RARA-AVIS: Caught in a Slipstream

Ted White (tedwhite@compusnet.com)
Sat, 14 Nov 1998 14:39:47 -0500 Mark Sullivan sez "I'm not really up on my science fiction," and asks
me "am I even close in my definition" of "slipstream" fiction? To
which I sagely reply, "probably." This is pretty off-topic for this
list anyway, but I must confess to not having closely tracked recent
developments in the SF field.

Between 1963 and the end of 1978 I read hundreds of thousands of words
of unpublishable SF, in addition to those stories I bought or
(1963-68) were bought by the editors to which I passed them on. My
first act as editor of HEAVY METAL was to abolish the token text story
which had been appearing in its pages -- in part so I wouldn't have to
read any more submissions. I have read far too much SF
professionally; I read mysteries for pleasure.

Nonetheless, I've stayed vaguely in touch, mostly through buddies like
Steve Brown (SF EYE), and Bill Gibson, et al. I think what's now
being called "Slipstream" is a second-generation, from SF writers like
those you mentioned, of what was "Magic Realism" in the seventies:
Robbins & Co.... It's a way of bringing the Outsider's Eye from SF
to contemporary culture. But it also blends in with pop-UFO crap like
"The X-Files," etc., at the bottom end and in the mass media.

In any event, I haven't read Kem Nunn, so what I have to add to this
discussion here is, I'm afraid, miniscule. (But ask me about agents
some time....)

--Ted White

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