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by @SarahWeave6
Slipstream is more like a feeling you get from a work, rather than a genre of fiction: while has attributes of blending different speculative fiction genres, it doesn't have to be speculative per say, but rather have a recurring dreamlike feeling similar to magic realism: suppose you lived in an every time suburban neighborhood, and one of your high school bullies is walking casually in front of a car because they're walking on the side of the road. In our world, we might call the cops, or at the very least politely (or slap if you're the sort) talk to the person and try to get them off of the road. But in a slipstream city, due to the nature of the setting, the car might drive right through the person, and the person doesn't know the car is there: they go through it like a ghost and continue minding their own business walking to school one morning.
The reality in a work of slipstream is ambiguous and ill-defined. The nature of reality as we know is not completely clear. Whether the execution is through technology or through magic, generally it is a form of fiction without a particular ideology. Slipstream Science fiction generally is often similar to soft science fiction, although it's possible to write hard science fiction in a slipstream dreamlike setting. Slipstream fantasy, like magic realism, generally tends to be set in our own world rather than a secondary world.
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The difference between Urban Fantasy, Slipstream, and Magic Realism/Surrealism is a matter of degree. William Gibson's Pattern Recognition is set in an everyday setting but features a protagonist with skill sets that make it ever so slightly into the territory of science fiction. In Wind Up Bird Chronicle, is it isn't set in a fantasy setting, rather it treats the past as immediate and alive as the present, and features the Tokyo underworld. As a couple of examples. They both have a treatment of the criminal underworld, although Murakami takes it a step further exploring its origin and history since the time of world war II.
I did not pick the label of slipstream or trans realism myself, rather it is one of those feelings that kind of get handed to me by the ghost of fiction's past, perhaps due to father Christmas telling them of the fact that he is merely a character in the story of life. Over Christmas, I had difficulty articulating exactly what it is I'm wanting to write next. For a long time I wanted to write children's stories, but as of yet have some difficulty formulating the plot for the next chapter book series or so. So here I am writing Slipstream Sci-Fi for the time being.
