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THE POST INDUSTRIAL FANTASY ANTI-MANIFESTO
A manifesto is about being disgruntled. About being unhappy with the state of things as they are. Manifestos are about angst, about changing the status quo into some better thing through revolution. It is about replacement, about change.
This is not a manifesto.
A manifesto in F/SF (and oh! are we so full of them) usually proclaims X way of writing fantasy (or science fiction) superior to all other forms. It is about taking the current stagnation of form and replacing it. Overthrowing it. New Wave! New Weird! Cyber Punk! Ribo Funk! Mundane SF!
The list goes on and on. People trying to change things. To enforce their viewpoint onto others. Claiming legitimization and power over forms that they have felt have gone stale, stagnant, or bored and boring.
This is not a manifesto.
What happens when a manifesto in F/SF loses steam? What happens when that great big market swallows it whole? It creates a subgenre. It takes all that fire, all that change, and boils it down into bite sized chunks and makes it marketable. In the end it is submerged, the genre changes.
The manifesto gets its way. People read the fiction inspired by it. People argue, people are up in arms—and then, then, then…the work ages. Faster than fast, people move on. The genre absorbs it, becomes different because of it. In a way, the manifesto wins. The writers change the genre. But what happened?
It lost all its teeth. The writers have moved on. Now it's a category, it's marketable. Other people write in it, but the revolution is gone. The revolution has moved on. And all that fire, all that teeth—it doesn't seem as important anymore. But the genre is changed. For ill or good, it moves on. Different than it was before.
This is not a manifesto.
Consider this, instead. What about cutting right to the chase? What about moving past all that fire and heat and just accept the end result? What about creating new subgenres instead of manifestos?
That's what this is. It's not about burning fire or teeth. It's not about unwashed masses of F/SF readers struggling against the mass market banality that is being served to them daily. This is about what happens after that manifesto is eaten and swallowed whole. This is about an idea for a new subgenre.
Imagine, if you will, a subgenre of fantasy where occultism is studied by the writer like science for hard science fiction or mundane SF. Of course, I'm not talking about believing in that superstition—rather, there are so many untapped stories and ideas in that mythological soil that it is a shame to leave it untapped.
Imagine a fantasy that is in a contemporary setting, with contemporary problems. But things are different, in ways we can't understand. Lots of little and big things are immensely different. Magickal things seem commonplace. Normal every day things seem magickal.
Imagine a fantasy were mood and character and theme all take precedent over all else. Characters are the reason for the plot, the reason for the action. Plot is what happens when the characters react to one another.
Imagine a fantasy with teeth. Imagine a fantasy with fire. Imagine a fantasy with attitude. Imagine a fantasy with nihilism of cyberpunk strapped into an occult frame.
Imagine a fantasy with complex narrative structures that bend past the normal linear problem–solution setup. That the whole structure itself is part of the story, that the narrative is as important as character, as theme.
Imagine a fantasy that stays in your brain, changing you after you read it.
Imagine a contemporary fantasy without faeries, or stealing Native American mythology and spiritualism. Imagine a fantasy that uses surrealistic imagery to taunt the reader and subvert the reader on a symbolic level.
Imagine a fantasy that is Lynchian in its dreamlike realism. Imagine a fantasy that is like a trance. Imagine a fantasy where the rhythm of the prose is worth celebrating on its own.
Imagine a fantasy with hidden worlds, tucked into the corner of our contemporary reality. Imagine a fantasy where people in the rural areas and the urban streets go exploring in large ruins of industrial factories and broken down old warehouses and sanitariums.
All together, I see this as some new subgenre. One I can't explain. It's not the same as slipstream—it has different results. But they do share some similarities. Welcome to the Post Industrial Fantasy un-revolution. I call it an un-revolution because in its heart it is not a revolution, it is not a cry for change in the heart of the world. It is a way of expressing ourselves. Maybe not a new way, but a way that needs to be used.
I'm sure I'm treading on ground that many others have tread on before. I'm sure this is nothing new. That is why this is not manifesto. That is why this is something else. A manifesto and a revolution require belief, cult-like intensity and flame wars and arguments and wars and battle lines drawn in the sand. A subgenre is a tool; it is another way of expressing something a writer needs to express. And Post Industrial Fantasy is a tool for our modern world, for a way of seeing things and talking about things that need to be talked about. About the decline of the Industrial world. About the state we leave ourselves in after our life has moved on. There is no permanence anymore.
All the more, we slouch forward, slouch onward. Into our next lives. And we need to talk about it. We need to discuss it. Post Industrial Fantasy is a way of doing this.
Quick definition for Post Industrial Fantasy:
—Contemporary fantasy
—Edgy. Nihilistic. Has attitude.
—Prominence of Urban Exploration
—Occult magic based on real world magic research
—Characters, prose, mood, and theme paramount
—Non traditional narrative structures
—Surreal/Dream-Like/ Trance-Like
As part of this series for Behind the Wainscot, I offer a mini anthology: four stories, each one exploring Post Industrial Fantasy in its own way, in its words, in its own methods. Each story is drastically different, yet at the same time they carry on a conversation. A conversation that is at the heart of each Post Industrial Fantasy work.
These stories are:
—The Proslogium of the Great Lakes
by Catherynne M. Valente
—The Histories of Now
by Jonathan Wood
—Philannion
by Paul Jessup
—And an excerpt from The Secret History of Moscow
by Ekaterina Sedia
Paul Jessup has been published in many magazines, including Apex Digest, Fantasy Magazine, Farrago's Wainscot, Post Scripts, Electric Velocipede, Psuedopod, Flashing Swords, Nanobison, Journals of Experimental Fiction, Jacob's Ladder and the Harrow. He is also the recipient of the 2000 Kent State University Virginia Perryman Award. He currently edits with his wife the bi-annual magazine GrendelSong.
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