Comments on: Thoughts About Thoughts to Think About Before Reading FEELING VERY STRANGE

By: Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology « Everything Is Nice

Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology « Everything Is Nice — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:58:50 +0000

[...] a lack of faith that their audience will find their reading of it persuasive.) As Alan DeNiro points out Greg Egan can make a reader feel very strange and, in fact, a great deal of core SF is far stranger [...]

By: Now All Slipstream Until The End « Torque Control

Now All Slipstream Until The End « Torque Control — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 08:11:10 +0000

[...] #8216;Slipstream’ Business” (Benjamin Rosenbaum, August 2006; comments) “Thoughts To Think About Before Reading Feeling Very Strange” (Alan DeNiro, August 2006) SLIP [...]

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:50:39 +0000

Niall> Right–Greg Egan can make a reader feel very, very strange. It would be interesting to take this even further and find how “cognitive dissonance” bleeds into the age-old “sense of wonder.”

David> I think you point to something important there. Mapping a reader-response might be easier in a relatively stable reading community (like SF/F), but with a project that is supposed to be trans-genre or even non-genre, the affect mapping becomes much more problematic as a way to talk about what brings a certain set of weird stories together.

By: David Moles

David Moles — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 09:08:45 +0000

On which note, I think pomo is more about reading than writing….

By: David Moles

David Moles — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 08:47:30 +0000

It comes to mind that trying to say what a story is, in the absence of a reader, is like trying to say what a word means in the absence of a hearer. Just because you can build whole academic departments around it doesn’t mean you’re talking about something that actually exists.

By: Fred Ollinger

Fred Ollinger — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 14:46:10 +0000

I can’t wait to read this book. I saw it in a local bookstore lately. Not that I can afford it for another year or so. I’m saving up for the single beer I’m going to drink at quizzo tonight.

However I got a book on China’s short stories which should be fun.

I thought that this whole slipstream thing was great b/c many people said that wow, this just means that Sterling discovered pomo. I’m wondering what’s the difference? Of course, artists will always try to break out of their pigeonholes so we’ll see. I’d like to see a book that’s part slipstream part pomo. I can see that this is probably missing the point which is the point.

Fred

By: Niall

Niall — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 00:29:17 +0000

What I think is tricky about pinning down an affect-based literature is the attempt to define the undefinable.

Do you consider horror an affect-based literature? I think I do, and I think it’s possible to recognise something as horror without necessarily being personally horrified by it. We can recognise the way it works. Same with slipstream, perhaps.

Maybe that’s the crux of the issue: how speculative and fantastic literature is inherently about “cognitive dissonance”.

Or indeed cognitive estrangement, per Suvin. Which I think is one of the problems with Kessel and Kelly’s intro; one of the holes it doesn’t plug.

By: Big Blog of Cheese » “Stories, on a basic level, can’t make anyone feel anything. They’re only linguistic intermediaries, membranes.”

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 10:05:36 +0000

[...] anes.” August 12, 2006 Posted by Niall in reading. trackback Alan DeNiro and Ben Rosenbaum with more thoughts on slipstream, the latter via Gwenda. See also th [...]