Customer Reviews

The New Weird

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thought this anthology would be interesting, and it doesn't disappoint.

There's an introduction by VanderMeer, J. To sum that up he says wants to provide a rough guide to the New Weird, acknowledging that it is quite possibly a past history thing.

On the rest of the non-fiction, there is part of a forum discussion from a few years ago, wherein the existence or not of the topic is debated. Amusingly, Jonathan Strahan calls it a load of old cobblers, then over the page comes up with this very anthology title (and also sort of implies that the New Space Opera might be something similar, and goes on to produce a great anthology titled exactly that, too). A kiss of life Super Editor, perhaps, is he?

There are some essays by others talking about the subject, and also some European editors, some from more Eastern Europe, and a German, talking about this sort of fiction in their countries and how it does commercially. The Czechs hung a fiction line of it that has done well, and not so good in dour Germany, it seems.

On the fiction front, things go from the fabulous find of a story about Jack Half-A-Prayer from China Mieville's New Crobuzon, to a poor excerpt from a novel by Steph Swainston. She is one of the names invoked along with Mieville, Di Filippo, and Bishop (whose story is rather good, and I had read before), as being part of the early moment of this stuff, around Perdido Street Station time. However, the Swainston excerpt isn't from the book mentioned - perhaps that one is better, being as it appears the first in a trilogy, and higher rated and more widely held on librarything, too. However, her writing in this excerpt isn't within a bulls roar of any of the others mentioned. Extremely cheesy science fantasy that veers more towards the romance science fiction romance subgenre at time, it seems to me. It has that crossover dabbler not quite getting it feel, it seems. Excerpts are problematic enough in anthologies without sticking in dodgy examples.

Moorcock's war story seems to be just a garden variety slightly nutty people at war tale, certainly not even remotely weird, particularly if you are thinking of mad scientists in Gran Bretan, or Warlords of the Air, or multiversal chasing grail hunting super nazis.

The actual cover itself isn't particularly weird, either, being sort of virginal white, with a clockwork bug - dime a dozen on the internet, these days, those sort of things, it seems.

Jeffrey Thomas has a pure SF story here, though, and I noticed a free novel released recently online - if it is anythinglike this, it will be worth checking out. Judge Dredd meets Blade Runner, or something like that.

Most of this stuff is fantasy or horror, and often both. Alistair Rennie being the classic example here of gross, grotesque horror-fantasy. This story is apparently new to the collection, so well done. I'd definitely like to see more of this.

The last fiction part includes a 'laboratory', wherein the editors ask some writers who aren't Weird enough, mostly, perhaps, to try New Weird. PDF sets it up for them, and then they take a crack at various parts of a related set of stories. Whether it was worth doing this rather than including some other good New Weird stories, I think I'd come down on the side of no, given the retrospective aim of this book.

In a good move, they have included a list of 70 odd books that are New Weirdish, while noting at the start they are leaving out Alastair Reynolds and company 'space opera new weird' books. Cyberpunk is ok, presumably, given Thomas. Then they go and leave half a page blank on their book list. Why not put them in at the end rather than waste the space? At least given the wasted paper they could have said why - don't read it/not familiar with/don't like it/publisher said no, especially as they open the book with writers than have committed space opera in the pat.

Chasm City, for example, is way weirder and more grotesque than the very tame Ligotti story that could easily have fallen out of a rift in time to 1920.

So, overall this anthology manages to make it to good, but nothing past that, and does contain a couple of excellent and a few good stories.

As a final note, the Tachyon publisher site has a 'part 8' of the Festival Lives laboratory experiment, also by PDF.


New Weird : The Luck in the Head - M. John Harrison
New Weird : Crossing into Cambodia - Michael Moorcock
New Weird : In the Cities the Hills - Clive Barker
New Weird : The Braining of Mother Lamprey - Simon D. Ings
New Weird : The Neglected Garden - Kathe Koja
New Weird : A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing - Thomas Ligotti
New Weird : Jack - China Miéville
New Weird : Immolation - Jeffrey Thomas
New Weird : The Lizard of Ooze - Jay Lake
New Weird : Watson's Boy - Brian Evenson
New Weird : The Art of Dying - K. J. Bishop
New Weird : At Reparata - Jeffrey Ford
New Weird : Letters from Tainaron - Leena Krohn
New Weird : The Ride of the Gabbleratchet - Steph Swainston
New Weird : The Gutter Sees the Light That Never Shines - Alistair Rennie
New Weird : Death in a Dirty Dhoti - Paul Di Filippo
New Weird : Cornflowers Beside the Unuttered - Cat Rambo
New Weird : All God's Chillun Got Wings - Sarah Monette
New Weird : Locust-Mind - Daniel Abraham
New Weird : Constable Chalch and the Ten Thousand Heroes - Felix Gilman
New Weird : Golden Lads All Must - Hal Duncan
New Weird : Forfend the Heavens' Rending - Conrad Williams

Oh Mammy, how I chop ya, how I chop ya

3.5 out of 5


A glowing charge.

3 out of 5


Urban decay contest honeymoon definitely over.

4 out of 5


Potted old bag's distributed prediction power scratched.

4 out of 5


Finally off the fence about this flower chick.

3 out of 5


Cold medicine.

2.5 out of 5


Half-A-Prayer of ending.

4.5 out of 5


Union City clone shooter Blues.

4 out of 5


Fishy dead clown.

3.5 out of 5


I'm too keyed up. Rats.

3 out of 5


Stupid is the stripling who perambulates with swicidal swordswomen.

4 out of 5


Earworm: Moth In the City.

3 out of 5


BEMmy.

3 out of 5


Get me out of this worm-fest.

2 out of 5


A real balls-up he made there, right, Sister?

4.5 out of 5


Dogwhacked terror tour.

4 out of 5


Mad luftballons.

3 out of 5


Dogpack discussion.

3.5 out of 5


Buggy morality.

3 out of 5


Magazine adventures.

3.5 out of 5


Slim hipped Songboys.

3 out of 5


Blown up assistance.

3 out of 5

A very uneven collection. There were several stories that really stood out which made me want to see more of the authors' work - the ones by Miéville, Swainston, Lake and Rennie in particular - but the rest were largely forgettable.

The forgettable ones usually tended to veer between being strange to the point of plotless (say, "Watson's Boy" by Evenson) or just plotless description ("The Art of Dying" by Bishop").

I'm also not entirely certain that the discussion of "What IS the 'New Weird'?" as a genre really added anything to the tome, as there was no clear cut definition nor concurrence as to if 'New Weird' can be classified, if it has past us by already, or if it is ongoing. A nudge in the direction to the archived discussion in the foreward would have sufficed vice reprinting it as an entire chapter.

On the plus side, I now have more promising authors' short story collections to look for.

In April 2003, M. John Harrison created or appropriated a new genre category called "The New Weird" and tried to kick-start discussion on the internet. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer bring that discussion into the real world where we generalists can join in. But if this book is anything to judge by, "The New Weird" is a make-work label designed to give C-list writers something to talk about, and to sell books to gullible japes like me.

Jeff VanderMeer, in his introduction, spews a lot of post-grad lit major gibberish to persuade us not only that this new category exists, but that it's already dead and he has the right to perform the post-mortem. He claims it's the rightful inheritor of sci-fi's New Wave and the innovative grotesque horror/fantasy of the 1980's. But he never says what New Weird is. And the main text of the book probably shows why.

The editors start with what they call "Stimuli," a selection of stories that nourished the New Weird ethos. But for the most part I can't tell the difference between them and the Old Weird. These authors, including Michael Moorcock, Kathe Koja, and Clive Barker, appear to channel Lovecraft, Poe, and Shirley Jackson. This reads like the Old Weird's Greatest Hits.

But these stories are masterful compared to the section labeled "Evidence." I beg, implore, and defy anyone to explain what makes these stories either New or Weird. Jeffrey Thomas' "Immolation" is bog-standard sci-fi. K.J. Bishop's "The Art of Dying" and Jeffrey Ford's "At Reparata" are fantasies. Apart from a playful attitude toward events, there's little innovative or Weird about these stories

The tales by Brian Evenson, Steph Swainton, Leena Krohn, and Alistair Rennie are--not to generalize--crap. If New Weird means rejecting clear characters, plot, or momentum, then I need to dig out the stories I wrote in junior high, because I'll make a mint. The only remotely inventive story is China Mièville's "Jack." No wonder VanderMeer disparages Mièville in the intro: we can't have schlubs like me reading or caring about our proud subgenre, can we?

The next "Symposium" section attempts to critically parse this subgenre. In addition to several windy, jargon-rich essays by authors from this book, it reproduces the early entries in Harrison's web discussion on what New Weird is and if it exists. Reading this bunch of half-baked cranks justifying their opacity, I am reminded why I dislike criticism as a whole and pop-culture criticism in particular.

I couldn't even finish the "Symposium," much less the "Laboratory" section, in which the VanderMeers prompt writers to add a new round-robin story to a genre they've already declared dead. I found myself steadily losing the will to live. In Harrison's web discussion, Jonathan Strahan describes the New Weird moniker as "a load of old cobblers," and I couldn't agree more.

Hundreds of pages into this tedious exercise, I knew I'd wasted precious reading time. The editors have been given a taxonomic category and felt the need to fill it, although the category has no parameters and the putative genre doesn't exist. Some individual stories are interesting, but the collection is gormless, without any clear unifying ethos. I'm sorry to say, there is no New Weird, and this would-be manifesto is a vulgar attempt to part you from your money.

Okay, here goes:

The New Weird: three-quarters anthology, one quarter manifesto.

There are a few good stories in here, like Clive Barker's much reprinted, "In the Hills, the Cities," Koja's (whose work I always love) "The Neglected Garden." I was pleasantly surprised by Brian Evenson's "Watson's Boy," and really enjoyed the psychological truth of Jeffrey Ford's "At Reparata." Jeffrey Thomas's "Immolation," and China Miéville's "Jack" were also very satisfying. Last, but not least though, is Ligotti's "A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing," which was very finely done.

The other stories, even the one by grand master Michael Moorcock, aren't so great; in fact, they're pretty bad. Their main problem: their bloat. Their unnecessary lengths are mostly due to self-indulgence, a relishing in a "weirdness" that screams of gimmickry--an ersatz "weirdness" that bulges, bottlenecks, and outright chokes their narratives in the most irritating of places. It's as if they were all saying, "Look, ma'! I can write WEIRD!" Please.

Just for the record, no one did the "new" weird like that old (now deceased) giant, J.G. Ballard. It may seem unfair to compare any of these artists with a virtuoso like Ballard, but, let's face it. Sometimes what's "new" isn't always better. Why would the editors print a much reprinted tale like Barker's, but not a one by Ballard? It's not like Barker's story came out yesterday. (And this is why the whole "New Weird" manifesto strikes me as being self-inflated and outright dishonest: it's not "new" at all! And how long has steampunk been around?) In my humble opinion, J.G. Ballard is the gold standard when it comes to this "new" genre, but, then again, he's so sui generis, I don't know.

Buy this one used or check it from the library.

The New Weird was not a typical literary movement, and this is not a typical anthology. It aims to do more than simply collect the defining stories of the New Weird movement. It seeks to explore the its origins, its motives, even its validity. And then it goes beyond even these discussions to explore what the implications of the New Weird movement have been, and even illustrates how those implications have differed around the world. There is fascinating scholarship here, but it easily digestible without the usual impenetrable language and obscure references.

All this scholarship, however, is grounded by the stories themselves--those by the literary forefathers of the New Weird movement, those that defined the movement itself, and then a particularly entertaining round robin tale told by a slew of excellent authors all influenced by the movement in one way or another.

And what stories. Some are more difficult reads that others. Some are more entertaining than others. But across the board every story in the collection is interesting in its own right. The stories may not be beautiful but they are striking, catching the reader with sudden glimpses into previously unseen, unimagined places. They are stories with sharp edges. They are weird stories.

Sometimes challenging, always entertaining, this is anthology that anyone with more than just a passing interest in speculative fiction should own.

Until I picked up this anthology, I was only tangentially aware of New Weird. I'd heard of China Mieville; I'd read some short work by Jay Lake, Jeffrey Ford and Paul Di Filippo; and I'd associated Clive Barker and Thomas Ligotti with mainstream horror, and Michael Moorcock with mainstream sci-fi.

The VanderMeers successfully weave disparate origins into not so much a literary movement as a literary moment. I don't think any of the authors considered themselves part of a "New Weird" school; they were simply converging into a space where there was some commonality to their work. Only a couple years later, they're already proceeding along their unique trajectories and I'm not sure the New Weird exists anymore. But that's the beauty of it: These are stories that are so removed from our own space and time that this volume will be able to stand on its own for decades to come. The subgenre label might not have permanence, but these stories and these writers do.

And that's the anthology editor's craft in a nutshell, isn't it.

My favorite stories: Barker's "In the Hills, the Cities," Moorcock's "Crossing into Cambodia," Lake's "The Lizard of Ooze," Ford's "At Reparata" and, most of all, Alistair Rennie's "The Gutter Sees the Light That Never Shines". The end notes, particularly "European Editor Perspectives on the New Weird" were in the main enlightening, although some of the last hundred pages seemed like filler.

Overall, though, a most welcome and treasured addition to the top shelf of my bookcase.

The moment may have passed for a new New Weird anthology and sorry, VanderMeers, Steampunk never floated my boat. But I'm eager to see what kind of gumbo Ann and Jeff cook up next.

I made the mistake of reading the introduction and essay portion of this book first...
Gah! Such annoying insecurity on the part of intellectual-wannabes that can't be satisfied that the label is selling ("OMG! I've been genrefied!!!").
How many times can a person use 'text' in one sentence? There are some good attempts at the record books in the 'The New Weird' essays section.
I had to put the book down for about a month so the stink could clear before I got on to reading the actual stories... but I'm glad I persevered. Not everything is shiny but there is gold in the ashes... as is usual with anthologies. I just wish the editors had found the fortitude to cut out the masturbatory non-fiction portions of the book and include more actual fiction... leave the Deconstructionist ramblings for the online forums (where I can safely ignore them).

It's easy to imagine two different readers reacting in opposite ways to The New Weird. One might find it delightfully odd; the other might find it as terrifying as Kafka on LSD. And a third might find it delightfully odd because it's as terrifying as Kafka on LSD. Certainly, no one is likely to find it boring.

The book is well-organized, with a short, useful introduction; a section entitled "Stimuli," containing older selections (though not very old; the oldest piece, by Michael Moorcock, has an original copyright date of 1979, while the Thomas Ligotti selection was published only in 1997); "Evidence," stories published mostly in this millennium and intended to demonstrate precisely what New Weird is, or was; "Symposium," short essays by three writers and shorter commentary by European editors; and "Laboratory," a communal story by "some of our finest fantasists generally not identified as `New Weird.'" Each section has its own points of interests, though the last is of dubious value; as discussed below, some writers even seem to be mocking the assignment, though perhaps that is merely a matter of style.

Which brings us back to the definitional problem. In his introduction, Jeff VanderMeer quotes M. John Harrison asking whether New Weird "is...even anything." It is VanderMeer's thesis that the popularity of China Mieville's Perdido Street Station in 2000 crystallized a shift in traditional weird fiction - the sort written by H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, which ultimately became modern-day horror fiction - into a new type of supernatural or fantastical horror fiction. The twin stimuli for the shift were the New Wave of the 1960s and the "unsettling grotesquery" of 1980s horror, like Clive Barker's Clive Barker's Books of Blood. The difference was that this new type of fiction surrendered to the weird, without ironic distance, using "rough-hewn but effective plots featuring earnest, proactive characters." VanderMeer suggests that this work was not particularly subtle and therefore considerably more accessible to readers than its influences had been. Some writers of work identified as New Weird, like Mieville, also argued that it had a specific political component, particularly in opposition to globalization and global corporations. Others, like Steph Swainston, found political categorization too limiting, finding instead a sort of spiritual meaning in the use of New Weird. It wasn't long before those authors writing the work most identified as New Weird came to deny the label, particularly as their work continued to grow and evolve. VanderMeer contends that none of them ever wrote anything that was much like what they'd written before "for the most part" - neatly setting aside the fact that a number of these writers, like Harrison, Swainston and Mieville continue to write books set in the universes they originally defined as New Weird. VanderMeer implies that New Weird was essentially a moment in time, a marketing category, a way of shaking up the field that has made it possible for writers to come up with "their own wonderfully bizarre and transgressive recombination[s]." Ultimately, VanderMeer comes up with what he calls a working definition of New Weird:

"New Weird is a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping off point for creation of settings that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy. New Weird has a visceral, in-the-moment quality that often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects - in combination with the stimulus of influence from New Wave writers of their proxies (including such forebears as Mervyn Peake and the French/English Decadents). New Weird fictions are acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise, but not always overtly political. As part of this awareness of the modern world, New Weird relies for its visionary power on a "surrender to the weird" that isn't, for example, hermetically sealed in a haunted house on the moors or in a cave in Antarctica. The "surrender" (or "belief") of the writer can take many forms, some of them even involving the use of postmodern techniques that do not undermine the surface reality of the text." (xvi)

It's a good definition, and largely supported by the stories the VanderMeers choose to fill out their anthology. If I were to tinker with it, it would be to emphasize that world-building seems to be especially critical to New Weird, more so than to traditional science fiction, fantasy or horror. Place is primary to character, and place tends to shape events more than characters do.

The first story in the anthology demonstrates this primacy of place in New Weird fiction. M. John Harrison's "The Luck in the Head" is a complex and very strange story set in Uroconium, "an indifferent city." This tale of the anniversary of Uroconium's liberation from the Analeptic Kings and its current rule by the incredibly ancient Mammy Vooley is one that seems to begin in the middle, as if there is much untold, leaving much work to the reader's imagination, leading one to wish she could unhinge herself from reality to follow the goings on. Ardwick Chrome, the protagonist, is seeking relief from disturbing, senseless dreams that torment him as he lies strapped to his bed. The convoluted plot has Chrome attempting to stop his dreams by assassinating Mammy Vooley at the request of an insect woman, and all flows into ever increasing strange and random changes. No doubt it is weird; it is also repellent. It is not a story to enjoy, but one to be distantly admired as the work of a vivid imagination.

Clive Barker's "In the Hills, the Cities," is a more accessible story, but no less weird. This tale strikes me as unlike much of Barker's work, lacking the vulgarity of his Mister B. Gone or the must-look-away images of his Hellraiser films. It is about an unusual festival conducted by two Eastern European cities, and a tragedy that befalls them. This story is alive with the oddness of cities truly becoming their populations, and the descriptions Barker writes stay vivid long after the pages fall closed.

"Crossing Into Cambodia: A Story of the Third World War" by Michael Moorcock is a more dubious choice for a "weird" tale, striking me more as a straightforward vision of the evils of war in the wake of Vietnam (and, even more so, Iraq, though Moorcock was writing while George W. Bush was still decades away from his Supreme Court victory, much less "Mission Accomplished"). That may be a matter of timing, though, for sometimes reality has a way of catching up with the weird in ways we don't appreciate.

Who can resist a story that begins, "It was a cold morning, two days before Jape Day, and little children were eating the eyeballs of corpses in Blood Park"? Simon Ings treats us to uncanny horror combined with gruesome humor, in "The Braining of Mother Lamprey." Kathe Koje's "The Neglected Garden" tells a tale of unrequited, obsessive love and horrible indifference as a woman becomes a part of her former lover's garden. Thomas Ligotti once again demonstrates the importance of place to weird tales in "A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing," a short tale of almost poetic language about a metaphysical parade that closes out the "Stimuli" section.

"Evidence" is a more difficult section of the book because so much of the material makes more sense if one has knowledge of the authors' larger works. China Mieville's "Jack," for instance, is far more intelligible to a reader who knows of the city of New Crobuzon, which first appeared in Mieville's Perdido Street Station. It's a good story, and it can stand alone, but without the authority of the city in which it is set surrounding it, it is a lesser tale. Jeffrey Thomas's "Immolation," one of the strongest, darkest and saddest stories in the book, takes on new meaning if the reader is aware of Thomas's Punktown. Leena Krohn's short novel Tainaron: Mail from Another City is a lovely work, and the excerpt here does not do it justice, just as "The Ride of the Gabbleratchet" from Steph Swainston's Dangerous Offspring hardly begins to give the reader the slightest taste of her marvelous Fourlands trilogy. New Weird depends so heavily on complex worldbuilding that it is difficult to convey its flavor in a short story, making the task the VanderMeers have set for themselves virtually impossible to accomplish. It takes time and much description and action to show a complete world - and many more words than will fit within the confines of a story. Indeed, most writers require more than a single long novel.

Nonetheless, several stories included, here manage to convey the haunting atmosphere of New Weird. Brian Evenson does it in "Watson's Boy," the tale of a man who spends his days picking up keys for no other reason than that they are there and they are all he knows. The world here is small, enclosed, and easier to describe, thus fitting within a single story. Jeffrey Ford, a true master of the short form, astonishes again with "At Reparata, a tale of a wonderful kingdom where everyone gets the title he or she truly deserves. And Alistair Rennie's "The Gutter Sees the Light that Never Shines" is foul and funny at the same time, a fine last tale to evidence that New Weird is not without a sense of humor.

The next section of the book, "Symposium," is uneven in its usefulness, but overall is likely to give a kick to anyone who has the slightest penchant for literary criticism and the future of the fantastic. This is the second "definitional" book that I know of (the first was Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, reviewed here) that has used excerpts from online discussions to try to explain the boundaries of a subgenre of science fiction/fantasy/horror - perhaps a logical outgrowth of the fact that those of us who read in these genres are those most likely to use tools like internet message boards. The discussion, between authors, readers, editors, critics, and some complete unknowns, is thoughtful and thought-provoking, extremely well-edited to convey the best of the conversation while preserving its occasionally playful tone. Essays by Michael Cisco, Darja Malcolm-Clarke and K.J. Bishop develop the idea that New Weird is a fuzzy label, alive and changing but, as Cisco puts it, very much "the scene." One of the most interesting parts of the book is the section in which the VanderMeers set forth the perspectives of European editors on New Weird. These editors talk about problems of translation and of the development of strange fiction in their own countries and their own languages, and of trends that have developed independently of English-language influence that have occurred simultaneously.

The least successful section of the book is the one labeled "Laboratory." The VanderMeers commissioned a piece from a number of fantasists not commonly known for their work in New Weird, writing in a round robin. The instigator is Paul Di Filippo, who unfortunately writes as if he is making fun of the whole concept of New Weird, choosing names for characters, gods and places that echo those used by Mieville and Swainston in a way that mocks them, and situations that sound more silly than weird. One almost begins to feel as if one is being laughed at for taking this New Weird stuff so seriously. Fortunately, the writers who follow Di Filippo are not so blatant in their disregard for the form, but their contributions rarely mesh with one another, and the story never coalesces.

Finally, the VanderMeers offer an extremely valuable "Recommended Reading" section at the back of the book. Even those who consider themselves well-versed in the New Weird might find some works here that he or she has overlooked, and be happy to have discovered them. As the VanderMeers state, it is not an exhaustive list, but it is stimulating. I've read a number of the works on the list since my first reading of The New Weird, and while some were better than others, they certainly all added to my understanding of this marvelously odd literary movement.

The New Weird is therefore an engaging and thought-provoking if imperfect book. Scholars of the fantastic will certainly wish to include it in their libraries, and it is a good impetus to discussion. Casual readers, however, may find it much more difficult to appreciate; still, it is a good place for them to start on an exploration of this little corner of science fiction/fantasy/horror, one where all three genres seem to be bundled into one very strange whole.

A look at the darker side of the world with horrifying rituals, insane festivals and more disturbing imagery are to be found in this exciting new short story collection - "The New Weird". Featuring stories by acclaimed authors Clive Barker and Michael Moorcock among a dozen other authors of various level's of experience of fame, "The New Weird" is a collection set on pushing the envelope on what society defines as weird and terrifying - all written in exceptional prose and sure to send some shivers down the spines of readers. "The New Weird" is a highly recommended anthology for anyone who wants a sample of what the next generation of horror, science fiction, and fantasy will bring forth.

I randomly bought this book at an event where the VanderMeers were promoting their newer "Steampunk" collection. I perused both books and found the "New Weird" stories much more captivating. Maybe this isn't fair as by chance I had opened it to Mieville's story and the long winded Victorian/Dickinson-ian writing on the other side never was my taste; even if I do like steampunk! So I bought this book for a friend, read a few stories and got hooked.

The first half is good (not great) and basically serves to wet your appetite for the second half. In fairness I would expect this as the first half was supposed to be a kind of "inspiration" section that lead to the newer works of the psuedo-genre they would ask you to call "New Wierd." 4~5 of the stories where truly amazing and made it all worth while, even if some of the others felt a little hollow or seemed incomplete.

I too am unsure why the cover art for such a genre would be so mild and steampunk-y (a mechanical geared beetle...) and have to agree with the other reviews that a few of the stories and excerpts didn't fit that well within the "genre/project." I also felt the symposium was a lot of hot wind, but overall was happy to be introduced to many new authors, and was surprised to find myself enjoying reading a book for the first time since college... wow!