The New Weird - Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station. My first impressions of the book were strange. I found myself often having to re-read pages of the already long novel to really understand what was being explained, and then more time was spent trying to make up the world in my head. The book is more one of world building rather than storytelling. Normally a word assists a story’s progression, but in Perdido Street Station I felt it was the other way around. The story was but a way to navigate the streets of New Crobuzon. I also found myself having to often refer to a dictionary tab on my computer. Perdido Street Station was quite exhausting to actually read, but the world it offered was rich. It was simply too much to comprehend for long reading sessions and instead I had to read it in short bursts. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. It was unlike anything I have ever read before which brings me to the topic of the New Weird and the direction of horror in books.
Horror in the past was scary, then books and movies manipulated it, turning the once scary creatures into comedy and romance. Then they were no longer scary. When most people are left to imagine a world, they often rely on what they know. This leads to stories that if too much is left to the imagination, start to blend together becoming less unique. I think the future of horror and the New Weird is new creatures. We’ve put every twist on the scary creatures of old. We know so much about them that they’re just not scary anymore. People need new creatures to fear after. This is part of the reason I believe the movie The Babadook was praised so highly. A book I read a couple years back called Bird Box is another great example of where horror is headed in literature. The creature in question? A being so immense, that the human brain can’t comprehend or understand it. It basically fries a person’s brain if they see it. It brings out an innate fear, because how can you not be scared when there’s something beyond the human comprehension of reality?