Why I Used to Love Slipstream Fiction

Do you remember there once was a secret boom of slipstream fiction? The term was coined by Bruce Sterling in 1989 to explain there were hidden treasures in literary fiction that could appeal to science fiction fans almost in the same way our genre hooked them. But the real treasures rushed out at the turn of the millennium when newcomers to our genre, Kelly Link, Jay Lake, Christopher Rowe, Benjamin Rosenberg, Christopher Barzak, and Jeff VanderMeer, started to explore their imaginations outside of our genre boundary. At the same time, coincidently or not, a lot of new literary newcomers also started to write with a lot more fantastic elements, borrowing ideas from science fiction and fantasy, and broke the genre barriers. Kevin Brockmeier, Amy Bender, George Saunders, Charles Yu, Adam Johnson, Arthur Bradford and many more tried to break out of the literary convention, enjoying the fresh weirdness which has been the tradition of our genre. It was a great time. Many tried chapbook zines, webzines, hypertext fiction, and original anthologies. Interstitial art movement and Literature's icons like Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, even Bradford Morrow encouraged them. It reminded me of the sixties, when the new wave and absurdist movement tried to go out of the conventions and ventured into new style of fiction. Its "Try Something New" spirit revived then again, seeking a new frontier of fiction. "Tear down the walls, Motherfuckers" we used to say, and the new writers actually tore down the walls and barriers of the literary genres.
But then what happened? There came the mashup novels. Imaginative freedom and whimsy look very alike and often come together. So when lazy writers learned they could do anything, they just played with their favorite characters and plots, mashing up different genres. In the spirit of entertainment, making fun, retrofit, exploiting our past literary resources. It's in the same contemporary capitalist greediness they do that. They don't explore the past to find something new, or forgotten treasures, they just have fun. Most of the steampunk novels are like that, too. No, that isn't wrong per se, fun and whimsiness, those elements belong to the pleasures of reading, too. But they did absorb the new movement of slipstream. Suddenly those new writers found that there were good market for the cross-genre fiction, and started to write mashup, or steampunk novels. Even some wandered off to game novelization. Lost was the spirit of "Try Something New" or weirdness, inherent trope of our genre. On the other side, those literary fiction's newcomers learned our genre and started to write the genre novels, post apocalypse, epic fantasy, or YA. Or they simply went back to the mainstream literature, being disappointed that there wasn't a market for their type of fiction.
Again it reminds me of the fact that there's no "us" anymore. Only a small community of the kin spirit can't support those writers. Nobody is looking for future, or newness, and we have to be content with what we already have. Even our genre readers have lost the appetites for new things, and go to pulp, military, comic, space opera, and more and more into traditional fantasy. I do miss those days of the new slipstream or "New Weird" days. Sigh.

Decline of Our Future

The decline of science fiction, or fiction in general, or even that of music, films, our culture in general, is eminent and depressing. The reason is apparent to me. We don't believe in future anymore. Without future, we only have to maintain (sustain?), making do with what we already have. We don't need any imagination. The future has already come and we've started to consume it. As Bill Gibson once suggested, without the imagination and innovation in the street, all technology brings no real joy, just commodities to consume. They're just convenient tools. We have cell phones, e-book readers, tablets, and all those networks to bring the whole world to ourselves, which we just consume, its information, entertainments, wisdoms, and demagogues. We can choose whatever there is and we're still not satisfied, yet we think that's all there is to avail. We're now losing our imagination. The reason again is apparent. We don't have "us" any more.
Our generation tends to talk a lot about the sixties, when there were futures. Science fiction was a pop and cool literature, and technology was slick and weird at the same time. The world was full of visionaries, even drugs were a means to take us to far out trips, not media of mere entertainments. Where have all those future gone? we tend to wonder. But gone were not the futures. They've come now. We've just lost "us." We're now divided, entrenched in our little cozy beliefs and causes, and only communicate with those who dwell in the same virtual reality. Red and Blue don't share the same reality, South and North, East and West, either. When adults read YA, it's because they need some different kind of entertainment. It isn't for the purpose to understand their youths, or to share their visions. By enjoying YA, adults steal the joy of such fiction from them, averting its trend and course to their liking. See how the characters of Twilight turn into sex maniacs in Fifty Shades of Grey. They don't share its romance with their kids. They just devour. And see how poorly they imagine their own adult sex lives. It's not imagination or visions they share. They just hold onto what they already have. We don't communicate, because we don't believe in any possibility that we can share something together except what we already do. Because we don't believe in "us."
In the sixties we could believe in us. Even in the communist countries, there were their own youth revolts. Even kids in the undeveloped countries enthused at the Beatles. We could relate to each other, we imagined, and we tried to share our visions and imaginations. We could venture into farthest alien worlds, because we knew we could always ask "Beam us home, Scotty" to return home, return to "us." We believed in our Spaceship Earth. We don't have that anymore, although there still remains only one earth for us. We don't want to share our future with aliens now, outsiders to our tiny separate groups of interests, because we don't share their values. We do occasionally care for them, I agree. But it's not sharing. It's not love. It brings no joy.
If you need a future, where you can liberate your imagination and vision and venture into a wonderful quest, you need some fellowship. People you can share your future with. When it comes to the future of our planet, or human race, we need to identify with it. In the sixties, the answer was love. But what do or can we have now? I still need the future, I still need love. Do you?

World SF Special

We'll be runnig a Word SF Special, featuring Questionnaire and articles on the subject. It's not about SF scene around the world. With Anglo-American SF being declining from its world dominance, many SF people around the world now begin to write not just to their own domestic audience, but also to the world. We'd like to share their views with all SF/F people, to build the genuine global SF/F community.

Buddy's Birthday

It could have been 73rd birthday for Lewis Nordan today. Now I realize that he was anothre rabbit like me according to our Chinese-Japanese calendar cycle. I've just started his memorial at our site, and that's a little consolation for me, at least. Well, happy birthday, my fellow rabbit, Buddy. Please enjoy your stay at your ownmemorial, here.

Lewis Nordan Memorial

Buddy Nordan Passed away on April 13 this year. I miss him so much, I have to do something about our ignorance of wonderful world of his fiction. So I'm now holding a big memorial to him. There will be original materials on him and his works. Please drop by and join our celebration of Lewis "Buddy" Nordan.

The Steampunk special issue of Hayakawa's SF Magazine is now released. It features The Mad Scientist's Daughters by Theodora Goss; Reluctance by Cherie Priest; Silver Lining by Tim Pratt; Clockwork Fairies by Cat Rambo; The Stoker Memorandum by Lavie Tidhar; The Age of Miracles, The Age of Wonder by Aliette de Bodard; Atuhor interview: Cherie Priest, Gail Carriger; Clockwork Dreams, Steampowered Films by Chise Soeno (film review); What is Neo Steampunk? by yours truly (introduction) I edited the special section and translated Pratt, Tidhar and de Bodard. Our members Hiro Takasato did Rambo and Junko Suzuki did Goss. We'll feature more on our website, too.

The Loving Dead by Amelia Beamer (Nightshade, July 2010: $14.95)

Following Tim Pratt, another great editor of Locus Magazine makes a giant leap into a novelist career. Amelia Beamer is a staff writer of SF&F newszine, Locus. She’s also a critic and writer, writing for small magazines and Interfiction anthology. Now she’s a novelist, too. Her debut, The Loving Dead is a novel of zombie romance, but I can’t resist an old impulse to call it a novel of Love, Sex, and Death. Well, especially love. It’s the most poignant love story our genre has ever produced. Forget the terrible review of Publishers Weekly. The ending is beautiful. The story is rather simple. In the streets of Berkley, weird looking homeless guys start to attack the pedestrians. Our heroine Kate finds a strange behavior of her girl friend and it turns out she’s a zombie now. Zombies are lascivious, and her friends easily become their prey. Kate sees zombies everywhere and trying to escape, she and her boyfriend seek refugee in Alcatraz prison. OK, there’s a very useful cell phone app to tame zombies and that kind of modernity and hilarity are everywhere in the novel. It’s sensuous, with a lot of sex scenes, and it’s humorous. Entertaining and witty. But the last scene is very moving and memorable, despite dark and disconsolate. Wow, Amelia Beamer has a very bright future now.