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Weird fiction

Subgenre of speculative fiction

  • 7 min read
  • 4 chapters

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Through Fantasy

Weird fiction often attempts to inspire awe as well as fear in response to its fictional creations, causing commentators like Miéville to paraphrase Goethe in saying that weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous. Although "weird fiction" has been chiefly used as a historical description for works through the 1930s, it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, under the label of New Weird, which continues into the 21st century.

Definitions

John Clute defines weird fiction as a term "used loosely to describe fantasy, supernatural fiction and horror tales embodying transgressive material". China Miéville defines it as "usually, roughly, conceived of as a rather breathless and generically slippery macabre fiction, a dark fantastic ('horror' plus 'fantasy') often featuring nontraditional alien monsters (thus plus 'science fiction')". Discussing the "Old Weird Fiction" published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock says, "Old Weird fiction utilises elements of horror, science fiction and fantasy to showcase the impotence and insignificance of human beings within a much larger universe populated by often malign powers and forces that greatly exceed the human capacities to understand or control them."

Jeff and Ann VanderMeer describe weird fiction not as a genre of fiction, but rather as a mode of literature (i.e. a style or mood) usually appearing within the horror fiction genre.

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