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Tuesday 1 April 2008

VanderMeers to Assemble Anthology of Kincaidism

by Flip Luppaidio


Jeff and Ann Vandermeer today announced that their next project together as husband-and-wife editors would be to assemble an anthology of original stories reflecting the new non-movement known as "Kincaidism." The book is to be titled A Movement of None, and will be published by Tachyon Press.

Jeff relates: "When Ann and I read Paul Kincaid's essay, 'A History of Today,' denouncing movements and manifestos in science fiction and fantasy, and implicitly trashing all the hard work we had done putting together our Pirate and Steampunk and New Weird volumes, we realized that he was really on to something. Something we could hitch our own stars to."

"Right," adds Ann. "We decided that maybe we had been a little too enthusiastic and faddish in our previous endorsement of these nebulous, over-hyped schools of literature. Maybe the best fiction was that which owed allegiance to no particular brand name."

"And so," says Jeff, "we instantly began contacting a variety of writers never previously associated with any movement. Admittedly, many of the writers who fit that description belonged to the lower ranks — bottom-feeders whom no movement had ever seen fit to co-op. Then we made them swear they would never endorse any theory but Kincaidism for so long as our anthology would remain in print."

"Once we had a roster of authors and a potential table of contents for our book, Jeff and I quickly wrote up an anti-manifesto of roughly sixty pages outlining what Kincaidism intended to achieve. We put together a reading list of famous past works by unaffiliated authors, and voila, the book was done!"

Tachyon intends to launch A Movement of None with t-shirts, lapel pins, bumper stickers, a web site and reading- group guides. The VanderMeers will tour the globe for a year, lecturing on Kincaidism. (Paul Kincaid himself was unavailable for comment.)

Already, Kincaidism has splintered into several factions, each of which is planning to release its own anthology soon.



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