NEW WAVE FABULISMT H E N E W W E I R D

E x p l o r e t h e M o v e m e n t

K e l l y L i n kL i n u z L e k yR a n d o l p h S a i l e r

T H E G R E A T D I V O R C EL U L LS I L V E RT H E C A N N O N

A STUDY IN DEATH

New Wave Fabulism is the most avant garde, spectacular, genre-breaking literary movement to enter the scene in the past ten, some say twenty years. In our inaugural issue we pick apart the clockwork of this movement towards the bizzare. Learn the ways of writers like Kelly Link, Linuz Leky, and Randolph Sailer before falling head�rst into their work.

� e N e w We i r d E r i c R o s e n f e i l d

Kelly Link is one of New Wave Fabulism’s most talked about new writers. Her work Lull is featured in this issue focused on death. Lull delves into the mysterious realm of time and story telling. Fall into this story the way the characters fall into the world of the story that Link forces them to occupy, that she bends them to �t in to, whether they seem to like it or not.

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Randolph Sailer, a self proclaimed “traveler” and “jack of all trades” �nished his most recent story �e Lime Front a�er returning from a trip to India. �ere he claims to have met with monks who showed him a new perspective on death that involves a deep introspective through the medium of slicing fruit. While this tale is still �ction, parts of it very much rich true.

� e L i m e F r o n t R an d o lp h S a i l e r

Leky, a 20 year old fantasy writer, who has published three books previously (one of which is the recently bestselling Land of Rumithea) and has lately taken an interest in short stories. His work is chillingly accurate, as true as is chisled on a tombstone. He has been described as this generation’s “Alan Grocept” and will stop at nothing to explore the darkening realities of our mortality.

R a m p a g eL i n u s L e k y

Leap into this story the way the characters fall into the world of the story that Day forces them to occupy, that she bends them to �t in to, whether they seem to like it or not. Day, while previously a writer for the Wall Stree Journal, falls into the world of �ction and fantastical tales very easily. His story Abbott Jones deals with death in a way that makes you feel as if you’ve just heard a riddle.

A b b o t t J o n e sD i l l a m o n d D a y

Agee Kline’s version of a “who dunnit” brings up the world of the weird in the usually cliche grounds of a darkened Carnival. But we have never seen ghosts quite like hers. Hailing from New Orleans, Louisiana Kline took chilling inspiration from the abandoned and broken down themeparks of the �ooded areas. Her writing re�ects the oddity of heartbreak within the area.

W h o S h o t W h oA g e e K l i n e

Kelly Link is one of New Wave Fabulism’s most talked about new writers. Her work Lull is featured in this issue focused on death. Lull delves into the mysterious realm of time and story telling. Lore wouldn’t be complete if we did not mention her more than once. Of course, �e Canon is a unique story that bends the conventions of the genre in itself and the laws of our modernity.

� e C a n o nK e l l y L i n k

Ships is a haunting mirror of birth and death. Lendron is a mother of two herself and reaches deep into a mother’s psyche through her ultra-realistic myth. She’s been in the Fabulism scene for two years and is closely nipping at Kelly Link’s heels as the most proli�c writer of the movement. Like Link she also has her own printing press where she seeks to gather and distribute new works.

S h i p sL i l l y L e n d r o n

Mopp takes the reader on a road trip that will leave them feeling both queasy and inspired. Never before has a writer tackled so much mundanity and ended up on the other side with a story like California. �is piece is the third in a series of 51 stories, each focusing on one of the states as well as Washington DC. Mopp expects to publish the anthology next fall.

C a l i f o r n i aR e n e M o p p

�ing is, I like the fantastic in �ction. I like the weird and the strange and the magical, I like Borges and Saramago and the rest of the Magical Realism crowd, I hold Ka�a in the appropriate amount of awe, and I think that guy �omas Pynchon is really on to something. I like Charles Johnson and Paul Auster, Steve Erickson and David Foster Wallace. And what I've discov-ered is that there are guys writing very much in the vein of those writers who I had never heard of because I only read "Literary Fiction." I tip o� for me was Kelly Link, who I stumbled upon and who proceeded to blow my mind."I'm a Science Fiction writer," said Link, "I think the term 'Literary Fiction' really

turns people o�." What in God's name, I wondered, was she talking about? So I did some research, and what I discovered was that ever since Hugo Gernsback almost single-handedly created the genre of "Science Fiction" back in 1926, there has been a tension between fantastic stories told within the genre (or genres, if we include Fantasy and Horror, the other pillars of "Specu-lative Fiction") and outside of them. People, including myself, like to bring up 1984 and Brave New World as examples of SF novels that are accepted in the literary cannon, but at the same time there were also Zamyatin and Ka�a and Robert Walser and many others writing fantastic stories around

the same time period who had nothing to do with SF as we know it. By the 1960s the "New Wave" of SF writers took a look around and saw fantastic novels all over the place, saw their own work maturing and becoming more sophisticated, and thought the time was �nally nigh for their lot to be accepted. In Dangerous Visions, the 1967 anthol-ogy that basically de�ned the New Wave, Harlon Ellison wrote: Speculative �ction has been found, has been turned to good use by the mainstream, and is now in the process of being assimilated. Burgess' A Clock-work Orange, Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Cat's Cradle, Hersey's �e Child Buyer, Wallis' Only

Lovers Le� Alive and Vercors' You Shall Know �em (to name only a recent scattering) are top-�ight speculative novels, employing many of the tools honed by science �ction writers in their own little backwash eddy of a genre. Not an issue of a major slick magazine passes without some recognition of speculative �ction, either by reference to its having foretold some now commonplace item of scienti�c curios-ity, or by openly currying favor with the leading names in the �eld via the inclusion of their work alongside the John Cheevers, the John Updikes, the Bernard Malamuds, the Saul Bellows. We have arrived, is the inescapable conclusion.

We have arrived! �e leading names in SF are to be included next to John Updike and Saul Bellow! In fact, when Ellison was putting together Dangerous Visions, he tried to include "Literary" writers too, and he seems a touch defensive at his inability to accomplish this. Originally, one of the lesser (but no less important) intents of this anthol-ogy was to commission and bring to the attention of the readers stories by writers well outside the �eld of specula-tive �ction. �e names William Burroughs, �omas Pynchon, Alan Stillitoe, Terry Southern, �omas Berger and Kingsley Amis were listed in my preliminary table of contents. ...

Circumstances almost Machiavellian in nature prevented the appearance here of the former sextet. But in some ways the New Wave movement was enormously successful. It did usher in a new age of more complex and sophisticated writing in SF, and also spurred the academic world to launch a slew of courses, journals and papers. And yet, the revolution did not quite occur. Here's Bruce Sterling in 1989: In a recent remarkable interview in New Pathways #11, Carter Scholz alludes with pained resignation to the ongoing brain-death of science �ction. In the 60s and 70s, Scholz opines, SF had a chance to become a worthy literature; now that chance has passed. Why? Because other writers have now learned to adapt SF's best techniques to their own ends. "And," says Scholz, "�ey make us look sick. When I think of the best 'speculative �ction' of the past few years, I sure don't think of any Hugo or Nebula winners. I think of Margaret Atwood's �e Handmaid's Tale, and of Don DeLillo's White Noise, and of Batchelor's �e Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica, and of Gaddis' JR and Carpenter's Gothic, and of Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K ... I have no hope at all that genre science �ction can ever again have any literary signi�cance. But that's okay, because now there are other people doing our job." And doing it well. "Slipstream," which is "a contemporary kind of writing which has set its face against consensus reality.” �ere is a magical draw to this genre, and something tells me it will become more and more common as people start hunger-ing for the odd, the strange, and the wonderfully bizzare.

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�e restraints of traditional chronology are not important in the work of New Wave Fabulism. Time can be broken down, scattered, or abandoned altogether. It can pass in great amounts, although it needn’t pass at all. In Kelly Link’s Lull time

is sucked through a tube and disperssed as she reveals a story, within a reality, within another story’s reality.

New Wave Fabulism deals with the mystical, but the mystical launched into the every day so that the lines between Central Park, NY and a dark, grim fairy tale

land are blurred inde�nitely. It is in a study of these two realms, real and not real, that we can either gain insight into characters o�en struggling with belief, or

simply enjoy the tales of the simply fantastic.

�e most inviting aspect of this literary movement is its ability to open discourse with the reader and let them decide what they wish to believe. In Lily Lendron’s Ships you can choose to see full scale ships sailing around the narrator’s bay, or

three wild, uncontrollable girls venturing out into the world. �ere is simply no right way to read a piece, casting multiple dimensions into the realm of the weird.

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l o c a t i o n

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here was a lull in the conversation. We were down in the basement, sitting around the green felt table. We were holding bottles of warm beer in one hand, and our cards in the other. Our cards weren't great. Looking at each others' faces, we could see that clearly. We were tired. It made us more tired to look at each other when we saw we weren't getting away with anything at all. We didn't have any secrets. We hadn't seen each other for a while and it was clear that we hadn't changed for the better. We were between jobs, or stuck in jobs that we hated. We were having a�airs and our wives knew and didn't care. Some of us were sleeping with each others' wives. �ere were things that had gone wrong, and we weren't sure who to blame. We had been talking about things that went backwards

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extend cellophane wings and take o� again. It’s early morning. Early like before four. We’re in the parking lot, and my wife can’t get her arms o� from around my shoulders. Her perfume attacks me, making me sni� and sneeze. I wonder if it’s healthy for a pregnant woman to wear perfume that strong. “It’s a plague. It’s the end of all days or something,” Stephanie is curled up, her lipsticked mouth pressed against the green terrycloth of my bathrobe. “It’s like in the Bible. Wasn’t there something in the Bible about this sort of thing? Grasshoppers or something?” She’s shaking. I try to extend a hand to start up the car but she pulls me away from the ignition and into her own manicure-clawed grip. �e parking lot is empty; the grocery store just closed for a few hours to stock. �ere is this satisfying violet glow to everything, to the store’s red lettered sign, to the shopping carts pushed haphazardly together in the collecting lane, to the opalescent skins of the bugs plummet-ing from the hazy tangerine sky. “Locusts,” I assure her while straight-ening the glasses on my nose she’d knocked askew. Maybe these are locusts. �ere are thousands of them, and they buzz and hiss a bit, occasion-ally tapping into the windows and thumping on the door. I had almost been free, almost allowed to start the engine and go home to catch those last two, glorious hours of sleep, when it started storming bugs. Large bugs. Bugs with long antennae that swing back and forth in the extra illumination of our headlights. Oh, how

much I wanted to take the world’s largest �y swatter to that infuriating mass of insects. Every time one smashes against her window Stephanie winces, closes her eyes, and tries to inch closer to me. �e cab is warm. �e plastic bag in the back is stu�ed with a random assortment, but it is the ice cream that I’m worried about most. She’s the one who woke me up at two-forty-�ve in the morning craving pistachio ice cream and teriyaki chicken. Why am I the one who cares if it’s melting? “Maybe it’s a sign,” she squeezes my hand, twisting herself into a tighter ball, curling around her pregnant belly.

�e doctor asked if I had been anywhere exotic or tropical during the conception or beginning of the pregnancy. I told her that occasionally I went tanning at Ted’s gym, the one he owned, on 23rd st. She said that could have been it. Labor was surprisingly easy, and the ship was birthed in a �ush of water, like a briny wave emerging from some bay inside of me. I heard a nurse, under her breath, mention sickly that the a�erbirth smelled like saltwater or mud. Ted sat beside me the entire time, except when he stepped out for the occasional smoke. He christened her Nina, and in the days a�er there was celebration and champagne. For months I couldn’t stand the sound of running water. I would cower in the tub every morning, placing a rag between my teeth to sti�e the torrent of sobbing that accompanied my shower. When it rained I would turn up the volume of the television, run the micro-wave, dishwasher, stomp loudly on the wood �oor until I drowned out the storm. I wished I was more in love with Ted, with his tanned skin and carpenter hands. I wished I could still love the man who built me ships. �e second pregnancy was worse. A Viking longship stretched my stomach so it seemed a tall, thin monster was attempting to burst through my skin. Ted would press his ear to my bellybut-ton and he would swear he heard the sea, like listening to a conch shell. At night I’d wake up in cold sweats craving dried �sh meats and citrus fruit. Ted called her Victoria before she even le�

my stomach, cooing her name to the sca�olding inside me. Two years later I delivered a small tugboat, barely three pounds, and Ted could �t the keel in his rough, extended palms. He loved her best. He gave Mary Celeste two names, to show her how much he loved her. A�er that we shouldn’t have contin-ued making love. I felt hardened, no longer touchable, as if covered in rows of thirsty, steadfast barnacles. And I was mad at Ted at the time. He’d been spending long hours away from home, coming back smelling like seaweed and dirty gulls. He’d take the girls out and away for days, leaving me anchored at home. At �rst they kept to the bay, paddling along the shoreline. I could see them sailing the temperate waters from my window. But they grew and acquired sailors and captains of their own. �eir captains took them on voyages to India and New Zealand, along the straights of Norway, through the Panama Canal. Everything was drenched in saltwater, bird droppings, and wind. Nothing was clean anymore, no matter how much I scrubbed and scrubbed. My last pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage in the second trimester. �is time not a ship. �is time, the doctor told me, it was a little boy with ten �ngers and ten toes, with little eyes and a little nose. Ted let me name him Aaron and he was buried in a little grave in that one cemetery, the one that looks over the bay. �ick, greenish bugs plunk down on the pavement, falling from the sky, then

We were having a�airs and our wives knew and didn't care. Some of us were sleeping with each others' wives. �ere were things that had gone wrong, and we weren't sure who to blame.

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�ings that managed to do both at the same time. Time travelers. People who weren't stuck like us. �ere was that new movie that went backwards, and then Je� put this music on the stereo where all the lyrics were palindromes. It was something his kid had picked up. His kid Stan was a lot cooler than we had ever been. He was always bringing things home, Je� said, saying, You have got to listen to this. Here, try this. �ese guys are good. Stan was the kid who got drugs for the other kids when there was going to be a party. We had tried not to be bothered by this. We trusted our kids and we hoped that they trusted us, that they weren't too embarrassed by us. We weren't cool. We were willing to be liked. �at would have been enough. Stan was so very cool that he hadn't even minded taking care of some of us, the parents of his friends (the friends of his parents), although sometimes we just went through our kids' drawers, looked under the mattresses. It wasn't that di�erent from taking Halloween candy out of their Halloween bags, which was something we had also done, when they were younger and went to bed before we did. Stan wasn't into that stu� now,

though. None of the kids were. �ey were into music instead. You couldn't get this music on CD. �at was part of the conceit. It came only on cassette. You played one side, and then on the other side the songs all played backwards and the lyrics went forwards and backwards all over again in one long endless loop. La allah ha llal. Do, oh, oh, do you, oh do, oh, wanna? Bones was really digging it. "Do you, do you wanna dance, you do, you do," he said, and laughed and tipped his chair back. "Snakey canes. Hula boolah." Someone mentioned the restaurant downtown where you were supposed to order your dessert and then you got your dinner. "I fold," Ed said. He threw his cards down on the table. Ed liked to make up games. People paid him to make up games. Back when we had a regular poker night, he was always teaching us a new game and this game would be based on a TV show or some dream he'd had. "Let's try something new. I'm going to deal out everything, the whole deck, and then we'll have to put it all back. We'll see each other's hands as we put

them down. We're going for low. And we'll swap. Yeah, that might work. Something else, like a wild card, but we won't know what the wild card was, until the very end. We'll need to play fast-no stopping to think about it-just do what I tell you to do." "What'll we call it?" he said, not a question, but as if we'd asked him, although we hadn't. He was shu�ing the deck, holding the cards close like we might try to take them away. "DNA Hand. Got it?" "�at's a shitty idea," Je� said. It was his basement, his poker table, his beer. So he got to say things like that. You could tell that he thought Ed looked happier than he ought to. He was thinking Ed ought to remember his place in the world, or maybe Ed needed to be reminded what his place was. His new place. Most of us were relieved to see that Ed looked okay. If he didn't look okay, that was okay too. We under-stood. Bad things had happened to all of us. We were contemplating these things and then the tape �ips over and starts again. It's catchy stu�. We could listen to it all night. " Now we chant along and summon

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15box of condoms and a pepper mill. When we asked what he was doing in Brenner's bedroom, he winked and then put his �nger to his mouth and zipped his lip. Brenner has a little pointed goatee. It might look silly on some people, but not on Brenner. �e pepper thing sounds silly, maybe, but not even Je� teases Brenner about it. "I remember that house," Alibi says. We call him Alibi because his wife is always calling to check up on him. She'll say, So was Alec out shooting pool with you the other night, and we'll say, Sure he was, Gloria. �e problem is that sometimes Alibi has told her some completely di�erent story and she's just testing us. But that's not our problem and that's not our fault. She never holds it against us and neither does he. "We used to go up in the orchards at night and have wars. Knock each other down with rotten apples. �ere were these peacocks. You bought the orchard house?" Here was a lull in the conversation. We were down in the basement, sitting around the green felt table. We were holding bottles of warm beer in one hand, and our cards in the other. Our cards weren't great. Looking at each

others' faces, we could see that clearly. We were tired. It made us more tired to look at each other when we saw we weren't getting away with anything at all. We didn't have any secrets. We hadn't seen each other for a while and it was clear that we hadn't changed for the better. We were between jobs, or stuck in jobs that we hated. We were having a�airs and our wives knew and didn't care. Some of us were sleeping with each others' wives. �ere were things that had gone wrong, and we weren't sure who to blame. We had been talking about things that went backwards instead of forwards. �ings that managed to do both at the same time. Time travelers. People who weren't stuck like us. �ere was that new movie that went backwards, and then Je� put this music on the stereo where all the lyrics were palindromes. It was something his kid had picked up. His kid Stan was a lot cooler than we had ever been. He was always bringing things home, Je� said, saying, You have got to listen to this. Here, try this. �ese guys are good. Stan was the kid who got drugs for the other kids when there was going to be a party. We had tried not to be bothered by this. We trusted our kids and we

hoped that they trusted us, that they weren't too embarrassed by us. We weren't cool. We were willing to be liked. �at would have been enough. Stan was so very cool that he hadn't even minded taking care of some of us, the parents of his friends (the friends of his parents), although sometimes we just went through our kids' drawers, looked under the mattresses. It wasn't that di�erent from taking Halloween candy out of their Halloween bags, which was something we had also done, when they were younger and went to bed before we did. Stan wasn't into that stu� now, though. None of the kids were. �ey were into music instead. You couldn't get this music on CD. �at was part of the conceit. It came only on cassette. You played one side, and then on the other side the songs all played backwards and the lyrics went forwards and backwards all over again in one long endless loop. La allah ha llal. Do, oh, oh, do you, oh do, oh, wanna?Bones was really digging it. "Do you, do you wanna dance, you do, you do," he said, and laughed and tipped his chair back. "Snakey canes. Hula boolah." Yeah, that might work.

the Devil," Bones says. "Always wanted to do that." Bones has been drunk for a while now. His hair is standing up and his face is shiny and red. He has a fat stupid smile on his face. We ignore him which is what he wants. Bones's wife is just the same, loud and useless. �e thing that makes the rest of us sick is that their kids are the nicest, smartest, funniest, best kids. We can't �gure it out. �ey don't deserve kids like that. Brenner asks Ed if he's found a new place to live. He has. "O� the highway, down by that Texaco, in the orchards. �is guy built a road and built the house right on top of the road. Just, plop, right in the middle of the road. Kind of like he came walking up the road with the house on his back, got tired, and just dropped it." "Not very good feng shui," Pete says. Pete has read a book. He's got a theory about picking up women, which he's always sharing with us. He goes to Barnes & Noble on his lunch hour and hangs around in front of displays of books about houses and decorating, skimming through architecture books. He says it makes you look smart and just domesticated enough. A man looking at pictures of houses is sexy to

women like Alexy Fermouth.We've never asked if it works for him. Meanwhile, we know, Pete's wife is always a�er him to go up on the roof and gut the drains, reshingle and patch, paint. Pete isn't really into this. Imagi-nary houses are sexy. Real ones are work. He did go buy a mirror at Pottery Barn and hang it up, just inside the front door, because otherwise, he said, evil spirits go rushing up the staircase and into the bedrooms. Getting them out again is tricky. �e way the mirror works is that they start to come in, look in the mirror, and think a devil is already living in the house. So they take o�. Devils can look like anyone-salespeople, Latter-day Saints, the people who mow your lawns-even members of your own family. So you have to have a mirror. Ed says, "Where the house is, is the �rst weird thing. �e second thing is the house. It's like this team of architects went crazy and sawed two di�erent houses in half and then stitched them back together. Casa Del Guggenstein. �e front half is really old-a hundred years old-the other half is aluminum siding." "Must have brought down the asking

price," Je� says pointedly. " Yeah," Ed says. "And the other thing is there are all these doors. One at the front and one at the back and two more on either side, right smack where the aluminum siding starts, these weird, tall, skinny doors, like they're built for basketball players. Or aliens." "Or palm trees," Bones says. "Yeah," Ed says. "Sure. Palm trees. And then one last door, this vestigial door, up in the master bedroom. Not like a door that you walk through, for a closet, or a bathroom. It opens and there's nothing there. No staircase, no balcony, no point to it. It's a Tarzan door. Up in the trees. You open it and an owl might �y in. Or a bat. �e previous tenant le� that door locked-apparently he was afraid of sleepwalk-ing." "Fantastic," Brenner says. "Wake up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom, you could just pee out the side of your house." He opens up the last beer and shakes some pepper in it. Brenner has a thing about pepper. He even puts it on ice cream. Pete swears that one time at a party he wandered into Brenner's bedroom and looked in a drawer in a table beside the bed. He says he found a

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