Picking a movement

If you aren't sure which of the multitude of "new wavelets" in speculative fiction you should declare allegiance to, stop by the Which SF Wavelet Movement Do You Belong To? quiz and find out!

No points for guessing which answer I got.

A note to the author of the quiz, though (I wasn't sure whether you intended to be anonymous): you left out the New Weird! Where's China Miéville when you need him?

Also, I'm a little unclear: does New Pulp include New Space Opera/Radical Hard Science Fiction? Or should that be yet another category?

I'm not sure I quite understand the EcoGothChick category—I've seen the term mentioned, and even defined, but I'm finding the concept a little bit slippery. Can someone provide some examples? Ideally with URLs?

13 Responses to “Picking a movement”

  1. Jay Lake

    Okay, *that* totally weirded me out.

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  2. JT The Pirate

    Arrr. Avast.

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  3. Elizabeth Bear

    Genre Pirate here! *g* Odd, since I think I’m one of the founding mothers of the EcoGothChick movement, but I’d rather be a pirate anyway. Better clothes.

    More rum!

    Jed, I think Peter Watts would be a good example of EcoGothiness: dark futures, political and ecological themes, child abuse/social ills/characters suffering for their Inner Byron, and mostly a strong genre sensibility coupled with a refusal to be categorized as *only* SF or fantasy or whatever–and a combination of stylish/experimental writing with narrative focus–bleeding over into Genre Piracy on one side, probably, and the New Weird on the other.

    But that’s just me *g*

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  4. Leah Bobet

    Jed, that’s my quiz there. And I’m vaguely surprised at how much attention it’s getting, considering I built it so I wouldn’t have to get wordcount last night. 😉

    Bear pretty much cleared up EcoGothChick, but I’d be more than happy to add New Weird to the quiz.

    *off to brainstorm New Weird options*

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  5. Karen Meisner

    This quiz tells me I am indeed a Style Monkey. So that worked out nicely, didn’t it.

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  6. David D. Levine

    It appears I am a New Pulper. I think I like the sound of that. Who are some other New Pulpers? Do we have a manifestor?

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  7. Jed

    Heh—I was going to drop Karen and Susan a note asking them what categories they ended up in, but Karen beat me to it. Susan, what about you?

    One thing I like about this quiz is that it manages to draw a distinction among a set of end results without suggesting that any of them are better or worse than the others. (Which is good, ’cause I like all of those categories, though certainly some more than others.)

    David: See my next entry re New Pulp. Charlie Finlay is the one I’ve heard use the term most often. I gather (though I could be wrong) that it also includes things like Alex Irvine’s Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives and the Michael Chabon-edited McSweeney’s (#10), though I’ve seen reviews that indicate the latter is, sadly, a little short on pulse-pounding.

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  8. Ruth

    Ah ha, so that’s why I’m usually an ecogothchick. I was wondering.

    Depending on what mood I’m in, I’m sometimes a style monkey though too.

    Like I said before, exceedingly cool, Leah. Great way to avoid wordcount.

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  9. Tempest

    I’m a style monkey. Can I be notorious, too?

    I thought Bear made up that EcoGoth thing, not that it was an actual movement. I have been out of touch too long, it seems.

    What this all comes down to is that they’re all Interstitial, and I’m sticking with that!! 🙂

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  10. Jed

    Btw, I hope (and mostly assume) that nobody is taking this quiz too seriously. I’m assuming that Leah intended it in a light-hearted sort of way (I especially liked the “Sneer at your natural genre movement enemies!” line at the top); I thought the quiz was a nice balance between fun and thought-provoking.

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  11. Celia

    Ooh, and from the Washington Post, no less, a new subgenre: “Industrial Fantasy.” Though I suspect it’s more of the mainstream way to view things like New Weird–not contemporary enough to be Urban Fantasy, just someplace urban and post-high fantasy, be it past or future. Probably bordered by Cyber-/Steampunk and Urban and High Fantasy.

    Subgenres just end up being too confusing and I don’t really see the point because I don’t want to be writing just one sort of thing. I want to be writing all of them, or at least feel like I can freely move between them without annoying my audience. (and yes, I realize I need to get an audience, but if I’m planning ahead, I’ll just plan for after that point.)

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  12. Jason Erik Lundberg

    Hey, hand me a banana, I’m a StyleMonkey. Does this mean I get throw my feces at people while reciting poetry to them?

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  13. Steve Nagy

    I’ve ended up as both StyleMonkey and New Pulper, depending on whether I favored adventure, fun, plottiness or character-driven plots. Oh, and cats vs. dogs, of course. Sometimes you need a dog, sometimes you need a cat to ignore you.

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