Before I get to DP's short stories I wanted to say a few things on the subject of genre. Bruce Sterling came up with the term "slipstream" to describe books that aren't precisely mainstream literature but aren't science fiction either. I believe he wants his own writing to escape the taint that sf has acquired because of its awful marketing conventions (Buck Rogers and “peeled eyeball” covers) and popular perception as a domain of geeky, fan-fiction-writing amateurs. Knowing what the field has to offer, when I hear my literature-reading friends say "I don't read science fiction," I get steamed. On the one hand, it's hard to defend a genre that looks so juvenile, but on the other, you have to wonder if they've ever read Burroughs or Pynchon or Orwell. DP's novels were all originally published within the sf field, where they no doubt baffled many an adolescent boy, and I sometimes fantasize about how they might be marketed the second time around. I imagine sleek covers with muted computer graphics and jacket copy describing DP as "a literary dimension-hopper, blinking from one set of genre conventions to another in relentless, techno-pastoral-visionary narratives." Is that farfetched? Look at what she's written: a metaphysical detective story (Mister Justice), Night of the Living Dead- style horror (The Spinner), a proto-cyberpunk, Taylorist nightmare (I, Zombie), books set in the future that read like ancient mythology (Doomtime, Earthchild), and an Appalachian vampire yarn (Blood County)!! If Jack Womack and J. G. Ballard can be discreetly moved over to the "fiction" section at your local bookstore, why not this writer?

- tom moody 3-11-2002 12:36 am