The Weird of Weird

There has been a sub-genre of speculative fiction that has been called “weird” for about 100 years now. It may even pre-date the term ‘fantasy’ as a sub-genre, but I am not sure about that.

I’ve been saying that my writing is “weird” for a while now. What is weird fiction? It is easy to use the term, but what makes something, particularly fiction, weird? On a basic level, ‘weird’ would be most easily defined by its opposite, ‘normal’. It is something not normal. It could also be defined using a synonym such as ‘strange’. But I feel there is something more to to weird than just reducing it to its opposite or an alternative. It has to be more complex than that.

I’ve been thinking how weird differs from fantasy, though they are related. Much of fantasy relies on what are called ‘magic systems’: a set of rules that explain the unusual abilities or certain characters or societies in a fantasy story. In my view, weird fiction does away with such systems and avoids term ‘magic’ all together.

Personally, I do not like the term ‘magic’ to explain how things occur in my writing. There is something inherently un-magical about having magic systems. To me, they explain away the wonder of the strange. The weird does not need, even refuses, to be explained; it simply exists and forces us readers to accept it for what it is. We have to accept what is normal in that fictional world; it may not be weird at all there. It is only weird to us.

We readers should not be allowed to have an explanation simply so we can fit it into our sense of normalcy. We have to forgo our need to normalcy when reading true weird fiction. Thinks do not always have to make sense. We are not longer in our world. We are tourists, and like any good tourist, we need to let go of our sense of the world, just for a little bit at least, and embrace another without the constant and exhausting reference to our own and go with the flow. Yes, there will be disorientation at first, but that is part of the fun.