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Has anyone here heard of a genre called "Slipstream"? I just searched it, and found a lot of references to it as a kind of cross-genre thing between science fiction, fantasy, magic realism and the like.
Is this term used?
I came across it when someone referred to my story in the Women of Mystery anthology as a "slipstream mystery".
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Here's the article that coined the term 'slipstream' first. By Bruce Sterling, whom I met but didn't say two words to at Writers of the Future.
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And since this is a forum that thrives on opinion, let me say I don't care for slipstream, especially as described by Bruce Sterling. (But also reinforced by the bits of it I've read)
This is the portion of Sterling's essay that makes me roll my eyes:
quote:It's very common for slipstream books to screw around with the representational conventions of fiction, pulling annoying little stunts that suggest that the picture is leaking from the frame and may get all over the reader's feet. A few such techniques are infinite regress, trompe-l'oeil effects, metalepsis, sharp violations of viewpoint limits, bizarrely blase' reactions to horrifically unnatural events . . . all the way out to concrete poetry and the deliberate use of gibberish. Think M. C. Escher, and you have a graphic equivalent.
Slipstream is also marked by a cavalier attitude toward "material" which is the polar opposite of the hard-SF writer's "respect for scientific fact." Frequently, historical figures are used in slipstream fiction in ways which outrageously violate the historical record. History, journalism, official statements, advertising copy . . . all of these are grist for the slipstream mill, and are disrespectfully treated not as "real-life facts" but as "stuff," raw material for collage work. Slipstream tends, not to "create" new worlds, but to *quote* them, chop them up out of context, and turn them against themselves.
I'd prefer clarity and cohesiveness.
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Hmm... well, I guess what I wrote wasn't slipstream by that definition.
<sigh> I was just hoping that I could think of a genre that it fit in. I mean, I sent it in for a general call-for-submissions from a publisher, and I was surprised as anything when they told me it'd been accepted into a mystery anthology.
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There's a SF book called The Miocene Arrow about a post-apocalyptic world that has regressed to the dark ages with WWI technology. Think of a "generic" fantasy story with kings and knights and stuff-- except the knights fly diesel powered aircraft.
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Urban fantasy in general? Esther Friesner's New York by Knight? Steven Boyett's Ariel? One of my favorite books of all times, that last. Make one change to the regular world, and stay consistent with it.
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Scott, you don't think there are some good stories that can't be told without confusing the reader?
I enjoy being confused every once in a while. That's why I read books like The Book of the New Sun and watch movies like Donnie Darko. Confusion can make you feel like there's something fantastic going on behind the scenes, lending a feeling of profoundness to the story.
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I think that "slipstream" is one of those loosey-goosey words that, in this case, is used to describe a story or novel that contains elements of two or more genres but doesn’t fit neatly into any one of them. Readers, editors and critics love to pigeonhole stories and novels into specific genres; when none of the existing labels fit neatly, they invent a new one. I've heard the term "slipstream" most often used to describe mysteries that also contain elements of the fantastic and/or science-fictional.
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quote:That's why I read books like The Book of the New Sun and watch movies like Donnie Darko. Confusion can make you feel like there's something fantastic going on behind the scenes, lending a feeling of profoundness to the story.
Heh-- when I read The Book of the New Sun I kept looking for things to GO somewhere. I got tired of searching, and wrote it off as a static milieu piece.
I didn't think it was slipstream, though-- just reeeealllly sloooooww sci-fi.
I don't mind being puzzled by plot elements. I don't mind a mystery, or odd things.
I HATE stylistic writing that intentionally confuses the reader in order to make the writer appear artsy, refined, cultured, intelligent, or profound. I hate writing that takes me out of the story to bask in the light of the writer's wit.
Which is pretty much what Sterling says slipstream (at least as it's described in the paragraphs I quoted) is designed to do.
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