The New Weird

Abstract

Inasmuch as so-called New Weird fiction defines itself in relation to what now presumably must be considered ‘Old Weird’ fiction, any discussion of the former must necessarily start with the latter—and, in keeping with the complicated and fascinating etymology of the term ‘weird’ itself, it is a discussion that spreads out in several directions. Contemporary English speakers are likely to use the term ‘weird’ as an adjective to characterise something odd, strange, abnormal or unexpected. The Old English wyrd, however, from which the contemporary usage is derived, was a noun signifying ‘[t]he principle, power, or agency by which events are predetermined; fate, destiny’ (‘weird, n.’ Oxford English Dictionary). The werdys were the Fates, the goddesses in charge of determining the course of human life—one hears this resonance in Shakespeare’s three ‘weïrd sisters’ in Macbeth—and someone’s ‘weird’ was their appointed destiny, that which was fated to happen to them. The use of ‘weird’ as an adjective originally derived from the noun and connoted the supernatural power to manipulate the destiny of human beings. From there, it generalised to convey a sense of the strange, unusual and fantastic.