans toward the psycho-social. You won't find many morality tales in this style.

New Weird, on the other hand, is almost always set in a secondary world, a world very much unlike our own. In this way, it is more accessible to core Fantasy fans than may be Slipstream. New Weird relies on the grotesque (in somewhat the same way Horror does) to give a feeling of wrongness to the reader. There is a tendency toward darkness in theme and the stories tend to contain very gritty social themes squirming below the surface. As these stories are set in a secondary world, many of the creatures, races, venues and customs of that world can be seen as symbols. Unlike your shelf-stable, run-of-the-mill heroic fantasy, you won't see many recognizable tropes (no Elves, Dragons, Vampires, Wizards) in New Weird. You will instead see Lovecraftian variations on those themes.

Though both of these types of story appeal greatly to me, and I'd wager they appeal to a very large common intersection of the Venn diagram of genre readers, they can be contrasted in this way (if somewhat oversimplified for sake of my point): Slipstream features strange events in a typical world whereas New Weird features typical events in a strange world. There is a perfectly good reason why these two conventions have arisen so. In Slipstream, the reader attempts tell what events are real while trying to interpret them in light of the physics of the known world. If those tales were set in a strange and alien world where the reader has yet to be shown an established physics, the reader could easily become overwhelmed with the task. That is to say, when a boy turns invisible in the real world, we know something out of the ordinary has occurred. But when a twarb turns invisible on planet Tandrel, we don't have a basis to decide if that is an unusual event or something that happens all the time. If all elements of the tale are very strange, it takes a lot of work for the writer to expose the necessary information to his reader and gain the reader's trust while enticing the reader to read on. It is much easier to fall into the New Weird conventions of a very strange setting with a fairly typical adventure, romance, drama, or intrigue plot. Or a very normal setting with an entirely unbelievable, confusing, atypical, post-modern plot.

Harder work, maybe. But interesting work? I think so. Here are a few stories I was reading that gave me some ideas about where to begin (and collections where you can find them for your own personal enjoyment):

Brian Evenson - "The Progenitor," "Body" (The Wavering Knife), "Watson's Boy (The New Weird)

Thomas Ligotti - "My Case for Retributive Action," "Our Temporary Supervisor," "In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land" (Teatro Grottesco)

Kelly Link - "Catskin" (Magic for Beginners), "The Wizards of Perfil," "The Constable of Abal" (Pretty Monsters)

Phillip Raines and Harvey Welles - "The Fishie" (Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet)

Veronica Schanoes - "Serpents" (Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet)

All of the above stories have radically different styles and feels. Evenson plays with bleakness and insanity and alienation. Ligotti combines just about every form of horror ranging from the psychological to the financial to the supernatural. The stories from Link have an off-kilter fairy tale feel, the Raines and Welles collaboration feels like a psychedelic folk tale, and Schanoes' story happens in a non-child-safe Wonderland. But they all have elements in common. They take place in worlds that we are unfamiliar with. They are not in simple Fantasy Land templates ala Tolkien or Terry Brooks. But more than that, they all contain a plot that makes us question the underlying reality of what seems to be the surface reality. Where is this story really taking place? What is really happening to the character? What is the true nature of the characters? Do the characters know what the nature of their reality truly is? Can we the reader be sure of what the reality of the tale is? In one way or another, all these stories create this unified feeling of strangeness. Not just in locale but in action and theme.

So, in short, I want to create successful stories that capitalize on the full spectrum of strangeness. I want to create worlds and plots that are equally bizarre, and fill them characters that don't fall apart under the pressure of being completely and utterly uncanny. I want to entertain, but I also want to encourage my readers to challenge assumptions, which means subverting conventions, but not so much as to become pure experimentalism. Secondary world fiction with plots that induce cognitive dissonance. Let's call it The Strange Edge. Because it will never be a core of any genre. It will always be a frontier region that scares people on all its borders, be they literary, fantasy, mystery, science fiction or horror.

Need to Write More Stories

So, via Duotrope's Digest I've found many, many, many publications who may or may not ever want to publish a story by me, G. Arthur Brown. I've found many magazines and e-zines that I never knew existed, plus many that probably shouldn't exist. The stumbling block I've hit now is that a lot of the ones that really seem worthwhile won't accept simultaneous submissions (industry jargon for they don't want to consider my shit for publication at the same time I've submitted to anybody else). So I need more stories. And I need to go back and revise a bunch of my old ones to get them publishable. This is going to take an awful lot of tea and make my girlfriend very lonely. Writing... it's a bitch.

Dream People 32 Now Online

The whole issue seems really tight. And through accident of alphabet I am at the top of the list. Be sure to tell the team at The Dream People that you really think they did a good job in choosing A Public Luncheon. Tell them that G. Arthur Brown is the coolest dude writing. Draw funny mustaches on their faces while they aren't looking.

Writing a Novel

So, I've started on a novel. Anyone who has ever written a novel or tried to write a novel knows that you start writing a novel long before you WRITE anything. Where to begin? Well, you need a premise. That much my pet chameleon can, and did, tell me. "Gary," he said, "you need a premise before you can write a novel." I gave him some lizard food and set about coming up with a premise. And the one I've got will turn out to be either A) the most brilliant post-modern novel yet written or B) the most preposterously pretentious novel of 2010. Hell, not everyone can have a million dollar idea like "The daVinci Code" or "Clifford the Big Red Dog." So I might as well have fun with it.

I've got a protagonist. I'm calling him Hatcher (even though that probably is not his name, but don't ask him to tell you who he really is) as a now not-so-veiled homage to both Brian Evenson and Thomas Ligotti, both of whom have written characters simply known as Hatcher. I'm completing the cycle.

I've got a setting. It's (ostensibly) a penal colony called The Belange. Here Hatcher tries to piece together a mystery while suffering from almost total amnesia. But he's not alone: everyone else is in the same boat, apart from the masked guards who do not speak.

There will be an old woman with a stack of family Bibles she uses to select names for the newcomers. There will be crepuscular phlebotomists called the Skeeters (the Esquidar brothers). There will be a dream demon who tells Hatcher what clues to look for. There will also be some strange creatures: the galoot, the oaf, the lummox. And also, a plot of some kind.

I will update my blog as I feel I make progress on this, my first attempt at a novel.

"A Public Luncheon" @ The Dream People

So, my flash fiction story "A Public Luncheon" will be in issue #32 of The Dream People, to be released sometime in October. TDP is, of course, the online magazine illustriously savaged by Editor-in-Chief D. Harlan Wilson, whose short fiction is something I really enjoy (haven't read any of his novels yet, though).

Oh, Yeah

Words and Images will be publishing my short story "Last Night with the Marvel" in their 2010 edition. It will be my first time in print, so I'm feeling rather self-congratulatory. Here's a quote from the story to tide us over:

"Bobby the Marvel’s last night in town remains like a snapshot on the refrigerator of my memory, and while soda drippings have caused it to grow murky through the years, I can still make out all the pertinent details. Well, almost all of them."

Jeff VanderMeer's Zany Blog Action

Jeff VanderMeer famous author of blah-blah-blah and husband of editor Ann VanderMeer plays host to a blog which is currently housing a rather heated (and longwinded) debate about the genre/literary divide, which was originally sparked by something somewhat inflamtory J.M. McDermott said.

In a more recent post, Jeff has quoted me alongside Hal Duncan, Nick Mamatas, Scott Bakker, and others. The quote being:
"G. Arthur Brown:
the only people who allow themselves to be challenged are those who are seeking new insights, new perspectives, new IDEAS. A ‘liberal’ thinker. The truly liberal thinker is also very rare. Because we aren’t just talking about the mind that would read Updike in contrast to the reactionary Bush supporter. We are talking about the mind who would read also the Turner Diaries and would still have no fear that they would poisoned by harmful IDEAS. An exceptionally rare sort of mind that doesn’t mind going outside of the box to make its decisions about reading or anything else."

It was originally a response to an allegation by Canadian fantasy author Scott Bakker that too many brilliant authors spend all their time preaching to the choir rather than taking their message to those it might challenge.

Get involved in the debate. Or check out Jeff's blog. Or buy his damn books.