Genres
New Weird
A literary movement of the 1990s and early 2000s that reworked weird fiction into urban, secondary-world, genre-blending fiction.
The New Weird is a literary genre that emerged in the 1990s and early 2000s with the characteristics of weird fiction; its writers cross genre boundaries. M. John Harrison is credited with coining the term in his 2002 introduction to The Tain, and China Miéville's Perdido Street Station (2000) carried the mode into mainstream consciousness. Harrison's 2003 forum post ("The New Weird. Who does it? What is it? Is it even anything? Is it even New?") sparked the naming debate; the VanderMeers' 2008 anthology The New Weird compiled its stories and commentary.
Definitions resist checklists: Miéville calls the label "a moment, a suggestion, a tease, an intervention, an attitude, above all an argument", and the VanderMeers describe "a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy". The craft handle: science fantasy-grade worlds with real-world models as jumping-off points; publisher Rose O'Keefe likens it to slipstream with a side of weirdness.
Sources
- Wikipedia: New Weird fetched 2026-10-20