Customer Reviews

Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology

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3 star:		(1)
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Feeling Very Strange was one of the most celebrated anthologies of last year. It took me a while to get around to reading it, partly because I had read most of the stories already. But I finally did read it. I reread the stories I had already read, and was darned happy to do so. It really is an outstanding book.

It includes some surprising and very effective pieces from outside the core SF/Fantasy genre -- notably Michael Chabon's "The God of Dark Laughter" and George Saunders's "Sea Oak". It includes some stories from within the genre that I had liked a lot (and praised highly in public) but that I didn't really see as slipstream -- though I see the editors' point in including them now I think -- stuff like Benjamin Rosenbaum's "Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Airplanes', by Benjamin Rosenbaum", and Theodora Goss's "The Rose in Twelve Petals", and Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God". It includes Kelly Link's magnificent "The Specialist's Hat", easily one of the spookiest stories I have ever read. It includes Howard Waldrop's Alternate History of an ascendant Africa, "The Lions are Asleep This Night" -- another story I wouldn't have at first blush called slipstream (and it does seem that the editors consider certain types of AH slipstream (the Rosenbaum story being another example), but that works that way, and reads a bit differently in that context.) There is also a fine new story by M. Rickert, "You Have Never Been Here", and good stories by Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Aimee Bender, Bruce Sterling, Jeff VanderMeer, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jeffrey Ford. Highly recommended.

After reading this anthology, I'm still not sure what qualifies as "slipstream". This puts me in good company, I suppose. The book features some interstitial discussion among authors in the genre, who can't seem agree on what is or isn't slipstream, or whether they want themselves or others to be included. This discussion didn't help me warm to the genre, unfortunately. I'd rather just enjoy the stories, without having the curtain pulled back to expose insiders reveling in their obscurity and pontificating on the importance of "SFnal tropes".

I found the stories themselves to be of mixed quality. Rather, they're all high quality writing, but most of them just didn't do much for me as stories. A few of them are very enjoyable. Some because they're wittily written and vividly painted (Sea Oak, Light and the Sufferer) and others because they stay just far enough out of reach to force you to stop reading and let the story sink in before moving on (Lieserl, You Have Never Been Here Before). But many of them seemed to me like well-executed creative writing exercises. The author has come up with a twist on reality and explored some interesting consequences, but that's as far as it goes. It's mildly entertaining, but without much point. (The Healer, The Lions Are Asleep This Night). And some of them are self-consciously postmodern, caught somewhere between fiction, autobiography and intellectual self-gratification. (Bright Morning, Biographical Notes...) If that's your thing, then you'll find them worthwhile. But like with some modern art, I just can't get over the feeling that the artist/author is laughing at me, along with the rest of the world.

Advanced review galleys are not typically featured - we usually only review from finished books - but FEELING VERY STRANGE: THE SLIPSTREAM ANTHOLOGY is something unusual to watch for: a collection which helps define and identify the genre of fiction known as 'slipstream'. This category has long defied easy definition: blend literary avant garde elements with science and you begin to realize its boundaries. It embraces cognitive dissonance, ambiguity, and visionary oddities and the short stories by Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Bruce Sterling and others provide diverse satisfying examples of how this is accomplished.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Themed anthologies are usually put together by people who pay pennies and earn nickels -- if they're lucky. Under such conditions, it's pretty unusual that every story is worth reading. This book is one of those rare exceptions. There are enough reliable names here -- M. Rickert, Jeffrey Ford, Ted Chiang, Kelly Link -- that anyone who pays attention to speculative fiction will have already identified this book as worth reading.

But for those of you who are poking your heads in from the world of mainstream literature, please come in! This book is a warm and welcoming place for you pale things -- strange and thrilling, but not formulaically so. Really, please come in.

I'm serious.

If you like 'gothic' this is the book for you - an excellent book