What is Slipstream Fiction?
There's something that isn't quite science fiction, nor is it horror and not quite fantasy either, and yet it's all of those things and more. Slipstream was a term coined by sci-fi author Bruce Sterling in 1989 to describe fiction that doesn't quite fit into the mainstream, rather trails in its wake, a clever neologism that doesn't quite do the form justice.
It has variously been called weird fiction, strange fiction or even magical realism, a term I loathe more than any of these inaccurate epithets. When literary authors dip their toe in genre fiction (with an angel or two perhaps, a cameo by the devil, or -shock- a ghost) they always feel obliged to deflect with that most non-committal term. The magical used to demonstrate and enhance the 'real'. Isn't this what all fiction does in some way or another? Why be coy about producing a fantasy novel? Well, I digress. 'Splipstream' as a term which sheds no light on the genre it describes is therefore exactly the most apt because it is so indefinable. Books as diverse as China Mieville's Bas Lag Trilogy, William Burroughs' Naked Lunch or the work of J.G. Ballard all come under this umbrella term. The way I define it is that there has to be something a little 'off' in the story. It doesn't have to be big like Perdido Street Station's myriad bizarre inhabitants, or even Naked Lunch's structural acrobatics.
Sometimes all it takes for something to be Slipstream is one single element to be put just off center. Like one loose pinion in a greater machine that ultimately puts the timing out and causes the whole thing to whirr uncontrollably away from the straight and narrow. Fantasy, as strange and other worldly, if not at times outrageously unreal as it can be, never has the insidious queasiness associated with Slipstream because the foundations are established and strong enough to support such eccentricities. Introduce one unsettling element, Dexter's 'Passenger' perhaps, or Holden Caulfield's conspicuous meta-narration in 'Catcher in the Rye', and the text unnerves. We're jolted away from the accepted conventions, the slight angle of departure enough to skew the narrative far from the true meridian and after a while to become utterly divergent. I love this aspect of what I consider Slipstream. I like to be made to feel uneasy, to be forced to look at this world from another perspective.
This doesn't mean that other literary styles do not achieve exactly that, but more often than not it is by placing the reader in a character whose experiences we are unfamiliar with. With Slipstream the alienation is inherent in the form. A kind of disassociation occurs that impels the reader to greater analysis and self reflection. Also I just get a thrill out of reading strange stuff.
It is my intention with Twin Monocle to get these kinds of stories out there, the ones that don't easily fit in to a standard category and yet straddle science fiction, fantasy, horror and the purely experimental. We'll see where this takes us, which alternative path presents itself, and then walk between the roads anyway.
