Bruce Sterling - Essays. Catscan Columns

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 Manna Enzyme

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

MILLAR, MARTIN - Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation

MOONEY, TED - Easy Travel to Other Planets

MOORCOCK, MICHAEL - Laughter of Carthage; Byzantium Endures; Mother London

MOORE, BRIAN - Cold Heaven

MORRELL, DAVID - The Totem

MORRISON, TONI - Beloved; The Song of Solomon

NUNN, KEN - Tapping the Source; Unassigned Territory

PERCY, WALKER - Love in the Ruins; The Thanatos Syndrome

PIERCY, MARGE - Woman on the Edge of Time

PORTIS, CHARLES - Masters of Atlantis

PRIEST, CHRISTOPHER - The Glamour; The Affirmation

PROSE, FRANCINE - Bigfoot Dreams, Marie Laveau

PYNCHON, THOMAS - Gravity's Rainbow; V; The Crying of Lot 49

REED, ISHMAEL - Mumbo Jumbo; The Terrible Twos

RICE, ANNE - The Vampire Lestat; Queen of the Damned

ROBBINS, TOM - Jitterbug Perfume; Another Roadside Attraction

ROTH, PHILIP - The Counterlife

RUSHDIE, SALMON - Midnight's Children; Grimus; The Satanic Verses

SAINT, H. F. - Memoirs of an Invisible Man

SCHOLZ, CARTER & HARCOURT GLENN - Palimpsests

SHEPARD, LUCIUS - Life During Wartime

SIDDONS, ANNE RIVERS - The House Next Door

SPARK, MURIEL - The Hothouse by the East River

SPENCER, SCOTT - Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball

SUKENICK, RONALD - Up; Down; Out