I think you could say that there are two kinds of movement -- the conscious kind, with manifestos and wotnot (e.g. cyberpunk), and the more nebulous kind, where a bunch of people just start writing about the same kinds of stuff because it happens to be in the air (e.g. new weird, as much as that was ever a movement at all). Which might more accurately be called a trend.
I certainly agree that if there's anything at all to mythpunk, it's the latter sense. Which is to say:
a combination of writers' interests and an editor's tastes.
That's exactly what it is, but, to borrow a Firefly-ism, that's not nothing. At least, not from where I'm sitting. I have no idea how commercially successful Prime has been/is, but in broad terms it's been critically successful, and I think you could argue for their catalogue being influential -- part of a general shift in what is understood as "genre fantasy"; I'd point to China Mieville and Link/Grant taking over the fantasy side of the year's best as other markers. I'm thinking on my feet here, and probably conflating UK and US trends more than I should, but ...
We're not the Inklings, or even the Scribblies. I don't know how much we bounce.
Fair enough, but you are on first-name terms. :)
Yolen, Carter and Beagle all sound like reasonable candidates for filing alongside Gilman under "influences" to me -- I bet your comrades have read them, too. As with all these things, there's sort of a critical mass effect, once there's a visible group you can point to. Though I sincerely hope it doesn't snowball so much that it becomes a default label. I end up grinding my teeth at least once a month at an unthinking use of "new weird" in some review somewhere by someone who clearly has no idea what the writers behind NW actually meant by it.
I wonder how this intersects with Dora's New Romanticism?
Dunno, but it's my sense (from her association with the IAF if nothing else) that she's more given to movementising, and perhaps a more self-conscious writer than the average ...
no subject
I certainly agree that if there's anything at all to mythpunk, it's the latter sense. Which is to say:
a combination of writers' interests and an editor's tastes.
That's exactly what it is, but, to borrow a Firefly-ism, that's not nothing. At least, not from where I'm sitting. I have no idea how commercially successful Prime has been/is, but in broad terms it's been critically successful, and I think you could argue for their catalogue being influential -- part of a general shift in what is understood as "genre fantasy"; I'd point to China Mieville and Link/Grant taking over the fantasy side of the year's best as other markers. I'm thinking on my feet here, and probably conflating UK and US trends more than I should, but ...
We're not the Inklings, or even the Scribblies. I don't know how much we bounce.
Fair enough, but you are on first-name terms. :)
Yolen, Carter and Beagle all sound like reasonable candidates for filing alongside Gilman under "influences" to me -- I bet your comrades have read them, too. As with all these things, there's sort of a critical mass effect, once there's a visible group you can point to. Though I sincerely hope it doesn't snowball so much that it becomes a default label. I end up grinding my teeth at least once a month at an unthinking use of "new weird" in some review somewhere by someone who clearly has no idea what the writers behind NW actually meant by it.
I wonder how this intersects with Dora's New Romanticism?
Dunno, but it's my sense (from her association with the IAF if nothing else) that she's more given to movementising, and perhaps a more self-conscious writer than the average ...