Slipstreams: A Genre I Just Heard Of

Hi everyone! Yes, I'm back. If you were wondering what happened to me, I got married a month ago (actually, today is our one-month anniversary... huh, how 'bout that??) and went to Hawaii for two weeks for our honeymoon. It was absolutely incredible; the wedding went nearly perfectly, except for some gown mishaps, and Hawaii was probably the best vacation I have ever been on and will go on in a very long time.

But that is not what I wanted to talk about today. Today, I wanted to share something bookish with you all, something I was taught this past weekend at the Children's Literature Association's annual conference. This year the conference was held at Simmons College, my now alma mater (I graduated last month from the library science program). I was lucky enough to be chosen as a volunteer, and as a result I was able to attend the conference for free. The theme was "Literary Slipstreams," and as I attended the panels I got a more clear idea of just what a slipstream is.

Slipstream is apparently a genre that was named in the 1980s by author Bruce Sterling, referring to works that are somewhere between the genres science fiction and fantasy and mainstream fiction. Many of you will be familiar with the term magical realism, which will most likely bring Gabriel Garcia Marquez to mind. Slipstream and magical realism can be one and the same, from my understanding; basically, if you think something is realistic fiction and then all of a sudden find something fantastical happening, you are probably reading a slipstream novel.

I am really glad to know about this genre now; there are a lot of books that I've read that don't quite fit in one genre or the other. I will review a book later on this week that I think fits into this genre, though others might disagree—I'd be interested to hear what you all think.