Feeling Very Strange is the second "please don't call us science fiction or fantasy" anthology of the summer. Unlike the "new wave fabulists" in Paraspheres, this collection is more firmly rooted in the genre; editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel are well-recognized SF&F authors in their own right, as are most of the anthologized writers (the exceptions are Aimee Bender, George Saunders and Michael Chabon, though the latter has of late made a point of writing in the genre). Moreover, the subtitle employs a term originated by cyberpunker Bruce Sterling back in 1989. This is "The Slipstream Anthology," though the stylistic variations among the selections don't help to clarify exactly what slipstream is. The editors themselves note that they weren't sure "there was such a thing as slipstream... In fact, it's probably safe to say that very few if any of the writers we include here -- even those aware of the debate over slipstream -- would acknowledge that they set out to write in this brave new genre. Several contributors to this book expressed surprise that we thought their work might be slipstream."

Indeed, a unique feature of this anthology is the inclusion of transcripts from Chronoautic Log, the blog of David Moles, in which folks debate what the hell slipstream might be. Particularly funny is when participants decide to start their own movement, "infernokrusher." As Benjamin Rosenbaum puts it, "We must now all swear to a solemn vow to say everywhere with a straight face, 'Slipstream? Never heard of it. Do you know about infernokrusher fiction, though. Exciting new movement.' We can do this, people."

To put this is some context, Sterling's original rant in the SF Eye #5 proposed "slipstream" as the anti-science fiction, a backlash against "Shared-world anthologies. Braided meganovels. Role-playing tie-ins. Sharecropping books written by pip-squeaks under the blazoned name of established authors. Sequels of sequels, trilogy sequels of yet-earlier trilogies, themselves cut-and-pasted from yet-earlier trilogies. What's the common thread here? The belittlement of individual creativity, and the triumph of anonymous product." In its place, he proposed an anti-category, slipstream: "a contemporary kind of writing which has set its face against consensus reality. It is a fantastic, surreal sometimes, speculative on occasion, but not rigorously so. It does not aim to provoke a 'sense of wonder' or to systematically extrapolate in the manner of classic science fiction. Instead, this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange (my emphasis); the way that living in the late twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility."

Fiction that makes you "feel very strange" is the titular catchall by which Kessel and Kelley define slipstream, whatever that is; consequently, unlike its "competitor" volume of "paraspheres," whatever that exactly is, it seems something more readily identifiable. Though it still leaves us in the same state as what a Supreme Court judge once famously said of pornography that, lacking a precise definition, "I know it when I see it."

Perhaps the best definition, even while it is poking fun at all this academic meditation, is offered by Jeffrey Ford's meta-fictional "Bright Morning," in which a writer meets his alter-ego in a series of Kafkaesque events, the irony being that the narrator's work is typically described as "Kafkaesque." (A synergistic sidenote is that the cover of Feeling Very Strange carries this quote from Kafka: "A story should be an axe to break the frozen sea within us.")

Here's how the non-Ford narrator of the story Ford wrote describes his (and presumably Ford's as well) œuvre:

My novels are fantasy/adventure stories with a modicum of metaphysical whim-wham that some find to be insightful and others have termed "overcooked navel gazing." Granted, there are no elves or dragons or knights or wizards in these books, but they are still fantasies, none the less, I mean if you have a flying head, a town with a pantopticon that floats in the clouds, a monster that sucks the essence out of hapless victims through their ears, what the hell else can you call it? At first glance, it would seem that any writer would be proud to have their work compared to that of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, but upon closer inspection it becomes evident that in today's publishing world, when a novel does not fit a prescribed format, it immediately becomes labeled Kafkaesque. The hope is, of course, that this will be interpreted as meaning exotic, when, in fact, it translates to the book-buying public as obscure. Kafka has become a place, a condition, a boundary to which it is perceived only the pretentious are drawn and only total lunatics will cross.

David Soyka is a former journalist and college teacher who writes the occasional short story and freelance article. He makes a living writing corporate marketing communications, which is a kind of fiction without the art.