“We’re all wild bulls on our way trying to break out of the chute.”

Nice.

Sleight maintains that slipstream is NOT the same as literary sf, interstitial fiction or magic realism. Slipstream is fiction where, not only can you not recognize the world you’re in, but you may have forgotten how to recognize it.

Sleight's first sentence is a fact. Sleight's second sentence sounds good and may even be true but is tangential and, by my reader, contra to his previous statements on the subject.

[Cut loads of waffle about lists.]

Valente: “Through this list we can create the ideal slipstream reader.”

I already exist!

She notes that something she added to the list (The Pillow Book, I presume) is there just because it was absolutely strange for its day, though many people wouldn’t think it is now. “What is considered slipstream may change.”

Which is exactly why this is such a rotten way to define slipstream.

An audience member asks if there are any magical realism works that aren’t slipstream, and if so what are they. Panelists list several: The Natural, all the works of Alice Hoffman, Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits was on the list, but probably shouldn’t have been.

This is a question I asked in the build up to the panel (and which I did not receive an answer too.) I'm intrigued by the answers but none-the-wiser on the reasoning behind them. What is it, specifically, that makes The House Of Spirits magical realism but not slipstream?

An audience member asks about “writers who may be hacks: Jasper Fforde, Gregory Maguire”. There is an oohing in the audience as if fighting words have been spoken, but Valente quickly says that these writers are not remotely slipstream, sidestepping the whole quality question.

"Oohing"? I thought Readercon was the sercon of all sercons? Suggesting Fforde may be a hack is controverstial?

Discussion of slipstream in other genres: Eric Van says that the original cut of Donnie Darko was slipstream, and the director’s cut (which he prefers) is science fiction. Interesting!

This is interesting! I've only ever seen the director's cut.

In general Valente talks a lot of sense, Kessel doesn't and Drummond seems to be completely irrelevent to proceedings.

So Slipstream is what happens when you lose the infodumping?

sercon

?

Suggesting Fforde may be a hack is controverstial?

Probably not (though his popularity among book lovers is completely out of proportion to his abilities as a writer and humorist), but Gregory Maguire is a critical darling.

I've only ever seen the director's cut.

The original cut is much better. It doesn't impose the SFnal reading by intercutting the story with extracts from The Philosophy of Time Travel (originally just an extra on the DVD), which does open the story up to plenty of different interpretations and genres, as well as being less didactic. I think Van is onto something here.

A lot of people - both on the panel and in the audience - were pretty rude about MAguire, making very unfavourable comparisons between Wicked and Was....

Not an entirely fair comparison, I think, given that Maguire emphasizes the fairy-tale-ness of the stories he riffs off, whereas for Ryman Oz was just a jumping-off point. That said, it's precisely because he can't stop stressing their fairy-tale antecedents that Maguire's novels fail to come together, so I guess the comparison is valid in that, although Maguire and Ryman are doing different things, Maguire is doing the wrong one, or at least the wrong one for him.

?

Serious convention (eg with none of that horrible titting about fandom does.) I feel guilty for using a filthy fandom term.

Gregory Maguire is a critical darling.

He's not really know in the UK. I'd say unknown but Wicked came out last year.

I feel guilty for using a filthy fandom term.

If it's any consolation, you got it wrong.

He's not really know in the UK.

My office is mad for him, becauseof the musical.

My office is mad for him

So is most of Readerville, and most of the same people like Jasper Fforde.

If it's any consolation, you got it wrong.

Hooray!

I bought the Maguire book in Hay, and am feeling that, paying £1, I was overcharged.

Isn't it one of fjm's favourite books ever?

Very possibly. But just because one is a good friend of someone, doesn't mean that one agrees with them on all book-related matters. So I've heard.

Doesn't the director's cut also imply that Donnie's problem is that he stopped taking his meds? Or was that just badly described to me?

Actually, there's a deleted scene on the theatrical release DVD in which Donnie's psychiatrist tells him that his meds are placebos. I can't remember whether the DC reintroduces it.

Ahhh. I am mollified.

You don't want the handout. It is ridiculous.

Ridiculous how?

(Asked in a genuine spirit of enquiry.)

Well--ridiculous is probably an overstatement. And I'm getting as cranky about slipstream these days as I am about interstitial.

But there was the inclusion of a book in the "canon" that isn't actually available yet, and with the bit where items like 5-7 (or whatever) were individual works by Kafka and then item 9 was "the complete works of Kafka." And the inclusion of works that seem to me clearly pure fantasy (the Goss, frex).

Jinx!

Buy me a Coke!

OK, so you mean ridiculous (or whatever) in its specifics, not in the principle behind the whole project. This is a little awkward to respond to because, although we never quite articulated in in this way, I feel that something like collective responsibility obtains wrt the list, and I shouldn't try to distance myself even from the stuff I disagree with/didn't vote for. That said, I am in sympathy with your two core points, about the duplication between individual works and collected works, and about including not-yet-published books (though only one, I think, and that composed of reprints.)

not in the principle behind the whole project.

Well, the whole psuedo-consensus of the voting set up is a bit odd.

I notice that apparently you were the only person to vote for Steve Erickson, the quintessential slipstream writer of the last twenty years.

So you have a copy of the final list, then? Is it available somewhere to download?

Re Erickson, I think the problem is that his good work is spread across a bunch of books (almost all of them), and there's no one definitive career-summation work.

The voting threw up some surprising stuff too, like how much more widely M John Harrison was seen as influential than Christopher Priest. Not sure why that is.

Is it available somewhere to download?

Not that I am aware of.

Re Erickson, I think the problem is that his good work is spread across a bunch of books (almost all of them), and there's no one definitive career-summation work.

That didn't stop our old friend Joseph K. It is for this reason that the canon is skewed towards short story collections. It is more of a key figures list than a core text list.

None of which explains how a minor work by an author of little relevence to slipstream (Changing Planes) makes it so high up the list and Erickson and Barthelme who live and breathe this stuff appear so far down.

The voting threw up some surprising stuff too, like how much more widely M John Harrison was seen as influential than Christopher Priest.

Neither appear on the list though?

PS Aren't you proud of me for not mentioning Perdido Street Station?

Both Priest and Harrison appear on the list, but further down than the core 20-odd. I've emailed the Readercon magi and asked for them to forward/post the whole thing, which should make things clearer. Or, you know, not.

I think they must be on the "Other Important Non-Canonical Slipstream or Slipstream-related Writings" list, rather than the actual list. A weblink would be good.

Both Priest and Harrison appear on the list

No they don't. They're in the complete list of nominations, but not in the canon.

Huh. Memory was tricking me, then. (I certainly wound up talking more about Harrison with my co-panel-ees beforehand.) I should say, though, that I regarded all three lists as being part of the overall canon-y list-y thing. There were, so to speak, three concentric circles of canon-ness. Or something.

Looking at the choices it would appear that, amazingly, yours were some of the least insane.

(For example, I personally feel that Steve Erickson's work is quintessentially Slipstream, that he is the most characteristically Slipstream author—yet only one of his books made it onto the top-115, and that near the bottom.)

I am Ron Drummond.

On many levels, you're not.

As I said elsewhere, the problem with Erickson is that he has a bunch of more or less equally characteristic slipstream-y novels, rather than one career-defining work. I think they're all awesome, but maybe others had only read bits and pieces of his work.

I am, I'm afraid, starting to find listing in general a bit ridiculous, insofar as the lists don't seem to me to illuminate much. Which may again by interstitial bleed on my part, but the slipstream lists, too, strike me as increasingly, "Here are books we like," as much as anything else.

I do admire your solidarity. :-p

And the inclusion of works that seem to me clearly pure fantasy

And the inclusion of works that seem to me clearly pure realism. For example, The Waves, which is experimental in execution but not content.

But if (like Kessel or me) you have an effect-based definition of slipstream, then you can have mimetic slipstream just as an effect-based definition of horror gives you mimetic horror too.

Indeed, indeed, I'm familar with your's and Kessel's effect-based idiocy ;) I was just replying to Hannah that this "clearly falling on one side" issue applies to both sides equally.

I didn't catch any of the pure-realism works, but I am happy to accept equal absurdity.

15. The Metamorphosis (1915), Franz Kafka
16. The Trial (1925), Franz Kafka
17. Orlando (1928), Virginia Woolf
18. The Castle (1926), Franz Kafka
19. The complete works of Franz Kafka

Maybe the list itself is a work of slipstream!

Feeling snarky =/= feeling very strange. :-p

You don't want the handout.

Not even to mock?

Nah. Sorry.

Maybe you should make a poll...

*\o/*

Jethro Tull? Classical music is such a downer.