As I put together my two-dozen plus query letters for my three novels -- one near-future SF, one paranormal romance, one young adult urban fantasy -- to send out to unsuspecting agents and editors, I've been trying to wrap my brain around these fascinating discussions about the 'New Weird' (Thanks to Trey for the link.)

Here's a sampling, from M. John Harrison:

"Try & write every book as if it was the first book written. We're bad at that because the opposite--build every book on the assumption that every reader has read every other book like this--is at the very basis of all genre (and of all in-genre theory). Genre becomes, if it's allowed to, infinitely self-reflexive. Lazy writers freeload on that prepared audience. While loonies of invention just spin-off notions from notions already spun off from previous spun-off notions: result total unreadability except by the cognoscenti. Ever heard that complaint before ? Oh yes. It's the one made most by sf people about mainstream lit-fic..."

Or this:

"You have to bring the reader into a new world every time you write a book. Sf used to do that. It used to understand how to do that. It used to be a kind of travel writing. Now no-one does it."

Damn. This is good stuff -- like a crash-course on the state and near-future of genre writing, as it's unfolding right now.

The only problem is, it really makes my tired brain hurt. I can only read it in small doses before all the concepts make me hit overload. But it's worth it.