ON SLIPSTREAM

"The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable." Jean-Francois Lyotard, "What is Postmodernism?"

In this essay I'm going to attempt to define slipstream fiction. My attempt is, of course, doomed from the start, because literary styles are human inventions subject to flux and constant (re)interpretation. There is no doubt that this essay will immediately cause dissent and disagreement, perhaps with opprobrious personal labels attached. However, because an increasing number of zines are appearing with the word "slipstream" in their descriptions, it seems to me that there's some practical use in making this attempt, at least to help writers unfamiliar with the term.

A dictionary definition of "slipstream" is that pocket of reduced pressure and, often, forward suction that is exerted behind an object moving forward through a medium such as air or water. An object moving forward in another object's slipstream does so with greater ease, meeting less resistance. Thus, slipstream fiction is that fiction which moves forward more easily in the slipstream of its precursors, especially "magic realism," a term associated in the 1960s with Latin American postmodernist fiction, especially those novels written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Slipstream also contains elements of surrealism and weird fiction, and it has been informed by the gritty and dystopic worldview of cyberpunk. That is, whereas magic realism seems to draw its nourishment from a primarily agrarian folk culture—even if located in a city—slipstream seems to draw its nourishment from urban culture—even if located in the country.

"Slipstream" was used by Bruce Sterling in 1989 to describe "Novels of Postmodern Sensibility" and has since been applied more generally to fiction that slips between genres, literary fiction that has science fiction or fantasy elements. Informed by a postmodern worldview, slipstream fiction relies on Lyotard's "petit recit," or little narratives, suggesting an ambiguous, fluid sense of reality filtered through human perception rather than existing "out there." The reader doesn't know if the fantastic elements in a slipstream story are real or simply a figment of the viewpoint character's skewed perceptions and is not meant to ask.

How does this differ from science fiction and fantasy?

Science fiction seeks to explain its speculative elements by extrapolating from science (mechanical, biological, cognitive). Science fiction is often plausible, if far-fetched or dependent on innovations and discoveries that have not yet been made and may be impossible.

Fantasy, by contrast, doesn't seek to ground its speculative elements in this world, but takes as granted either the existence of alternative worlds wherein the natural laws differ, or the existence of natural laws not yet discovered, such as "laws of magic."

Note that both science fiction and fantasy still implicitly assume that there is an external world that exists outside of human perception and that the world is governed by consistent natural laws—although not necessarily the same laws as those found in real life. They are rooted in modernist understandings of the world and usually follow modernist goals for fiction: that is, they analyze and comment upon events in the real world either directly or as metaphor; they suggest ideals to be sought or warn of dystopias to be avoided; they suggest that humans change as a result of their experiences; and they are usually structured as a quest narrative, in which the characters seek to achieve a goal despite opposition or obstacles.

Slipstream, on the other hand, doesn't seek to ground its narrative in a real world or describe events that culminate in climax or transformation. Instead, slipstream stories are grounded in human perception, and their speculative elements are detached from the need for consistency or internal logic. The reader doesn't even necessarily know if a slipstream work has any speculative elements. Some slipstream stories could simply, for example, be straightforward literary works told from the point of view of somebody who's hallucinating. Slipstream seldom provides reliable referents with which to draw lines between external reality and internal perception. The narrator may be reliable or unreliable ... but it's not important to the story. After all, how many of us are completely reliable or unreliable when we tell the stories of our own lives, and how many of our stories would match those that someone else might tell about our lives? Which is real? Who cares?

Moreover, like literary fiction, slipstream does not necessarily follow the classic quest structure found so often in science fiction and fantasy. Slipstream is, in fact, more likely to be minimalist, with minimalism's tendency toward disillusioned, locally situated, mundane characters who are immersed in their popular culture and who lack any grand narratives to shape their lives or aspirations. Minimalist stories seldom follow traditional plot structure and don't seek to convey a message—and neither, often, does slipstream.

Slipstream adds to this, however, a sense of the weird that complements minimalism's atmosphere of alienation and detachment. The world in slipstream is a little out of skew, but, after all, the world is out of skew. The characters in slipstream often find the strangeness unremarkable, no different from the other unlikelihoods of this McWorld we live in. Usually the weird elements in slipstream are fantastic in nature—suggesting the paranormal or magical—but they might also be hallucinatory, symbolic, or surreal. The "reality" of the weirdness isn't as important as the frisson it gives to the reader.

Is this postmodern? In some senses of the term. Slipstream, like postmodernism, questions identity, meaning, and representation. The signifiers in a slipstream story don't necessarily point to a signified objective, external world, but rather an individually or socially constructed world. Much slipstream also follows postmodernist tendencies of questioning technological and social "progress," referring to popular culture without explanatory context, and emphasizing disjunction and difference.

Is slipstream a "real" genre? From a postmodernist point of view, that question is irrelevant—slipstream is as real as it's treated. Since more writers are self-identifying as slipstream, more zines declaring that they publish slipstream, and more academics digging through history to identify this novel or that story as slipstream, it is apparently real enough.

References

Hartman, Jed. (3 December 2001). Where does genre come from? Retrieved from <http://www.lgc.edu/primary.cfm?linkid=586>.

Kelly, James Patrick (2003) On the Net: Slipstream. Asimov's Science Fiction. Retrieved from <http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0312/onthenet.shtml> .

Lyotard, .Jean-Francois. (1991). "What is Postmodernism?" from The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Originally printed in 1979.

Sterling, Bruce (July 1989) Slipstream. Originally published in SF Eye. Retrieved from <http://lib.ru/STERLINGB/catscan05.txt>.