In aerodynamics, a “slipstream” is the region behind a moving object in which a wake of fluid (typically air or water) is moving at velocities comparable to that of the moving object, such as the the wake behind a speeding boat or jet plane. Most do not know though, that the term has another use: a genre of literature originally described by science fiction author Bruce Sterling in his 1989 essay of the same name. Sterling’s own description of slipstream as a genre is slippery at best, but it can be summarized as a movement growing out of both science fiction and literary fiction, blending the qualities of both into a stranger amalgamation, unfamiliar to both of its parents. For Sterling, slipstream was the wake behind the accelerating body of mainstream literature at the turn of the millenium, where writers sought to describe the ever stranger conditions of modern existence by transcending the constraints of genre that commercial publishing demands they fit into.

At least, that’s what Sterling thought. The fact of the matter is that “slipstream” has never exactly caught on as a term and not many of authors have self-conciously associated themselves with it. Despite that fact, the idea of “slipstream” has remained in the substrata of literary criticism: a genre whose name hardly describes what it is and who has no conscious acolytes. 

2006’s “Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology” sought to bring the genre into wider circulation, providing a smorgasboard of authors (including luminaries like Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, and Michael Chabon) who the editors felt emodied in their words, “21st Century Schizoid Art”. Ben and I sat down to talk about the anthology, the stories therein, the concept of “slipstream” and the strange place the whole concept of genre finds itself in in 2023. 

We hope you enjoy the conversation.