Essays. Catscan Columns

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.

Some slipstream books are quite conventional in narrative structure, but nevertheless use their fantastic elements in a way that suggests that they are somehow *integral* to the author's worldview; not neat-o ideas to kick around for fun's sake, but something in the nature of an inherent dementia. These are fantastic elements which are not clearcut "departures from known reality" but ontologically *part of the whole mess*; "`real' compared to what?" This is an increasingly difficult question to answer in the videocratic 80s-90s, and is perhaps the most genuinely i

A "slipstream critic," should such a person ever come to exist, would probably disagree with these statements of mine, or consider them peripheral to what his genre "really" does. I heartily encourage would-be slipstream critics to involve themselves in heady feuding about the "real nature" of their as-yet- nonexistent genre. Bogus self-referentiality is a very slipstreamish pursuit; much like this paragraph itself, actually. See what I mean?

My list is fragmentary. What's worse, many of the books that are present probably don't "belong" there. (I also encourage slipstream critics to weed these books out and give convincing reasons for it.) Furthermore, many of these books are simply unavailable, without hard work, lucky accidents, massive libraries, or friendly bookstore clerks in a major postindustrial city. In many unhappy cases, I doubt that the authors themselves think that anyone is interested in their work. Many slipstream books fell through the yawning cracks between categories, and were remaindered with frantic haste.

And I don't claim that all these books are "good," or that you will enjoy reading them. Many slipstream books are in fact dreadful, though they are dreadful in a different way than dreadful science fiction is. This list happens to be prejudiced toward work of quality, because these are books which have stuck in people's memory against all odds, and become little tokens of possibility.

I offer this list as a public service to slipstream's authors and readers. I don't count myself in these ranks. I enjoy some slipstream, but much of it is simply not to my taste. This doesn't mean that it is "bad," merely that it is different. In my opinion, this work is definitely not SF, and is essentially alien to what I consider SF's intrinsic virtues.

Slipstream does however have its own virtues, virtues which may be uniquely suited to the perverse, convoluted, and skeptical tenor of the postmodern era. Or then again, maybe not. But to judge this genre by the standards of SF is unfair; I would like to see it free to evolve its own standards.

Unlike the "speculative fiction" of the 60s, slipstream is not an internal attempt to reform SF in the direction of "literature." Many slipstream authors, especially the most prominent ones, know or care little or nothing about SF. Some few are "SF authors" by default, and must struggle to survive in a genre which militates against the peculiar virtues of their own writing.

I wish slipstream well. I wish it was an acknowledged genre and a workable category, because then it could offer some helpful, brisk competition to SF, and force "Science Fiction" to redefine and revitalize its own principles.

But any true discussion of slipstream's genre principles is moot, until it becomes a category as well. For slipstream to develop and nourish, it must become openly and easily available to its own committed readership, in the same way that SF is today. This problem I willingly leave to some inventive bookseller, who is openminded enough to restructure the rackspace and give these oppressed books a breath of freedom.

THE SLIPSTREAM LIST

ACKER, KATHY - Empire of the Senseless

ACKROYD, PETER - Hawksmoor; Chatterton

ALDISS, BRIAN - Life in the West

ALLENDE, ISABEL - Of Love and Shadows; House of Spirits

AMIS, KINGSLEY - The Alienation; The Green Man

AMIS, MARTIN - Other People; Einstein's Monsters

APPLE, MAX - Zap; The Oranging of America

ATWOOD, MARGARET - The Handmaids Tale

AUSTER, PAUL - City of Glass; In the Country of Last Things

BALLARD, J. G. - Day of Creation; Empire of the Sun

BANKS, IAIN - The Wasp Factory; The Bridge

BANVILLE, JOHN - Kepler; Dr. Copernicus

BARNES, JULIAN - Staring at the Sun

BARTH, JOHN - Giles Goat-Boy; Chimera

BARTHELME, DONALD - The Dead Father

BATCHELOR, JOHN CALVIN - Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica

BELL, MADISON SMARTT - Waiting for the End of the World

BERGER, THOMAS - Arthur Rex

BONTLY, THOMAS - Celestial Chess

BOYLE, T. CORAGHESSAN - Worlds End; Water Music

BRANDAO, IGNACIO - And Still the Earth

BURROUGHS, WILLIAM - Place of Dead Roads; Naked Lunch; Soft Machine; etc.

CARROLL, JONATHAN - Bones of the Moon; Land of Laughs

CARTER, ANGELA - Nights at the Circus; Heroes and Villains

CARY, PETER - Illywhacker; Oscar and Lucinda

CHESBRO, GEORGE M. - An Affair of Sorcerers

COETZEE, J. M. - Life and rimes of Michael K.

COOVER, ROBERT - The Public Burning; Pricksongs & Descants

CRACE, JIM - Continent

CROWLEY, JOHN - Little Big; Aegypt

DAVENPORT, GUY - Da Vincis Bicycle; The Jules Verne Steam Balloon

DISCH, THOMAS M. - On Wings of Song

DODGE, JIM - Not Fade Away

DURRELL, LAWRENCE - Tunc; Nunquam

ELY, DAVID - Seconds

ERICKSON, STEVE - Days Between Stations; Rubicon Beach

FEDERMAN, RAYMOND - The Twofold Variations

FOWLES, JOHN - A Maggot

FRANZEN, JONATHAN - The Twenty-Seventh City

FRISCH, MAX - Homo Faber; Man in the Holocene

FUENTES, CARLOS - Terra Nostra

GADDIS, WILLIAM - JR; Carpenters Gothic

GARDNER, JOHN - Grendel; Freddy's Book

GEARY, PATRICIA - Strange Toys; Living in Ether

GOLDMAN, WILLIAM - The Princess Bride; The Color of Light

GRASS, GUNTER - The Tin Drum

GRAY, ALASDAIR - Lanark

GRIMWOOD, KEN - Replay

HARBINSON, W. A. - Genesis; Revelation; Otherworld

HILL, CAROLYN - The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer

HJVRTSBERG, WILLIAM - Gray Matters; Falling Angel

HOBAN, RUSSELL - Riddley Walker

HOYT, RICHARD - The Ma

IRWIN, ROBERT - The Arabian Nightmares

ISKANDER, FAZIL - Sandro of Chegam; The Gospel According to Sandro

JOHNSON, DENIS - Fiskadoro

JONES, ROBERT F. - Blood Sport; The Diamond Bogo

KINSELLA, W. P. - Shoeless Joe

KOSTER, R. M. - The Dissertation; Mandragon

KOTZWINKLE, WILLIAM - Elephant Bangs Train; Doctor Rat, Fata Morgana

KRAMER, KATHRYN - A Handbook for Visitors From Outer Space

LANGE, OLIVER - Vandenberg

LEONARD, ELMORE - Touch

LESSING, DORIS - The Four-Gated City; The Fifth Child of Satan

LEVEN, JEREMY - Satan

MAILER, NORMAN - Ancient Evenings

MARINIS, RICK - A Lovely Monster

MARQUEZ, GABRIEL GARCIA - Autumn of the Patriarch; One Hundred Years of Solitude

MATHEWS, HARRY - The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium

McEWAN, IAN - The Comfort of Strangers; The Child in Time

McMAHON, THOMAS - Loving Little Egypt