Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Steampunk

Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like "steampunks," perhaps ...

- K.W. Jeter, letter to Locus magazine, April 1987

Although Jeter's letter is widely considered to be the terminus a quo for the usage of the term "steampunk" to describe those tales that utilize and (often) subvert Victorian Era steam-based technologies to create fantastical, adventuresome tales, steampunk-like stories can be traced back at least four or five decades, to the inventor/adventurer/conqueror pulp fiction called "Edisonades" and to the reactions to the oft-jingoistic, racist undertones of such novels. It is this juxtaposition of 19th century positivist attitudes towards technology and our more recent concerns with social relations (among a great many other things) that makes steampunk fiction a very popular and creative literary cousin to the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s.

In Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's just-released anthology, Steampunk, the editors begin by noting the influences on steampunk, its various forms and foci, and how interest in all things steam-driven has created a subculture that revels in brass knobs and gears affixed to their computers or other everyday appliances. Since steampunk doesn't have the attribute-defining problems that New Weird fiction does, the editors instead have structured this anthology differently from their February The New Weird anthology. There is an introductory article written by Jess Nevins that explains the 19th century origins of steampunk fiction, which goes into detail describing the rise of the Edisonades and how by the 1960s, authors such as Michael Moorcock had begun writing stories that took the the Edisonades' entrepreneurial spirit and subverted it, creating tales that were much more complex in their focus and which contained quite a bit of ambiguity in regards to the notion of "progress" being sacrosanct. This article sets the stage well for the 13 stories/excerpts that follow and for the two concluding articles written by Rick Klaw and Bill Baker.

The stories chosen represent a cross-section of authors who are primarily known for their steampunk fictions (Joe R. Landsdale, James Blaylock, and to a lesser extent, Paul di Filippo) as well as those whose works utilize steampunk tropes on occasion (Michael Chabon, Ted Chiang, Michael Moorcock, and Jay Lake, among others). Although some of the more famous steampunk writings do not appear here because they are novels (such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine), the stories that do appear in this anthology are very strong choices.

I usually don't spend much time reviewing individual stories when I comment on anthologies, since I am much more interested in seeing how "well-glued" the anthology is rather than elaborating at length on each of the stories. However, I do want to point out that in each of the stories presented here, we see evidence of the various motifs that Nevins discusses in his introductory article. We see the use of an industrial golem in Ted Chiang's brilliant "72 letters." In an excerpt from his 1971 novel The Warlord of the Air, Michael Moorcock explores questions of whether or not gadgetry employed for destructive purposes is something that ought to be glorified. Some of the tales are funny or satirical, such as Paul di Filippo's "Victoria," while others contain gruesome warnings, such as that embedded in Jay Lake's "The God-Clown is Near."

As I read each of these tales, I could not help but to reflect back to not just Nevins' introduction, but also to the closing pieces by Klaw and Baker. In their pieces, the two discuss what it is about steampunk that creates such a lasting impression on the reader or upon the movie/TV viewer who enjoyed shows as diverse as the old Jules Verne-based movies from the 1960s to the original TV version of The Wild Wild West. As I read these stories in light of the point raised by these articles, I could not help but to remember reading one of the last major Edisonades, the reworked and updated Tom Swift novels released in the 1980s, and thinking about how there was so much that appealed to me then but which now leaves me feeling uncomfortable with the underlying assumptions behind writing such tales. Reading these steampunk stories served to highlight their distinctions from the earlier Edisonade form, while they still managed to capture some of the energy and spirit that makes such works exciting reads. Based on this, the VanderMeers' latest anthology works both as a historical piece that concisely tells the origins and importance of the steampunk subgenre and as an enjoyable set of tales that ought to appeal to a wide range of readers. Highly Recommended.

Publication Date: May 1, 2008 (US); tradeback.

Publisher: Tachyon

Jeff VanderMeer, The Situation

Some of the strangest fiction is based on everyday relationships. From the rituals that people do in waking up, to how we hope for a desired outcome (from praying to the various "rain dances" seen during dry spells, etc.), to how we engage in power struggles along the way of developing personal and professional relationships with other people, when we extract these actions from their "normal" setting and place them in an imagined situation, all sorts of strange, unsettling interpretations can ensue.

In Jeff VanderMeer's just released novella, The Situation, office politics plays a central role in creating an atmosphere that is as haunting for how familiar it is for the reader as it is for its modified humans and the rather grotesque objects being produced in this office situation. The story opens with a description of the narrator's manager:

My Manager was extremely thin, made of plastic, with paper covering the plastic. They had always hoped, I thought, that one day her heart would start, but her heart remained a dry leaf that drifted in her ribcage, animated to lift and fall only by her breathing. Sometimes, when my Manager was angry, she would become so hot that the paper covering her would ignite, and the plastic beneath would begin to melt. I didn't know what to say in such situations. It seemed best to say nothing and avert my gaze. Over time, the runneled plastic of her arms became a tableau of insane images, leviathans and tall ships rising out of the whorling, and stranger things still. I would stare at her arms so I did not have to stare at her face. I never knew her name. We were never allowed to know our Manager's name. (Some called her their "Damager," though.) (p. 5)

Many of us have known supervisors that we would never dare think were human or who actually possessed a heart; some I never dared call by anything other than "sir" or "ma'am." Imagining a boss with such metaphorical features as a non-functioning heart as becoming literal in this story helps to draw in those readers who need some sort of "anchor" to fasten themselves to the story unfolding here. But as easy as it would be to develop a tale revolving solely around an employee's precarious position with his/her bosses, it is in the complex, byzantine relationships that the narrator/employee has with his colleagues that makes this story easy to relate with, even as the strangeness of the company grows with each passing page.

Co-workers are often as much of a nuisance as a comfort, when they are not outright being one's enemy. I have worked mostly as a schoolteacher over the past decade and while the politics there differ greatly in some aspects from those of business offices, there is still quite a bit of professional jealousy that transpires between the classrooms as there does from cubicle to cubicle. Add to that the pettiness that supervisors or other colleagues can have from time to time, and the situation can grow quite hairy:

For a while, everything went well. We built the fish by hand and it took shape with a coherent design. I noticed a certain reluctance on the part of Scarskirt and Leer, but in general everyone seemed happy with my efforts.

Then the Manager finally decided to attend a meeting. Ten minutes into the meeting, she burst into flames and stood up.

We all shied away from her as she said, "The fish was to have my face. That is the last design to materialize in my office and none of what you have done since has been sent to me for approval, or is acceptable to me in any way."

This business about approval was blatantly untrue. I had sent her several messages about the changes. I had used her favorite message method: tiny crunchy bats that spurted the long-lost flavors of marzipan, chocolate mousse, and apple pie into your mouth even as you cracked down on the bones to receive the information.

But when my Manager visited my office later, she professed ignorance. She said she had not gotten any of my messages. (pp. 20-21).

Behind this weird design product and the equally strange message delivery system lies familiar territory for a great many workers: turf battles, the desire of superiors to put their own stamp on matters, and the profession of ignorance when it suits the person involved. Perhaps the oddities mentioned in this story are all the more noticeable because many readers might find themselves remembering how the foreman somehow managed to get his/her name added at the last minute to a group project that they had shunted away to another to handle during the formative stages, only to assume control when the process was nearing completion. Maybe this situation is not as far-out as one might presume from a simple glance at the surface features.

For me, the central theme of the story is revealed when the narrator describes how one of his co-workers has changed:

Complicating matters, Mord, I soon discovered, had also become part of their network. Despite all of his promises, Mord had changed once he moved to Human Resources. He was now partially composed of some large furred animal, almost like a bear. He began to emit a musk that someone told me was supposed to have a calming effect on the employees. He retained his hands, but they morphed to become more like those of a raccoon. His eyes had been enlarged and refitted so he could see at night. In the dark hallways of some floors it was rumored that he whirled around and snarled and bit the air, as if encased in a straitjacket.

For a month or so, Mord had taken to following me around, and this gave hope that all would be normal. He wouldn't talk to me, but he would stand in the doorway of my office. Waiting.

Soon, though, I discovered it wasn't really Mord. It was just a shadow Mord had made of himself, and at the Manager's direction each employee had been assigned shadows. After a time, I ignored Mord's shadow and it went away.

As for the real Mord, he rarely came to our floor anymore, and if he did it was to visit Leer's office. I only saw him if he had official business.

When I suggested he come over to my apartment sometime, he ignored me.

When I suggested we go looking for sparrows, he ignored me.

For all intents and purposes, Mord had forsaken me. He had become Other. (pp. 22-23).

I have worked with people who have changed when they gained a promotion; currently, I am experiencing something akin to that now that I am working in a different capacity in a place with many co-workers of mine from a former department. It is odd, rather unsettling at times, how people distance themselves when new responsibilities are added. It can create a sense of alienation, especially when some question just how you managed to rise to such a position without you breaking any ties or changing from what you were. It is as lonely at any new position as it is at the top. This seems to be part of the narrative undercurrent here and in this scene, where Mord has become "Other," it feels so true, in part because I have been through it before on occasion.

These passages highlight only the beginnings of the narrative disillusionment and separation that precede the events of the last half of the novella. VanderMeer's characters stay true to the form established in the opening sections and as the narrator's situation, trapped in a place where he struggles to maintain himself against the crushing pressures from peers and supervisors alike, develops, the reader likely will find him/herself identifying more and more with what is transpiring, until the end is reached and the silly, stupid weirdness of such a corporate setting is revealed for what it truly is: a wretched situation. Highly recommended.

Publication Date: March 2008 (UK only), limited-edition hardcover; released as a free e-book.

Publisher: PS Publishing

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, The New Weird

weird (wîrd)

adj. weird·er, weird·est

1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of the preternatural or supernatural.

2. Of a strikingly odd or unusual character; strange.

3. Archaic Of or relating to fate or the Fates.

n.

1.

a. Fate; destiny.

b. One's assigned lot or fortune, especially when evil.

2. often Weird Greek & Roman Mythology One of the Fates.

tr. & intr.v. weird·ed, weird·ing, weirds

Slang To experience or cause to experience an odd, unusual, and sometimes uneasy sensation. Often used with out.

---

[Middle English werde, fate, having power to control fate, from Old English wyrd, fate; see wer-² in Indo-European roots.]

Despite the seemingly precise definition cited above, "weird" is something that resists pat explanations or cute labels; it is just there, lurking at the peripheries, making the observers of it quite uncomfortable. In fiction, there have been hints of "weirdness" in the writing, places where it feels almost like a transgression to cross, because of its often alien and grotesque nature. From the beloved ruins of the Romanticists to the dank, dark corridors of an Ann Radcliffe, full of mysterious, odd, and quite possibly malevolent creations, to the rather unsettled end to the rather frightful 20th century, many writers have come to explore those boundaries that contain elements that both fascinate and repel humans. When I heard about Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's latest anthology project, The New Weird, I was reminded of a comment by M. John Harrison in his introduction to the PS Publishing edition of China Miéville's The Tain, "China Miéville & the New Weird" written in October 2002:

Good fiction should make us question our experience of the world; not to say the means by which we scaffold that experience. But it should never do this obviously. The most painfully defamiliarising gesture is the most subtle. Good fiction has an uncanny quality: and that's enough to make it "fantasy" and "mainstream" at the same time. Let's go out there, we might say, meaning, into this mainstream arena, and make readers uncomfortable. Instead of splitting hairs let's do some acts of the countermundane.

In his introduction to The New Weird anthology, Jeff VanderMeer addresses not just the history of this "movement," stretching back to and referencing the near-iconic old pulp magazine Weird Tales, but also the problems inherent in such a purposely vague and yet fitting term. Back then, there were no rigidly-defined terms such as "epic fantasy," "urban fantasy," "horror," or "hard SF." Instead, in pulps such as Weird Tales, writers might mix elements of all of the above into an alchemical brew that would leave their readers feeling in turns fascinated and uncomfortable.
All well and good, one might argue. But what makes this "weird" the New Weird? VanderMeer continues, noting that the often-political, almost-always experimental approach of the New Wave writers of the 1960s and 1970s(M. John Harrison and Michael Moorcock being two prominent writers of this time period), with their appropriations of whatever "mainstream" tropes and concerns that they saw fit to use, made it okay again, after the rather rigid divisions between SF and Fantasy that occurred during the post-World War II Golden Age of SF era, to blend and blur the boundaries. In addition, during the 1980s, some horror writers (Clive Barker being cited as a major influence) began to take a more visceral, unsettling approach to Lovecraftian themes, daring to reveal much more of the hideousness of the imagined and "real" monsters than had been done before.

But experimenters rarely are accepted into the fold and by the 1990s, during a time in which the older political models seemed to be dissolving into a toxic mixture of ethnocentrism, religious fundamentalism, and rising xenophobism in the so-called "First World" nations, some writers influenced by the predecessors mentioned above began to write their own takes on the older fantasy, SF, horror, and "mainstream" tropes. This, VanderMeer postulates, is the beginning point for what later became known as the New Weird.

The term itself, he notes, is quite controversial, as even those associated with its coining, China Miéville, Steph Swainston, and M. John Harrison, later came to distance themselves from the term. Labels, after all, are tricky and confining entities that seek to bind and to standardize. But if "weirdness," this "uncanniness" that unsettles people, is such a slippery, vague word in the first place, how can labels apply? It is around this question that much of the VanderMeers' anthology revolves.

Many anthologies give little more than a brief introduction by the editor(s) of whatever theme(s) that the anthology seeks to explore. Here in The New Weird, the questions raised in the introduction are underscored by how the VanderMeers have divided their book. In the first section, "Stimuli," the reader is introduced to seminal stories such as M. John Harrison's "The Luck in the Head" (originally published in 1984 as part of Viriconium Nights), Clive Barker's "In the Hills, the Cities" (published first in 1984 in the collection Books of Blood, Volume I), and Thomas Ligotti's "A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing" (1997 publication, In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land). In each of these stories (and others that I neglect to mention above), there are a few common elements. The settings are very vivid, sometimes set in another "world," sometimes in a very recognizable contemporary Earth. The language of the stories focuses heavily on how the narrator/characters interact with their environs, which often differ from the characters' "norms." It is a classic "Man versus the Environment" clash in part, but there is much more to it than just that. In these stories, the reader can expect to find all sorts of unsettling situations or implications based on plot events, all designed to heighten any unease that the reader might hold. As an introduction to the influences on the latter styles, these stories work very well together.

In the second part, "Evidence," there are reprinted stories by Miéville, Jay Lake, Jeffrey Thomas, Steph Swainston, and Jeffrey Ford, among others. In these tales, the earlier tales' atmospheric settings and unsettled narrative reactions is married to an even closer attention to language and "real-world" concerns. Miéville's "Jack," set in his New Crobuzon universe, explores the machinations of a totalitarian state and the usefulness for that regime of having mythical hero-opponents such as Jack Half-a-Prayer oppose it. Miéville's descriptions of the Remaking process, of how Jack is eventually caught, and what happens to his snitch all serve to focus our attention not just on the wonderfully described situation, but also on how our own political systems are fraught with corruption and how complacent many citizens can be in light of such potential governmental abuses. Although the other stories in this section are not quite overtly political (or Marxist) as is Miéville's, they too have their moments in which the "weirdness" presented often hits a bit too close to home for our comfort.

But as well-written and presented as these stories were, one of the key selling points for this anthology in my mind was the third section, "Symposium." Here the VanderMeers have reproduced the opening salvos of a landmark 2003 discussion that originally appeared on The Third Alternative forums (now archived here) as well as publishing reprinted and original essays on the New Weird theme by Michael Cisco, K.J. Bishop, and a series of non-English language editors from Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe on the impact that such a movement as the New Weird has had in their countries, both in the selling of translated fiction as well as on native writers. It is in this section that the questions presented in the introduction reemerge and take center stage. The reader witnesses the debates over the terminologies employed, the questions over the efficacies of even having such a label, and so forth. For me, it was this section that made this anthology much more than the sum of its parts.

In the final section, "Laboratory," there is a writing project in which authors not often associated with the original New Weird movement, are presented with a story beginning written by Paul Di Filippo and are asked to riff off of that intro, using their own understandings of what "New Weird" might mean. This collaborative exercise on the parts of Di Filippo, Cat Rambo, Sarah Monette, Daniel Abraham, Felix Gilman, Hal Duncan, and Conrad Williams is a very striking look at how the techniques employed by the New Weird writers have influenced those whose stories at first glance might not be associated with such a movement. It was an interesting way to end the anthology and one that will take me multiple reads before I will feel comfortable presenting a cogent discussion of its themes and elements.

Perhaps that was one of the points of that exercise - to shake readers such as myself from our comfort zones and make us contemplate things that are often baffling, sometimes repulsive, but almost always imaginative and vivid. In this, the final section fits in well with the previous three and hints at what may lay ahead in the field. Defined precisely or not, the New Weird certainly has had a major impact on writing both inside and outside the narrowly-defined genre limns. This eponymous anthology does an outstanding job in presenting the New Weird in all its unsettling, vague, weird glory. Highly Recommended.

Publication Date: February 1, 2008 (US), Tradeback.

Publisher: Tachyon Publications

Best of 2007: Anthologies and Story Collections

I made it my goal this year to read more anthologies and short story collections by particular authors. Although I still have a few stories here and there to finish in some of these, I have read enough of the following to justify splitting this into two separate categories, one for anthologies and one for collections by one or two authors. I'll announce my Top 3 picks in each category on Monday in my Best of 2007 writeup.

Anthologies:

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (eds.), Best American Fantasy

George Mann (ed.), The Solaris Book of New Fantasy

Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss (eds.), Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing

John Klima (ed.), Logorrhea

Keith Brooke and Nick Gevers (eds.), Infinity Plus: The Anthology

Kelly Link and Gavin Grant (eds.), The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

Peter Wild (ed.), The Flash


Story Collections:

Margo Lanagan, Red Spikes

Sarah Monette, The Bone Key

Richard Parks, Worshipping Small Gods

Michael Cisco, Secret Hours

Cat Rambo and Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon's Tale and Other Tales

Tim Pratt, Hart & Boot & Other Stories

I have some very tough decisions ahead. Oh, and in the coming days, do expect some reviews of some of those works above that I have yet to review here.

Crazy People, "Well-Adjusted" People

Jeff VanderMeer has an intriguing post up about authors coming to realize that they've been writing about "crazy" people. The discussion about this has included a related question that had been eating at me earlier in the day, about how come a reader will rarely encounter a truly "well-adjusted" character in a novel. I highly recommend that all people reading this to click on the link above and to read through the discussion that ensued, as I think it's something worthy of further exploration. Also, if you have any thoughts on my question, I'd love to hear them as well.