VanderMeer’s New Weird is to science fiction what mysticism is to theology. Like mystical texts throughout the ages, his Weird does not explain; it attempts to get at something beyond the explainable. Mystics of the Judeo-Christian tradition—who flourished especially during several centuries of the Middle Ages—were similarly preoccupied with a kind... See more

We know that the mystical and expansive experiences we’ve read about or had ourselves are in some deep way true—truer than parking tickets and emails and ready meals. But the core wisdom of modernity—the whole drive behind the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution’s insistence on empirical evidence—is that once you open that door to the... See more