Scattered Thoughts

Darin Bradley

[I]t is only with the new century that what one might call genre-morphing has become a central defining enterprise within fantastic literature.
John Clute,
“Science Fiction from 1980 to the Present”

Writers of New Weird, Interstitial, New Wave Fabulist, or Slipstream literature assert that today’s progressive speculative fiction borrows elements from many genres.¹ However, many, if not most, writers of speculative fiction still work within genre boundaries (i.e. space opera, cyberpunk, high fantasy, hard science fiction, etc.), and they write progressively within those parameters. Increasingly though, small-press experimentation is finding its way to broader audiences. This literature, to begin with generalizations, is not as broadly attractive or approachable as the more clearly defined, tried-and-true works that typify speculative fiction. Many of the progressive forms under discussion–with their often sustained and driving interests in characterization over plot–are either outright “literary” or close enough to invoke the term, a distinction that contributes to their general separation from “mainstream” speculative fiction. Other subversive, non-mainstream forms such as magical realism, surrealism, the fantastic, the marvelous, and the uncanny are all ready modes within the world of progressive, small-press speculative fiction; however, these forms are subject to deconstruction, re-alignment, even contradiction. Nevertheless, a familiarity with them enhances the understanding and appreciation of the progressive mode.

when fantastic, marvelous, or uncanny events occur, focal primacy is placed not upon these events but upon the characters or focalizors and their (often) broken relationships with themselves and others.

The literature of the progressively experimental community I am addressing coexists in the pages of the small press with examples of “cleaner,” non-hybridized works in the forms I mentioned above (and many more) and with mainstream speculation. These other works have received critical attention in the past under the rubrics of the larger classifications they belong to (i.e. fantasy, science fiction, horror); however, the truly experimental and truly progressive have not undergone as much consideration. For this reason, and for the venues wherein this literature appears, I refer to this mode as the “little weird.” Contemporary theories of consciousness, studies in narratology and semiotics, linguistic analysis, and postmodern literary criticism all offer lenses through which we may view the convolutions of the little weird.
The general, distinguishing mechanics of the little weird are inverted. I mean this discursively: these narrative elements are inverted relative to their uses in older forms such as magic realism and the fantastic. In Tzvetan Todorov’s early definitions of the fantastic, interest centers on the fantastic hesitation, the pause during which a focal character (or reader) cannot determine if the events he or she is facing are “marvelous” (and therefore supernatural) or “uncanny” (and therefore natural, albeit unique). The fantastic lasts as long as the hesitation; once the character makes his or decision, the text enters one or the other mode.² All three of these modes, however, emphasize the events: grounded in the mundane, characters encounter these strange occurrences and must then reconcile the experience with what they knew about the world and themselves before. However, in the little weird, the reverse is true: when fantastic, marvelous, or uncanny events occur, focal primacy is placed not upon these events but upon the characters or focalizors and their (often) broken relationships with themselves and others.³ The invasion of the weird into the narrative framework is a given. It is offered as speculative staple out of which these stories are built. What is far more unapproachable is the self, destabilized as it has become by cognitive science and social upheaval. The worlds of technological and social innovation have largely caught up to speculative fiction, leaving its characters in the same quandaries of self suffered by its readers. John Clute, addressing this problem in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction asks “Can sf, as a set of cognitions which differ from the world, exist in a world which takes on the colouring of our thought? What now is figure, what now is ground? What now is difference, what now is mission statement?”⁴ The little weird answers by dodging the question: the sublime is not in accepting a lack of understanding with some unknowable and indefinable event or thing; the sublime comes in accepting the impossibility of understanding a self that, in relation to the world that has caught up to its speculation, as Clute points out, is in a constant state of flux. Under these circumstances, “strange” events are metaphors for the socio-cognitive uncertainty of being.

The little weird also inverts the typical power-relations found in magical realism. Traditionally, magical realism has concerned itself with juxtaposing the magical (typified as non-Western, post-colonial, and anti-positivistic) against the real (Western, rational, and epistemologically intolerant).⁵ This mode has opened narrative opportunities for cultural voices that have previously, under the oppression of what Maggie Ann Bowers calls “totalitarian regimes,” struggled to be heard.⁶

NOTES
1 See China Miéville “Long Live the New Weird,” editorial, The Third Alternative 35 (2003). See also Peter Straub, Guest Editor’s Note, Conjunctions: 39: The New Wave Fabulists, ed. Bradford Morrow. Guest ed., Peter Straub. (New York: Bard College, 2002) 6-7. See also James Patrick Kelly, “On the Net: Slipstream,” column, Asimov’s Science Fiction December 2003 <http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0312/ onthenet.shtml>
2 Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1973) 24-25.
3 Bal defines focalization as “the relations between the elements [of a story] presented and the vision through which they are presented. . . . Focalization is, then, the relation between the vision and that which is ‘seen,’ perceived.” Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1985), 100.
4 John Clute, “Science Fiction from 1980 to the Present,” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, eds., Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 68.
5 See Maggie Ann Bowers, Magic(al) Realism. The New Critical Idiom, series ed., John Drakakis. (London: Routledge, 2004).
6 Bowers, Magic(al) Realism, 4.

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In this literature, the magic is presented just as matter-of-factly as the real, therefore theorizing either a new order entirely that breaks the logic separating the magic from the real or simply theorizing that the magic (whatever it represents) exists even in the face of the oppressive real. The characters who typically appear as agents in magical realist texts are often disenfranchised and removed from the oppression’s centers of power. In the little weird, juxtaposing the magic and the real is not simply a way of demonstrating how the “magic” (and who it represents) can negotiate with the “real”; it is also a model for demonstrating how the oppressive, rational “real” can approach and apprehend the “magic.” The characters in works of little weird fiction need not be disenfranchised, under-represented, or oppressed: indeed, they can be painfully mired in the “totalitarian regime” as generic citizens with generic jobs. However, these “real” characters can still find, in the struggle to apprehend the “self,” that the magic (or weird) defines their problems far more clearly than the rational real, for as I argue elsewhere, the nature of “self” is weird.⁷

If the dual narrative modes of magical realism both characterize the respective people each embodies, then both the magic and the real are representationally recursive narratives. People are the manner of their stories–for example, a story presenting the “magic” as it is conceived within the cultural ideology of colonized people represents how they conceive of existence not only narratively but in the “real” world as well. Ill defining as this is, it demonstrates that there has been a narrative anxiety about the importance of understanding the self before understanding the landscape and whatever events occur there beyond the scope of a people’s worldview (making them “magic”). The little weird simply brings this anxiety into narrative primacy, often unconcerned about what has been culturally suppressed in favor of examining the uncertain cultural roles characters are thrust into, even if their culture is the “totalitarian regime.”

Furthermore, stories in the little weird typically occur in the “real” world and not in alternative worlds as pure science fiction and fantasy sometimes do. However, the mimetic nature of the little weird ends there. Time and reality can flow in any direction in this literature; insofar as these stories are coherent within their own narrative frameworks, they exhibit no concern for anchoring their models to a knowable world–that is to say, the “weird” elements in stories do not have to “mean” anything. Frame stories can become main stories (as in Kelly Link’s “Lull” and Jeffrey Ford’s “The Yellow Chamber”).⁸ Landmasses and locomotion may re-invent themselves as necessary for the story (as in Ed Park’s “Well-Moistened with Cheap Wine, the Sailor and the Wayfarer Sing of Their Absent Sweethearts” and Christopher Rowe’s “The Force Acting on the Displaced Body”).⁹ Dreams or alternate states of consciousness can make the real world before they have even occurred (again “The Yellow Chamber,” also Alex Irvine’s “Gus Dreams of Biting the Mailman” and Jonathan Lethem’s “The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, Is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door”).¹⁰ All of these instabilities and textual experimentations point to a larger, overarching concern in the little weird: there are no worlds, no realities; there are only people and their self-world metaphors. This, of course, can be clearer in some works than in others, particularly in those that deal very directly with the anxiety of self as far more destabilizing than invasions of the strange (as in Elizabeth Hand’s “The Least Trumps,” Glen Hirshberg’s “Shipwreck Beach,” or Peter Straub’s “Little Red’s Tango”).¹¹ In these last examples, there is certainly more of the “real world” than in, for example, “Lull” or “The Yellow Chamber”; however, the first three demonstrate the same anxiety, for, as Mieke Bal argues in Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, events must be “motivated” for inclusion in a narrative by who- or whatever is focalizing the elements of the story.¹² These focalizors are then “making” their worlds in accordance with what their personal anxieties dictate warrants inclusion in the narration of their experiences.

It bears mentioning that this is not a manifesto. I am not proposing a call for literature that will voice the concerns of genre-blurring and form-destabilizing mechanics. Rather, I am attempting to map the confluence of the varied characteristics of progressive speculation occurring today. I am attempting a survey of a particular textual community; I am not trying to create one. Indeed, it is the preexistence of this textual community (loose and largely undefined as it is) that makes this examination significant for the speculative tradition.

NOTES, Continued.

7 Darin Bradley, “The Self-Weird World: Problems of Being as the Fantastic Invasion in Small-press Speculative Fiction,” The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (forthcoming).
8 Kelly Link, “Lull” Conjunctions: 39: The New Wave Fabulists (see note 2).
Jeffrey Ford, “The Yellow Chamber” Trampoline: An Anthology, ed., Kelly Link. (Northamptom, MA: Small Beer Press, 2003).
9 Ed Park, “Well-Moistened with Cheap Wine, the Sailor and the Wayfarer Sing of Their Absent Sweethearts” Trampoline: An Anthology (see note 8). Christopher Rowe, “The Force Acting on the Displaced Body” ibid.
10 Alex Irvine “Gus Dreams of Biting the Mailman,” Trampoline: An Anthology (see note 6). Jonathan Lethem, “The Dystopianist, Thinking of his Rival, Is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door” Conjunctions: 39: The New Wave Fabulists (see note 1).
11 Elizabeth Hand, “The Least Trumps” Conjunctions: 39: The New Wave Fabulists (see note 1). Peter Straub, “Little Red’s Tango” ibid. Glen Hirshberg, “Shipwreck Beach” Trampoline: An Anthology (see note 8).
12 Bal’s motivation is “. . . a function of focalization. A character sees an object. The description is the reproduction of what it sees. Looking at something requires time, and, in this fashion, the description is incorporated into the time lapse. But an act of looking must also have its motivation. There must be enough light so that the character is able to observe the object. There is a window, an open door, an angle of vision which also have to be described and therefore motivated. Further, the character must have both the time to look and the reason to look at an object.” Bal, Narratology, 130-31.

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There are a number of reasons why this community developed; however, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish which of its characteristics are symptomatic and which were generative. As comfortable as writers and editors of the little weird are with recursion, however, it seems only appropriate that the “real” world out of which they work should be as unstable and relative as the work itself. After all, verdicts such as “symptomatic” and “generative” are simply the conclusions produced by different perspectives. Others have asked whether art mirrors life or life mirrors art. I am largely uninterested in answering this question.The little weird and its textual community are also tied to the Information Age. As global economic factors exert their influence upon the operation of publishing houses, magazine presses, and even the disposable income of citizens in general, the downsizing and conglomeration of media producers shifts to keep pace. As certain smaller publishers, production companies, and other media outlets cease operation, others emerge to claim their territory. The larger firms, however, that produce the majority of today’s creative commodities find themselves forced to hedge their bets regarding what chances they can take with literature, film, or games. It is no secret (nor is it a conspiracy) that most of what these firms offer can be categorized as “safe”–it is based on models that have turned profits before, models that typify what is “mainstream.” The small press, however, counterbalances this by publicly experimenting with “safety” in literature. Brian Attebery argues that most innovation in the speculative fiction field today occurs in periodicals.¹³ I extend his argument: the most innovative segment of this innovation occurs within small-press periodicals, for even well-funded and well-established periodicals have expenses to cover and profits to turn. To a large degree, the magazines, collections, anthologies, and even novels produced by the small press turn no profit–sometimes they are lucky to simply break even. As such, the editors publishing this material do so for reasons other than straight monetary gain, and they are willing to take greater risks with their material. Perhaps they are trying to establish themselves as the voices of progress. Perhaps they are performing studies of their own, wrestling with the ideas of textual communities and narrative forms in the most direct way possible: circulation. Perhaps they publish simply because they love particular strains of literature; literature in general; or, simply, all things textual. There may be no good reason why some of them do what they do, but it is enough for the purpose at hand that they do it.But there remains the little weird’s ties to the Information Age.One of the most feasible methods for small-presses to operate is electronically. They offer their literature, articles, and interviews as digital magazines, often linking to each other and back to themselves in dizzying convolutions that can lead their readers through a labyrinthine publishing underworld. There are very few rules (or even expectations) for how these ezines should operate, and since some offer the same pay rates to their contributors as larger, established presses, these smaller enterprises offer work by the same writers powering what I earlier described as “mainstream.” This is, of course, not universally true, and many, many magazines offer little to no pay. Just so, the material the small presses offer so readily makes of the entire small-press and e-movement one large, operating deconstruction of mainstream speculative fiction. That the editors and writers involved in the “mainstream” are sometimes similarly involved in the underground only heightens the idea promulgated by progressive speculative fiction that the self is shapable, not only artistically, but methodologically as well.

Furthermore, the recent popularity of low-budget micro films and games available through the internet influences the little weird community. Entire artistic genres can appear, present their operating aesthetics, and then disappear at alarming rates, sometimes within a matter of days. Every aesthetic (not simply those beloved of speculative fiction) has, or soon will, come under experimentation through the internet. Feedback comes instantaneously, and these experiments remake themselves at dizzying rates. The very idea of artistic form itself has come under attack, and postmodern metafiction has become a staple for this ever-changing artistic dynamo. There are few remaining lines between art and self, and those that still exist are in danger of disappearing.The writers, artists, programmers, and designers (among the myriad of others) who maintain online journals are as recursive and interconnected as the aforementioned ezines. Whereas during the Golden Age of speculative fiction, critical discussion had to occur largely in the form of letters written in to editors, these same discussions now take place across the network of blogs: the blogosphere.¹⁴ The Information Age has facilitated instantaneous discussion between thinkers who, in previous decades, would only have been able to engage each other by coming together face-to-face.

To return to the textual community of the little weird, writers, artists, and editors have taken critical theory from the sequestered discussions of Academe and re-invented it as they see fit. Discussions of form, narrative, identity, and poetics occur alongside personal anecdotes, confessions, political argumentation, and even the perpetuation of “memes”–the form of Richard Dawkins’s discovery as it has come to be known in its electronic incarnation.¹⁵ There is no longer a clean line between high art and low, between a theoretical discussion and simple amusement. Derrida and Saussure must now share digital page-space with the faces on American Idol and Survivor, and textual communities like the little weird express how this fast-paced and ever-changing environment destabilizes ideas of the self, the real, the virtual, and the simulacrum. As I said before, there are no longer selves and landscapes, there are simply selves expressing–voices espousing and abandoning artistic methodology as rapidly as possible to keep not only their listeners, but also themselves, guessing. In an age of widespread political dissatisfaction, economic uncertainty, and artistic exhaustion, it has become less important to hold fast to clear, mimetic aesthetics and more important to demonstrate that change cannot occur and then settle down to a good, several-decades run as a solidified form. As writers, artists, and editors seek answers for why things are how they are and who can be blamed for what, their creative output suggests that no one gets the responsibility. No one, in this sense, owes anyone anything, though as the world-bending literature of the little weird demonstrates, we still have not, as a world-community, admitted to ourselves that we have realized this.

NOTES, Continued.

13 Brian Attebery, “The Magazine Era: 1920-1960,” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, eds., Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 47.
14 Ibid, 37.
15 See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1976), 201-15. See also Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999).