Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology
Based on Wikipedia: Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology
In 2006, Tachyon Publications released a book that was less a collection of stories and more a manifesto written in the margins of a genre that refused to sit still. Edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology arrived at a moment when the literary world was desperate to categorize the uncategorizable. It sought to do two things simultaneously: to present the finest examples of slipstream fiction and to finally, definitively, define what the hell slipstream was. The result was a volume that captured the energy of a movement while inadvertently exposing the friction at its core. It is a book that asks the reader to suspend disbelief not just in the narrative, but in the very framework of how we organize fiction. For the reader who has just finished "The beautiful terror of publication," this anthology offers a fascinating, if contentious, look at the publishing industry's struggle to name the unnamed. It is a chronicle of ambition, confusion, and the undeniable power of a story that feels slightly off-kilter.
To understand the weight of this 2006 publication, one must first understand the vacuum it attempted to fill. By the mid-2000s, the boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction were dissolving. Writers were creating work that possessed the emotional resonance of literary fiction but employed the conceptual engines of speculative genres. Yet, the industry had no shelf for these books. They were too weird for the mainstream, too grounded for the hard sci-fi aisle, and too strange for the fantasy section. This was the "slipstream"—a term that had been floating around since Bruce Sterling coined it in the early 1990s to describe fiction that makes you feel "very strange." It is not a genre of spaceships or dragons in the traditional sense; it is a genre of the uncanny, where the rules of reality are bent just enough to make the mundane terrifying or the impossible mundane.
Kelly and Kessel did not just gather stories; they assembled a battlefield. The book is structured as a dialogue, a chaotic and often heated debate about the nature of the work itself. The editor's foreword is not a polite introduction but a primary attempt to define the genre, laying down the gauntlet. But the editors knew that a definition imposed from the top down would fail. So, they interspersed the fiction with a series of essays and arguments from other authors and commentators, all gathered under the provocative heading, "I Want My 20th Century Schitzoid Art." This section is the intellectual engine of the book, a collection of voices arguing over whether slipstream is a legitimate subgenre, a marketing ploy, or a necessary evolution of storytelling.
The stories themselves are the evidence presented in this trial. They range from the surreal to the deeply psychological, all united by that specific feeling of dislocation. When you read these tales, you are not transported to a distant galaxy or a magical kingdom; you are usually in a familiar world that has just tilted slightly on its axis. A character might find their memories replaced by someone else's, or a mundane object might begin to behave with impossible sentience. The goal is to induce a state of cognitive estrangement, to make the reader feel the "strangeness" that gives the anthology its title. It is fiction that demands you question your own perception of reality, a high-wire act that few genres attempt with such consistent audacity.
However, the reception of Feeling Very Strange was as fractured as the genre it sought to define. The reviews were mixed, reflecting the very uncertainty the book tried to resolve. The critical response was not merely about the quality of the writing—which was, for the most part, high—but about the viability of the concept itself. Most of the negative responses centered on a single, stubborn objection: the critics were unconvinced that slipstream was a legitimate subgenre. They saw it as a category error, a label slapped onto a disparate collection of works that had nothing in common other than their refusal to be normal.
The review on The SF Site captured this skepticism with surgical precision. They stated that the "stylistic variations among the selections don't help to clarify exactly what slipstream is." This is a damning critique for an anthology that claims to be a definition. If a book presents twenty stories and the reader finishes it still asking, "But what is this?" then the book has arguably failed its primary mission. The variations were too broad, the themes too scattered. The reader was left with a sense of arbitrariness, as if the editors had simply grabbed anything that felt a little weird and shoved it into a box labeled "Slipstream."
The critique deepened in the pages of Strange Horizons, where the concerns moved from the practical to the political. The reviewer expressed a profound worry that the definition given in the book was fundamentally flawed. They argued that "slipstream is not a genre" and that an anthology dedicated to it "risks seeming arbitrary in its selections." But the review went further, suggesting that the term itself was problematic. It noted that "slipstream" could be seen as an "imperialist coinage, a land-grab by the ghetto." This is a powerful accusation. It suggests that by trying to create a new genre for work that exists outside the traditional boundaries of science fiction and fantasy, the editors were effectively colonizing that space, trying to force a new label onto work that was already thriving in its ambiguity. It was an attempt to tame the wild, to put a fence around a movement that thrived on its lack of boundaries.
Yet, even in the harshest criticism, there was a grudging admission of the book's power. Strange Horizons conceded that "the quality of the stories in this book, with a couple of exceptions...is not in doubt." This is the central tension of Feeling Very Strange: the stories are undeniably good, even if the container holding them is suspect. The literary merit of the individual pieces stands in stark contrast to the theoretical confusion of the whole. It is a reminder that great fiction often defies the boxes we try to put it in. The stories work because they are compelling, not because they fit a definition.
Publishers Weekly echoed this sentiment with a similar proviso. They stated that "While these intriguing stories (and accompanying essays) may not be enough to define the canon of a new subgenre, they provide plenty of good reading." Here, the magazine acknowledges the failure of the book to achieve its theoretical goal while celebrating its success as a reading experience. It is a book that works despite its own premise. The essays, the arguments, and the stories may not have created a new canon, but they did create a vibrant conversation. They provided a space where the boundaries of fiction could be tested, stretched, and broken.
Some voices were less qualified in their praise, finding a joy in the very ambiguity that frustrated others. Susurrus Magazine captured the essence of the reading experience perfectly: "though it's hard to define exactly what is happening, it's a pleasure to read." This is perhaps the most honest review of the book. It admits the confusion, the lack of a clear definition, but prioritizes the emotional and intellectual pleasure of the engagement. The book is a pleasure precisely because it is hard to define. It is a celebration of the strange, the uncertain, and the unclassifiable. To demand a clear definition from Feeling Very Strange is to miss the point of the entire exercise.
The essays within the "I Want My 20th Century Schitzoid Art" section are just as vital as the fiction. They provide the intellectual scaffolding for the stories, offering different perspectives on what it means to write and read slipstream. Some authors argue for the genre's necessity, seeing it as the only way to capture the complexity of the modern world. Others reject the label entirely, preferring to see their work as simply good fiction. The inclusion of these conflicting viewpoints turns the anthology into a dynamic forum rather than a static collection. It forces the reader to participate in the debate, to weigh the arguments, and to decide for themselves whether slipstream is a valid category or a marketing invention.
This internal conflict is what makes the book so relevant to anyone interested in the mechanics of publishing and genre. The struggle to define slipstream is a microcosm of the larger struggle within the literary world to categorize and market fiction. Publishers need categories to sell books; they need to know which shelf to put a book on, which audience to target, and how to describe it to a bookseller. But writers often resist these categories, creating work that transcends the boundaries. Feeling Very Strange is the collision point between the commercial need for categorization and the artistic need for freedom.
The date of publication, 2006, is significant. It was a time when the internet was beginning to change the way people consumed media, and the rigid boundaries of genre were starting to crumble. The rise of online communities allowed readers to find and share work that didn't fit traditional categories. The concept of slipstream was becoming more relevant as the world itself became more surreal, more fragmented, and more difficult to pin down. The anthology arrived at a moment when the definition of reality was shifting, and the genre of slipstream was perfectly positioned to explore that shift.
Yet, the legacy of Feeling Very Strange is complicated. It did not succeed in creating a unified canon or a universally accepted definition. The critics were right; the genre remains slippery, and the term is still used with varying degrees of precision. But the book did succeed in something perhaps more important: it brought the conversation into the light. It forced the literary world to acknowledge the existence of this strange, hybrid fiction. It gave a name to a feeling that many readers had experienced but could not articulate. It provided a platform for writers who felt marginalized by the traditional genre labels.
The human cost of this literary struggle is not measured in casualties or destruction, but in the frustration of readers and writers who feel misunderstood. When a genre is rejected or misunderstood, the stories within it can be overlooked. The readers who crave this type of fiction are denied the language to describe their desires. The writers who create this work are denied a community and a market. Feeling Very Strange attempted to solve this by creating a community, even if that community was fractured and argumentative. It gave a voice to the strange, the uncanny, and the unclassifiable.
In the end, the book is a testament to the power of fiction to disrupt. It is a collection of stories that make you feel "very strange," and that is its greatest achievement. The debates about whether it is a genre or a marketing ploy are secondary to the experience of reading the stories themselves. They are stories that linger, that haunt, that challenge your perception of the world. They are the kind of stories that stay with you long after you close the book, forcing you to question the reality you thought you knew.
For the reader who has just finished "The beautiful terror of publication," Feeling Very Strange offers a deeper background into the mechanics of how stories are named, sold, and understood. It shows that the process of defining a genre is not just an academic exercise; it is a struggle for identity, for visibility, and for the right to tell a story that doesn't fit the mold. The book is a reminder that the most powerful stories are often the ones that refuse to be categorized, the ones that slip through the cracks, the ones that make us feel very strange.
The mixed reviews and the ongoing debate do not diminish the value of the anthology; they enhance it. They prove that the book is alive, that it continues to provoke thought and discussion. It is a book that demands to be argued with, that refuses to be ignored. It is a testament to the enduring power of the strange, the uncanny, and the unclassifiable. In a world that often demands clarity and certainty, Feeling Very Strange offers a different kind of truth: the truth of the uncertain, the truth of the ambiguous, and the truth of the strange. It is a book that is as difficult to define as the genre it seeks to champion, and that is exactly what makes it so essential.
The legacy of James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel's work is not in the definition they provided, but in the conversation they started. They gave a name to a feeling, a space to a movement, and a voice to the strange. They showed us that the boundaries of fiction are not walls, but horizons, and that the most interesting stories are the ones that lie just beyond them. Feeling Very Strange is a book that will continue to be read, debated, and enjoyed, not because it solved the problem of genre, but because it embraced the mystery of it. It is a book that reminds us that the best stories are the ones that make us feel a little lost, a little confused, and a lot alive. And in the end, that is the only definition that really matters.