Urban Gestalt: The New Weird and Cities

A post over at the Urban Gestalt blog highlights the critical role of cities in today's loosely defined "New Weird" genre. The article is particularly interesting since it's written by an aspiring New Weird novelist, Brian Wood-Koiwa, who inevitably must pay close attention to the importance of urban places for meshing them into his narrative. The central role the urban holds in New Weird tales has been noted before, but it can't be reiterated enough, at least for pinning down the New Weird's elusive essence.

By all accounts, cities are common stages for odd happenings in works placed into the New Weird niche. China Mieville's fiction is regularly cited as literature which incorporates the urban with New Weird elements. But cities or city-like scenes also flash through the stories of Michael Cisco, Thomas Ligotti, and Clive Barker--all of whom have fallen under the New Weird label at one time or another. If it's possible at all to reach a consensus on what the New Weird means, then critics and fans should definitely focus on the city as a starting point.

-Grim Blogger