I guess it’s going to have to be; I have an essay on VanderMeer and genre that I plink away at occasionally where it might fit nicely…
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I’m team weird but have a lot of love and respect for SF. I guess I’d be interested to hear whether you think science fiction just sort of hit a limit or whether it had an inherent flaw. Thinking of your writing on uncertainty and the sense of “this world is not right” that weird fiction excels at
aug 30, 2025, 11:19 pm • 3 0 • view
Is there something about science fiction for you that can’t quite duplicate that same sense of the world being wrong? Is it that in a sense relies too much on realist principles (even though it takes place within a second world ) for the most part?
aug 30, 2025, 11:27 pm • 1 0 • view
Good question! Lots of weird fic draws in sf elements, of course, but yeah, especially if we take a Suvinian approach to sf emphasizing a “possible” novum rooted in realism, it’s exceedingly rare (not impossible!) for the author to then emphasize the unsettlement at the heart of the weird
aug 31, 2025, 2:21 am • 2 0 • view
To oversimplify: might most SF be a displacement in time [that promises a better/worse but stable reality], whereas the weird is a disruption at the heart of the symbolic order, the inability to make sense of (any) historical happening? In psychoanalytic terms, fantasy vs. psychosis.
aug 31, 2025, 3:46 pm • 1 0 • view
I like that! I like the time-based def for SF although I might pick at “displacement” there - that would imply an affective weirdness that isn’t always there. Would be interesting to investigate that with/against the weird disruption…
aug 31, 2025, 7:12 pm • 1 0 • view