

The same is true of older Detective or Thriller fiction. In traditional, ye-olde, Mystery fiction, the mystery is all-important and the characters and atmosphere are fleshed out as a by-product, if indeed they get fleshed out at all. Of course it can be backed-up by anything you like: science fiction, fantasy, deviant psychology, whatever you want. Instead, it often concentrates on the everyday, and things becoming very strange, or out of place. No giant conspiracies, no huge space-faring or mine-dwelling empires, poised to take over the world or anything like that. It tries to be subtle, usually, and avoid things being 'epic'. But, being modern, it has some important differences. Slipstream, at least as I see it, is the modern approach to the Mystery/Macabre genre. The 'unexpected', is most important in Slipstream. I personally - and I'm not alone - see Roald Dahl as the grandfather of Slipstream, particularly with regard to his 'Tales Of The Unexpected' works.

A number of authors identify themselves as Slipstream authors, and it is starting to appear as a genre/category on book listing sites. 'Slipstream' is a neologism and may be regarded as somewhat dubious, but it is getting used more and more.

I am going to write a small piece on it up on my GoodReads blog, but I don't know when, so please take the below as my views. Even as a casual science fiction reader I've heard of hard science fiction before, but what is You describe the book as "Slipstream and Hard Science Fiction". Rob : A little about the book, before we get started on the technical side. The others seem to be getting very good responses, but Black Prince is the one that makes 'em jump up and down. Jon : Ah that's fantastic! A lot of people seem to *love* that story (if I may be so bold). I couldn't put down "Black Prince" once I started. Rob : Hi Jon, I read a little bit, to get a feel for your writing. I certainly learned a lot from Jon about what is involved in using OpenOffice and other open source tools together to produce an e-book. Since I know the topic of e-book production is of interest to many OpenOffice users, I asked Jon if he'd consent to an interview (via email) on this topic, to which he agreed. He was finishing up a new volume of short stories, Stories of an Awkward Size and was seeking permission to mention Apache OpenOffice in the book's colophon. Authoring e-Books in Apache OpenOffice: An Interview with Jon Swords-HoldsworthĪ few months ago we received an email from Jon Swords-Holdsworth, an author of "slipstream and hard science fiction" from Melbourne, Australia.
