New Weird

What kind of book is it?

That’s a question I get asked fairly often. Is it Horror? Is it a Thriller?

My publisher classifies “The Lucifer Messiah” as Paranormal/Supernatural under their Horror banner. Originally they called it Dark Fantasy, before they changed their genre classifications this year. I think Barnes & Noble’s website had it ranked as an Urban Fantasy at one time. One bookstore I visited had it shelved in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section, and another had it in the Horror section.

One reviewer plainly referred to me as a “horror novelist” while another one claimed to be disappointed in the book as a fantasy writer himself (or herself, I’m not sure).

So what is it?

Horror, fantasy, dark fantasy, urban fantasy, urban dark fantasy, supernatural, sci-fi/fantasy, or just plain old fantasy?

My answer? None of the above. And all of the above. And maybe something else, too.

It’s not a cop out. I’ll try to explain.

“The Lucifer Messiah” has elements of all of those genres. There’s blood and gore, a staple of horror fiction. There’s sword fighting and pagan mythology, both fantasy mainstays. The setting is almost entirely urban and much of the plot involves supernatural creatures, for which something like a pseudo-scientific explanation is suggested.

That covers everything right?

But at the same time, it’s not scary, so it can’t really be called horror. There are no elves, fairies, dwarves, wizards or anything else you expect in post-Tolkien fantasy. The supposedly supernatural elements explicitly reject any connection to actual gods or religions, and the sci-fi bit is just that, no more than an oblique reference.

So it isn’t any of those genres. Right? In that case, what the heck did I write?

This is why I have a hard time breaking it down into a few words when people ask me about it in casual conversation. For the record then, here’s my attempt at an explanation.

Weird Fiction. Or maybe New Weird, if that’s possible.

Neither of those are my creation, so let me give credit where it’s due. Weird Fiction, in my mind, conjures up the work of Clark Ashton Smith, a woefully under-read guy these days. I think it also covers a lot of the work of Robert E. Howard (even some of the Conan stuff, which is pretty much the standard-bearer for Sword & Sorcery these days) and H.P. Lovecraft, whose work would probably be classified as straight horror in many cases.

These folks all had their heydays during the pulp fiction years of the thirties and forties. Smith especially wrote a lot of what we would now consider cross-genre stories. Almost all of them involved some kind of ancient, lost magic and some sort of horrific monster or a vaguely-evil wizard summoning dark, forbidden things in a dying, creepy old city.

I am not in Smith’s league. But if I could put my stuff in any “category” of fiction, I’d want it grouped in some way with that “genre.”

Another possibility is what some people have taken to calling “New Weird” which already has its own wikipedia entry, so it must be real. (What did Michael Scott say about that -- “anyone can write in, so you know it must be true?”)

The writer most closely identified with New Weird is a British guy named China Mieville, who for my money is the most talented fantasy/sci-fi/horror/cross-genre writer working today. If you haven’t read King Rat or Perdido Street Station then you’re missing one of the most interesting voices out there.

New Weird, if it is a real thing at all, is a conscious merging of all of the above-mentioned categories into something that includes elements from all of them; a genre that rejects familiar genre conventions, you might say.

If I ever become half the writer Mieville was five years ago (when he was in his early-thirties!!) I’ll be more than pleased, so I’m not going to nominate myself for inclusion in the same category as his work. It’s something to strive for.

So what is “The Lucifer Messiah”?

You’ve just read my best guess. But I’m open to other suggestions.