A Working Canon of Slipstream Writings: Readercon 18, July 2007
A Working Canon of Slipstream Writings: Readercon 18, July 2007
A Working Canon of Slipstream Writings: Readercon 18, July 2007
"I've felt, more strongly as I've grown older, that reality's always
somewhere else. You can't take reality in your hand, it's a perfume and
it's everywhere. But I've never been able to find out where it comes
from, so I'm left wondering, is it real?"
— Peter Barnes, Introduction to Plays: Two
The following list was created by the Panelists on the “Slipstream / Fabulation / Magic
Realism Canon” Panel before we knew that Fabulation and Magic Realism were being
added to the list; neither is considered by any of us to be identical generically to one
another or to Slipstream, though overlaps do occur.
Nominations for a working Slipstream canon were received from F. Brett Cox, Paul Di
Filippo, Ron Drummond, Theodora Goss, John Kessel, Victoria McManus, Graham
Sleight, and Catherynne M. Valente, with supplementary titles suggested by John
Crowley and Kelly Link. The eight panelists then voted on every title on the resulting
list of 264 books (plus four authors whose “complete works” were also nominated),
assigning zero, one, two, or three points to each title. The results were tabulated and
ranked by vote, and then separated into two lists.
On the primary list, “A Working Canon of Slipstream Writings”, which contains 112
books and three authors’ complete works, only works that received ten or more votes
were included. Then, to sharpen the usefulness of the list, the top 27 items, listed in
bold type, can be safely considered “The Core Canon of Slipstream”; these works all
received 15 or more votes each. Only one work, Borges’s Collected Fictions, received
3 votes from all eight panelists, for 24 votes total (though the top nine titles received
20 or more votes each).
In creating the rankings, works sharing a single vote total are ranked chronologically
by publication date, from earliest to latest (though posthumously-published collections
and “complete works” are placed based on the year of the given author’s death). So,
for example, Dhalgren and Burning Your Boats received 21 votes each, but the Delany
is placed first because it’s the earlier work. Yes, the system is somewhat arbitrary,
but the whole enterprise is as well: and this is a working list.
A secondary list, of the bottom 152 titles (plus one author’s complete works), is
provided as a list of “Other Important Non-Canonical Slipstream or Slipstream-related
Writings”.
Two supplementary lists are also appended: A list of women writers of slipstream,
compiled by Theodora Goss from suggestions by panelists (see the previous two lists
for specific suggested titles); and a list of slipstream-related works by the panelists
themselves, compiled by F. Brett Cox.
Panelist Ron Drummond compiled the voting list from panelists’ nominations,
tabulated the voting results, researched the titles, compiled the primary and
secondary lists and wrote their respective introductions.
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A Working Canon of Slipstream Writings / July 2007
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A Working Canon of Slipstream Writings / July 2007
45. The Start of the End of It All (coll 1990), Carol Emshwiller
46. Was (1992), Geoff Ryman
47. The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (coll 1994), A.S. Byatt
48. Black Glass (coll 1997), Karen Joy Fowler
49. Ciphers (1997), Paul Di Filippo
50. Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Nalo Hopkinson
51. The Vintage Book of Amnesia (anth 2001), Jonathan Lethem (ed.)
52. In the Forest of Forgetting (2007), Theodora Goss
53. The Complete Stories (coll 1971), Franz Kafka
54. Finnegans Wake (1939), James Joyce
55. The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Shirley Jackson
56. Chimera (1972), John Barth
57. The Woman Warrior (1976), Maxine Hong Kingston
58. Slapstick (1976), Kurt Vonnegut
59. Engine Summer (1979), John Crowley
60. Fundamental Disch (coll 1980), Thomas M. Disch
61. Sixty Stories (coll 1981), Donald Barthelme
62. The House of the Sprits (1982), Isabel Allende
63. The complete works of Samuel Beckett
64. Moonwise (1991), Greer Gilman
65. Brittle Innings (1994), Michael Bishop
66. Pussy, King of Pirates (1996), Kathy Acker
67. Humpty Dumpty: An Oval (1996). Damon Knight
68. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1997), Haruki Murakami
69. A Season in Hell (1873), Arthur Rimbaud
70. Ulysses (1922), James Joyce
71. Lolly Willowes (1926), Sylvia Townsend Warner
72. Steppenwolf (1927), Herman Hesse
73. The Waves (1931), Virginia Woolf
74. The Gormenghast Trilogy (1946-1959), Mervyn Peake
75. Lanark (1981), Alasdair Gray
76. Blood and Guts in High School (1984), Kathy Acker
77. The Bridge (1986), Iain Banks
78. The Hidden Side of the Moon (1987), Joanna Russ
79. Vineland (1990), Thomas Pynchon
80. Adventures in Unhistory (coll 2006), Avram Davidson
81. As She Climbed Across the Table (1997), Jonathan Lethem
82. The Godhead Trilogy (Towing Jehovah, Blameless in Abaddon, The Eternal
Footman) (1994-99), James Morrow
83. In the Stone House (coll 2000), Barry Malzberg
84. Perdido Street Station (2000), China Mieville
85. Kappa Child (2001), Hiromi Goto
86. Sister Noon (2001), Karen Joy Fowler
87. Report to the Men's Club and Other Stories (coll 2002), Carol Emshwiller
88. Set This House in Order (2003), Matt Ruff
89. Black Juice (2004), Margo Lanagan
90. The Labyrinth (2004), Catherynne M. Valente
91. Map of Dreams (2006), M. Rickert
92. Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Luigi Pirandello
93. The Glass Bead Game (1943), Hermann Hesse
94. Ice (1967), Anna Kavan
95. City Life (coll 1970), Donald Barthelme
96. Grendel (1971), John Gardner
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A Working Canon of Slipstream Writings / July 2007
97. Strangeness (anth 1977), Thomas M. Disch and Charles Naylor (eds)
98. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Milan Kundera
99. Empire of the Sun (1984), J.G. Ballard
100. Days Between Stations (1985), Steve Erickson
101. Tainaron: Mail From Another City (1985), Leena Krohn
102. Forty Stories (coll 1987), Donald Barthelme
103. Medea: The Sorceress (1991), Diane Wakoski
104. X, Y (1993), Michael Blumlein
105. The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye (coll 1996), Jonathan Lethem
106. Godmother Night (1996), Rachel Pollack
107. Big Fish (1998), Daniel Wallace
108. House of Leaves (2000), Mark Danielewski
109. The Library (2002), Zoran Zivkovic
110. The Impossible Bird (2002), Patrick O'Leary
111. The Lovely Bones (2002), Alice Sebold
112. Pattern Recognition (2003), William Gibson
113. Cloud Atlas (2004), David Mitchell
114. Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (2004), F. Brett Cox and
Andy Duncan (eds.)
115. The Girl in the Glass (2005), Jeffrey Ford
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The panelists’ consensus, represented by the top ranked titles on the primary list, has
long since unraveled by the time we get to the items on the secondary list. Because a
large majority of the works on this secondary list received only single nominations
(though far more often than not each of those works received votes from more than
one panelist), it seemed important to identify the nominators; the nominators’ initials
are therefore listed following each title.
I think this secondary list is very important, because it contains many relatively
obscure titles that are of high quality and deserving of attention but failed to rank
higher due to their very unfamiliarity. (For example, I personally feel that Steve
Erickson's work is quintessentially Slipstream, that he is the most characteristically
Slipstream author—yet only one of his books made it onto the top-115, and that near
the bottom.) Every member of this panel has nominated works of high quality but low
visibility, works that deserve to be more widely read and discussed. Our hope is that
this list will help to bring these neglected works to a wider audience.
– Ron Drummond
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A Working Canon of Slipstream Writings / July 2007
In the spirit of this enterprise and as progenitor of this project, I’ve added five more
titles. No doubt the list would be different if you’d been involved.
- Eric M. Van
The Nominators: F. Brett Cox (BC), Paul Di Filippo (PD), Ron Drummond (RD),
Theodora Goss (TG), John Kessel (JK), Victoria McManus (VM), Graham Sleight (GS),
Catherynne M. Valente (CV); John Crowley (JC), Kelly Link (KL), Eric M. Van (EV)
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A Working Canon of Slipstream Writings / July 2007
F. Brett Cox: “Flannery on Stage” (Indigenous Fiction, June 2001); “When John Moore Shot Carl Bell”
(Carriage House Review, Winter 2001); “My Whole World Lies Waiting” (Rabid Transit: Long Voyages,
Great Lies, 2006)
Ron Drummond: “The Frequency of Liberation” (Science Fiction Eye #12, Summer 1993; available at
http://www.studiolarz.com/erickson/articles/frequencyofliberation.html
John Kessel: "Herman Melville: Space Opera Virtuoso" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
January 1980), reprinted in the author’s collection The Pure Product (Tor, 1997); "Another Orphan"
(F&SF, September 1982), reprinted in the author’s collection Meeting in Infinity (Arkham House, 1992);
"The Lecturer" (Light Years and Dark, ed. Michael Bishop, Berkley, 1984), Meeting in Infinity; "Man"
(Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine, May 1992), Meeting in Infinity; "The Family Vacation" (Infinite Matrix,
September 2002); "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence" (SciFiction, March 2004); "The Red
Phone" (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, July 2005); "Downtown"
Catherynne M. Valente: The Labyrinth (Prime Books, 2004, novel); Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams
(Prime Books, 2005, novel)
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