Confused!

[emilycross]

So, i was wondering if someone could help me out? I thought i'd just come to grips with what Magic Realism and Slipstream were, when i glanced at the 'reading list' for this section.

Could someone tell me what is interstitial fiction? New Weird?

Are these just labels for the same thing? or are they very different from Slipstream?

[Liosse de Velishaf]

Slipstream refers to fiction that falls between the spec fic and mainstream (literary) fiction genres. Interstitial refers to fiction that falls between any set of two or more genres. So, in one sense, slipstream is a form of interstitial fiction.

[Dawnstorm]

When genre-people want to advertise genre works to the "literary establishment", they point towards people like Ray Bradbury, or Ursula K. Le Guin. Bruce Sterling (genre writer) thought it would be fun and reverse the game: what books praised by the "literary establishment" are of interest to genre readers? He came up with a list, and a name "slipstream". So we get books like Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor, or Martin Amis' Time's Arrow, or non-genre work by genre authors, such as Michael Moorcock's Mother London. It's basically a marketing bridge, little else.

I know little about "intersticial", other than it's actually a movement with their own homepage (http://www.interstitialarts.org/wordpress/). It appears to just generally cross borders, even between art-mediums (writing, painting, music...). Note the *.org ending of the webpage.

New Weird is a movement within spec-fic that lumps together fantasy and SF, and has very similar goals to the New Wave. The people who coined the term have moved on, though, and it's mostly a marketing label now.

Magic(al) Realism is a European post-surrealist movement in painting that seeped over into literature, a South American movment influenced by said movement and inspired by a European-Native conflict of world views, a critical term referring to South American trends in fiction (Angel Flores (1955) (http://books.google.at/books?id=Zzs_cLhfd9wC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=angel+Flores+%22magical+realism+%22&source=bl&ots=Tg7EouRWmP&sig=ffvKtIa8RXGmM4eTlWfesM8ndrg&hl=de&ei=sr2aSoLPCIL1_AahrqnGCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=angel%20Flores%20%22magical%20realism%20%22&f=false)), a renewed interest in the method and an application of the term to post-colonial contexts (Marquez & Rushdie, mostly), a blanket term coverin all of that, and a marketing term targeting the distinguished reader.

I've been studying these distinctions for some time now and I'm still confused. Luckily, ending that confusion isn't very important to writing or reading, which is what matters most. If it's about marketing, Magical Realism and New Weird are relevant, although New Weird will - I predict - soon be a historical term (if it isn't already). Magical Realism is here to stay.

[Kitty Pryde]

Read Teh Sticky Of Definitions: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132949

And one on Magical Realism: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133531

[emilycross]

Thanks everyone :)