I picked this book up at the dealers room at Wiscon 33 last weekend. I’m not particularly familiar with slipstream, though I’d read one story that appeared in this anthology. But I had such a nice chat with M. Rickert so I decided I would see what this was all about, since one of her stories appears. Verdict: overall probably not my thing. I really liked some of the stories. Some of the ones that didn’t work for me really didn’t work for me. When a story is trying to mess with me, it better succeed well or I’m just gonna be irritable.
Editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel start with an introduction trying to explain slipstream. Not define it, exactly, though. It’s an extended musing on the definition, as as it exists, it’s history, whether it should be defined, and the pitfalls of including particular stories for this undefined thing. Throughout the book they’ve also reprinted a series of comments made on David Moles blog regarding what slipstream’s definition. The end result really isn’t a definition any more than Bruce Sterling’s original essay was. Conclusion: hey, there’s some weird fiction out there that has some common elements that we like.
Al
by Carol Emshwiller- The first story in the anthology didn’t work for me at all. According to the introduction, it’s sort of a mashup of Lost Horizon and a satire of the New York City art scene. Al crash lands in a different culture and tries to become part of it. That different culture is, in this case, an artist commune of some sort. Not having any connection to any of the pieces, it seemed strange for strangeness sake to me.
The Little Magic Shop
by Bruce Sterling- Very cool little story about a fellow who comes back to a magic shop every decade or two to get a magic elixir that returns him to his youth in exchange for everything he possesses.
The Healer
by Aimee Bender- Another really good story. Two school girls, one with a hand of fire, one with a hand of ice. The water from the second girl’s ice can heal. But can it heal the unstable fire girl?
The Specialist’s Hat
by Kelly Link- A ghost story. I’ve read this story before, and liked it then. My opinion hasn’t changed on re-reading it. When I went back and read what I wrote way back when though, I said something that I probably should have paid attention to.
Overall, I wouldn’t read her again, even though I liked half the stories. Just too much trouble.
I just bought Magic for Beginners in the Small Beer Press sale, so I might end up not liking it. For $1 though, you can’t really go wrong. Light and the Sufferer
by Jonathan Lethem- Mysterious aliens follow people who have drug habits. Another great story.
Sea Oak
by George Saunders- Another awesome story! Absurdist science fiction fantasy crossover. Aunt Bernie comes back from the dead a little more assertive than she was when she was alive. Great bit is a faux T.V. show called
The Worst That Could Happen
which takes unlikely but possible tragedies and simulates them.A kid gets hit by a train and flies into a zoo, where he’s eaten by wolves.
Brilliant! Exhibit H: Torn Pages Discovered in the Vest Pocket of an Unidentified Tourist
by Jeff VanderMeer- This is one of the ones that didn’t work for me at all. Shades of H. G. Wells The Time Machine with stratified garbage workers.
Hell Is the Absence of God
by Ted Chiang- I wonder if there’s a Ted Chiang story that I don’t like. This one I loved. It’s simple in structure, but thought-provoking. Two big tenets of Christianity don’t have to be taken on faith in this story: god exists and manifests himself all over the place, and hell is the afterlife whose primary feature is being cut off from god. God and angels still are mysterious. They do things for strange reasons. Angels show up randomly, curing some and afflicting others. Neil Fisk’s wife is killed in one of these appearances and ascends to heaven. Neil wants to love god so he can be with his wife in heaven when he dies, but he also hates god for taking her from him. Quite the dilemma!
Lieserl
by Karen Joy Fowler- Einstein’s daughter? I think … ? That absence of sound you hear is the vacuum inside my head.
Bright Morning
by Jeffrey Ford- Decent but fairly unmoving story about a writer who searches for a lost Franz Kafka story only to have the writer Jeffrey Ford outbid him for it at auction. It kind of pulls a Memento like trick though, in that the gimmick really felt like a gimmick. Clever for cleverness sake.
Biographical Notes to
by Benjamin RosenbaumA Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes
by Benjamin Rosenbaum- This story tries to pull a similar self-referential trick, but to my mind, the story worked better. Not because of the gimmick though. It’s just a bit more fun is all.
The God of Dark Laughter
by Michael Chabon- The second story that I’d previously read. Still like it.
The Rose in Twelve Petals
by Theodora Goss- Kind of a re-telling/take-off of Sleeping Beauty with a bit of alternative history. I like it, and I may like it more on a re-reading. It has that kind of feel to it.
The Lions Are Asleep This Night
by Howard Waldrop- An alternative history story where a kid in Africa saves his lunch money to buy cheap books and wants to write his own. Alternative history because Europe and America aren’t dominant (and might not ever have been). I liked it, but that’s the book geek in me identifying with the book geek in the kid.
You Have Never Been Here
by M. Rickert- This is the reason why I bought the anthology. As the introduction to the book states, it’s very haunting. It’s second person, in a hospital. The doctors are doing something, perhaps conducting an experiment, but perhaps doing something else. They want you to love. It’s confusing. But in spite of the fact that I don’t know what the hell is going on, I liked the story. It works like I wish poetry did for me, mostly by setting a mood and instilling feeling.
Other blogged reviews:
Title: Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology
Editors: James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel
Cover creator: Isabelle Rosenbaum (photographer)
Imprint / publisher: Tachyon
Format: Paperback
Length: 288 p.
Publication date: 2006
ISBN-10: 1-892391-35-X
ISBN-13: 978-1-892391-35-3
