Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology

The body loves books
even the not so great ones
where's my goth E.T.?

This anthology isn't really a cohesive whole, and that's a good thing. The stories contained within are supposedly from a newish genre called slipstream. According to Bruce Sterling, slipstream's unifying force is cognitive dissonance. What this anthology demonstrated is that Slipstream isn't a genre at all, and that's there nothing new about it. It is, in fact, anti-genre, and a demonstration of how some our great young writers don't give a damn about genre boundaries. Much of the fiction here felt influenced by Borges and Kafka, with a hint of Calvino.

I was familiar with many of the stories here, but it was nice to see such a broad variety of stories in one Anthology. There are other names for the type of fiction contained in this book: interstitial arts seems to be the latest term. Don't be fooled: these stories are fiction without genre, and it works best when the authors aren't trying too hard. Highly recommended.