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Slipstream is a literary genre or category of speculative fiction that blends together science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction, or otherwise does not remain within conventional boundaries of genre and narrative. It directly extends from the experimentation of the New Wave science fiction movement while also borrowing from fantasy, psychological fiction, philosophical fiction and other genres or styles of literature.
Historical examples of the genre were partially codified in ; contemporary examples include Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez, and The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender.Manusos, Lyndsie. "Too Weird or Not Weird Enough: What is Slipstream?" Book Riot, 15 June 2021.
It was invented by my friend the late Richard Dorsett while the two of us were discussing a category of non-genre fantasy books that we had no name for. "They're certainly not mainstream," I said, and "Why not slipstream?" he suggested, and I thought it was a pretty good coinage.
Sterling later described it in an article originally published in SF Eye #5, in July 1989, as "a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction credits Sterling with inventing the related term of "slipstream sf" for works that "make use of sf devices but which are not Genre SF".
Science fiction authors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, editors of , argued cognitive dissonance is at the heart of slipstream, and it is not so much a genre as a literary effect, like horror or comedy. Similarly, Christopher Priest, in his introduction to Anna Kavan's genre-defying but arguably slipstream novel Ice, writes "the best way to understand slipstream is to think of it as a state of mind or a particular approach, one that is outside of all categorisation. ... slipstream induces a sense of 'otherness' in the audience, like a glimpse into a distorting mirror."Kavan, Anna. Foreword. Ice. By Christopher Priest. Peter Owen Publishers.
In her 2012 volume Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, Grace Dillon identified a current of Native American Slipstream that predates and anticipates the timeframe for slipstream, notably including Gerald Vizenor's 1978 short story "Custer on the Slipstream".
Other science fiction authors and fans claim "that slipstream is a term that lumps together metafiction, Magic realism, surrealism, experimental fiction, counter-realism", and Postmodernism writing, and/or applies to a story with themes coming from one or more of these literary influences.
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