What is the New Weird? Well, it's been around for a while, the term having been coined by M. John Harrison and championed by China Mieville—it is basically politically aware "weird" fiction (horror/fantasy, but without traditional magic rules and monsters) that keeps one foot solidly in genre fiction by eschewing postmodern techniques such as metafiction. It's "renunciation and return", according to Mieville's 2003 manifesto, and it is "messy." New Weird titles include Mieville's own Perdido Street Station, Jeff and Ann Vandermeer's anthology The New Weird , and Steph Swainston's The Year of Our War. One could also do much worse than check out the current film, Annihilation (loosely based on Jeff Vandermeer's novel) in theaters in the US now.

And now, the New Weird is Japanese!  See?



Sisyphean is here! And we're giving away four copies of Dempow Torishima's copiously illustrated, extremely strange, and utterly bizarre novel-in-stories. And all you need do is write in the comments of this post about something weird: a book, an experience, a film, a dream you had. You can tell us all about it in the form of a poem or brief essay, and you can write it in English, Spanish, Japanese, or Greek!

On Friday, we'll select four winners, and we ship anywhere! So enter today, weirdo, and tell your friends!