Slipstream— denoting forms of speculative fiction that do not remain in conventional boundaries of genre and narrative, directly extending fron the experimentation of the New Wave SF movement while borrowing from fantasy, psychological fiction, philosophical fiction and other.... (I still have no idea what this is )
If you're curious, pick up the 2006 anthology Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. It's out of print, but easily available online. The editors were attempting to define the genre as best they could, so they included a variety of stories that were universally called "slipstream," even if no one could articulate why, as well as excerpts of important online discussions about the genre. As I recall, some folks argued that it wasn't even a distinct genre at all, just magical realism written by authors outside Latin America. In any case, there are some excellent stories in the anthology, so it's a good read.
Went to the "Genre" page of a publisher/bookseller. it had all your typical genres (Romance, Fantasy, Mystery, Speculative, Hybrid etc)..... then at the end of the genre list had "WTF?" which, i'm assuming, were books that were just too weird/in a genre all its own
That covered both star trek, and firefly. Gene Rodenberry's elevator pitch for Star Trek was "cowboys in space"
A lot of space opera is essentialy sci-fi Western, with planets standing in for continents and space for oceans. Many of Andre Norton's stories were about escaping the civilized Old World to the wild frontier of some unexplored wilderness planet.
I want some writing from me to be like magic and supernatural fantasy, in stone age settings. That would be unique, would it not? It would have everything go in an alternate direction from what we know of coming since the stone ages.
I believe the term he used was "Wagon Train To The Stars" But by the 3rd season the network producers were pushing him for Freak Of The Week and it shows.
I have been showing what would suggest this way of my writing magic and supernatural fantasy in what would possibly be stone age settings, in what has been shared as samples. I avoid mention of articles familiar to us necessarily made in civilization, yet with mention of fanciful articles, including such that are magical. Catriona, I have read Jean Auel's Earth Children books, and they are inspiring, while I did have ideas for this already previous to that.
Why does this remind me so, so much of Mel Brooks' A History of the World, Part I? Hey, if Mel Brooks could do Jews in Space, why not a film segment about actual, Wild West cowboys in space. "COWBOYS! IN! SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE.." Oh, wait -- oh, no. *facepalm* Let's not let the bad guys be Native Americans. Instead ... how about our "cowboys in space" simply sitting around drinking rotgut and eating beans, when the antagonists show up -- and they would be the ranch owners. "Git off yer keisters, boys! Our cows are stampedin' again!!" And the "stampeding cows" would be tiny little escape modules, who are leaving the ranch owners' spaceship. Why? Because the ranch owners kept someone (good guys? Bad guys? Neutrals?) prisoner, and they somehow escaped, overpowered the ranch owners' guards, and are trying to escape. Time for the Space Cowboys to make a decision! Is it exciting-chase-and-laser-firin' time? Or do they stand up to their bosses and go renegade? (As a bonus, there have been more than a few Jews in the Wild West, so they could have a song too. "We're Jews in the west! We keep our heads down, avoidin' a racist pest..." Yes, I know Mel Brooks already did that in Blazing Saddles. And actually, he was right; quite a few Jews also joined Native American tribes, and one of them even became a kind of tribal chief, so having a part-Jewish, part-Native-American chief isn't completely ludicrous. If you're curious what Mel Brooks is saying, here's the same scene, but with subtitles. And here's a little more about Jewish pioneers in the Wild West, from the National Endowment for the Humanities). Anyway, sorry to go on about this. I just thought it was interesting. I hope you do too.
I have experimented in some recent writing with avoiding mention of articles familiar to us necessarily made in civilization, and also with giving mention of fanciful articles, including such that are magical, not familiar to us. There can be a challenge in this with mentioning transportation, so I have made mention just of fanciful vehicles that do not necessarily have to have explanation of derivation from anything of civilization. They are really possibly powered by a magic source. I mention possibility of powerful spirits in such writing.
This reminds me of the way Andre Norton used to write in her science fiction novels. She loved native Americans and had deeply studied them, and often her characters seemed to be very similar, or even were descendents of natives. Even in the high-tech world of a space ship, or when they carried technological weapons with them out into the wilderness of an unknown planet, the technology always had very simple names that only describe what they do, like a blaster, a needler, a tangler, a flitter or a crawler. At first you have to wonder whether it's a creature of some kind, and then when it's revelaed to be a machine it still isn't described in any detail. The crawlers even run on programs that allow them to find their way to a destination around obstacles, so really they seem like animals. It seems to be the mentality of the characters, who think in these simple natural terms rather than in a sharply conscious/scientific way. It's like they have a deeply spiritual connectedness to the earth or to a planet's natural environment. Honestly I think they see even technology as living things with a spirit, if perhaps one limited by its programming. Or possibly evil because it's man-made and designed to be utilitarian and to serve us rather than connected to nature organically.
It is this way avoiding description of what would necessarily be derived from more developed civilization and referring to things available to people for a very long time that would make stories from me feel more timeless that I worked toward this writing I work on for the alternate direction of people in the stone age, with other means more supernatural. Hence there are artifacts and unique materials in the writing that make it possible. Leaders and some in special positions have much being made possible with the materials they have come to have access to, that would be magic to any others. A separate history will develop from that, without civilization even being there.
I read an authors bio that described himself as a "YF author"...... YF= Young (Adult) Fantasy (FYI....)
