Is Slipstream Just a Fancy Word for Voice?

by Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold

Originally published in IROSF. April 2005

 

Slipstream, slipstream, we all got slipstream.  It’s been a hot topic these last few years, at Tangent Online[1], in the pages of Asimov’s[2], and elsewhere in print and across the Internet.  What is slipstream and why do we care?

We have Bruce Sterling to thank for the nomenclature.  In his seminal essay on the topic in SF Eye #5, the Bruce defined the new genre as follows:

This genre is not “category” S...