The VanderMeers (Best American Fantasy
) ably demonstrate the sheer breadth of the “New Weird” fantasy subgenre in this powerful anthology of short fiction and critical essays. Highlights include strong fiction by authors such as M. John Harrison, Clive Barker, Kathe Koja and Michael Moorcock whose work pointed the way to such definitive New Weird tales as Jeffrey Ford’s “At Reparata” and K.J. Bishop’s “The Art of Dying.” Lingering somewhere between dark fantasy and supernatural horror, New Weird authors often seek to create unease rather than full-fledged terror. The subgenre’s roots in the British New Wave of the 1960s and the Victorian Decadents can lend a self-consciously literary and experimental aura, as illustrated by the “laboratory,” where more mainstream fantasy and horror authors, including Sarah Monette and Conrad Williams, try their hands at creating New Weird stories. This extremely ambitious anthology will define the New Weird much as Bruce Sterling’s landmark Mirrorshades
anthology defined cyberpunk. (Mar.)
