What Is Interstitial Fiction?

A couple of months back, I made the bold claim that my short story collection Transported is an example of interstitial fiction. “Ah-hah,” you might have thought to yourself, “I must get down to my local bookshop and raid the interstitial fiction shelves at once!”

Or, more likely, you wondered what on earth I was talking about. An understandable response, because “interstitial fiction” hardly trips off the tongue. But interstices are gaps or cracks, in this case gaps or cracks between genres, and much of what I write falls within those cracks. Things that fall through the cracks don’t always get much attention in this cruel world of ours, so this post is here to wave a flag – a multicoloured freak flag – on their behalf.

The concept of interstitial fiction, sometimes called slipstream fiction, is an American invention. It began to be used within the science fiction field in the mid 1990s to describe stories which tended to be published in certain science fiction magazines and anthologies, but which it was difficult to classify in conventional terms as SF.

These stories often used the traditional materials of science fiction – space ships and aliens, time travel and alternate histories – for non-traditional ends, with emphases closer to literary fiction than genre fiction as it had been previously written. Alternatively, they treated mundane materials in science-fictional ways. A parallel development occurred in genre fantasy, often bringing it closer to magic realism than had previously been the case.

Meanwhile, especially in the US, fantasy and SF elements were increasingly being incorporated in mainstream fiction. For example, the novels of Michael Chabon are marketed as literary fiction rather than SF or F, yet most of them have elements which bring them within one or both of those genres in a formal sense. Margaret Atwood, so vigilant against any claims that The Handmaid’s Tale or Oryx and Crake are science fiction (although, as stories set in an imagined future which extrapolate aspects of our own world, they clearly are), nevertheless wrote The Blind Assassin, which interleaved mimetic realism and pulp science fiction within the same novel.

And that’s what interstitial fiction is: fiction that mixes genres, in particular, fiction that interleaves the realistic and the fantastic.

Transported qualifies as interstitial fiction in two ways. It contains a mixture of literary fiction and speculative fiction stories in the one volume (together with some surrealism and flat-out weirdness), and it contains individual stories that mix genres. The paradigm example, and one of my own favourite stories in the book, is “Win a Day with Mikhail Gorbachev”, which mixes science fiction, travelogue, celebrity profile, political history, literary criticism, and the early short stories of Arthur C, Clarke, and comes out with – well, with interstitial fiction.

You can read “Win a Day with Mikhail Gorbachev” as part of the New Zealand Book Council’s Read at Work promotion (although there's a couple of paragraphs missing from this version), or in Transported. You can learn more about interstitial fiction at the Interstitial Arts Foundation. And you can take the wildest ideas you have, mix and match them without regard to genre, and end up with a story that can still find a home with receptive readers.

UPDATE

Helen Rickerby has posted a long and thoughtful assessment of Transported on her blog, which references this post and various others from "Books in the Trees". Thank you, Helen!

Another Good Review for Transported

This review of my short story collection Transported, by reviewer Mandy Evans, appeared in the Marlborough Express on 19 August 2008.

Transported by Breadth of Imagination

Expect to be transported by this collection of short stories and you won’t be disappointed.

From a neighbourhood debate about aliens moving in next door, a changing climate resulting in kiwifruit growing in Otago, an eye transplant that allows a man to better see the stars, and a country so crowded there’s standing room only, Tim Jones’s imagination and his pen range freely.

Jones has previously published two volumes of poetry, and one earlier collection of short stories, however, this is the first work of his I’ve read.

I found his writing polished and easy-to-read. His protagonists are all distinctive characters and the writing tone for each story reflects this. I particularly like that Jones has taken such diverse situations that at times seem like stray thoughts that would flit through most people’s minds and disappear, and turned them into thoughtful stories.

While not every story in the book was to my taste this just serves to prove the breadth of Jones’s imagination. I loved The New Neighbours which featured aliens living among humans. After The War, which tells the tale of one of Tolkien’s Orcs, also appealed to me.

One of the essential ingredients in a short story is its power to surprise; to produce the unexpected. I derive a great deal of satisfaction from reading a collection that does so with a flourish. Most of the stories in this collection finished with a satisfying element of doubt, ensuring the stories linger in the mind.

Snippets: Earthdawn Sale; Readings and Launches; Valley Micropress; Likeable Things

Earthdawn 15th Anniversary Sale

This month marks the 15th anniversary of the roleplaying game Earthdawn. To mark the occasion, publishers RedBrick have discounted the prices of Earthdawn products until 4 September, so you can get my novel Anarya's Secret for a little bit less until then (in hardback, paperback, or e-book via RPGNow or DriveThru).

Readings and Launches

From the social pages: here in Wellington, it's been the season of readings, launches, and both combined. I wasn't able to make the launch of Sue Orr's Etiquette for a Dinner Party: Short Stories, but did attend the Wellington launch of AUP New Poets 3 - Wellingtonian Janis Freegard is one of the three poets included in this volume, together with Katherine Liddy and Reihana Robinson, and Janis ran an enjoyable launch at Mighty Mighty.

I was also an apologetic no-show at the first instalment of the annual Winter Readings Series, which featured the launch of three books by Mark Pirie, including Slips which I reviewed a while back. There's an excellent report on Helen Rickerby's blog.

I'll be there next week, though, when Helen's new book of poetry My Iron Spine is launched with Harvey Molloy MC'ing, and the following week sees the launch of Michael O'Leary's Paneta Street.

I've had a sneak peek at My Iron Spine, and it's excellent.

And the launches don't stop there: Harvey Molloy's Moonshot is not far away from lift-off!

(Enough capital-centrism: there's lots of readings and poetry events right round the country, such as Kay McKenzie Cooke reports on from Dunedin.)

Valley Micropress

I took part recently in a Montana Poetry Day event in Upper Hutt, and organiser Tony Chad kindly sent me a copy of the "Poetry Olympics" booklet arising from the event, and also a copy of the magazine he edits, Valley Micropress. This is a monthly - that's right, monthly - poetry magazine which Tony produces. Subscriptions cost NZ $30 per annum, and contributions are mainly from subscribers, but also include other work at the editor's discretion. If you'd like to know more, please email Tony, tony.chad (at) clear.net.nz

Likeable Things: Second Instalment

maps, a poem by Jill Jones

The Bibliophilia shop, which sells the handmade books of Meliors Simms

Blackmail Press 22

Strange Horizons

Eating Greengages, a beautiful piece of writing by Fionnaigh McKenzie.

A few things I've learned about writing poetry, a very useful and interesting blog post by Janis Freegard.

Is Literary Fiction a Genre?

Via a comment which Steve Malley left on my blog, I discovered a vigorous — and very comment-rich — discussion by genre fiction writers on the perceived deficiencies of (some) literary fiction, a discussion carried on here after starting here. (Coincidentally, Polly Frost tackles the same topic from a different angle over at The Short Review.)

Apart from the debatable characterisation of Chaucer as some kind of early literary academic, I thought it was a very interesting discussion: and since I write both literary and genre fiction, and have even folded both in together in my short story collection Transported, I thought I would try to come up with a response.

At the core of Charles Gramlich's complaint is this question:

Can someone please explain why “literary” writers get to freely eviscerate the normal rules of writing but don’t get called on it, while you or I would be pilloried soundly if we tried the same thing?

My immediate reaction was to say that "the normal rules of writing" apply to genre fiction but not to literary fiction, but that did not seem adequate. I've read plenty of books which are classified as genre fiction (in particular those genres I'm most interested in, science fiction and fantasy) but which break the rules Charles lists.

What's more, literary fiction seems to have rules of its own. In a New Zealand context, these might be:

Write mimetic ("realistic") fiction ...
about middle-class and upper-middle class characters ...
with no significant political interests or concerns ...
who do not experience anything which could be labelled a "plot" ...
and whose close personal relationships ...
... and personal emotional development are of paramount interest in the fiction.

These "rules" have changed over time; formerly, working class characters were more common, and latterly, the stranglehold of realism has eased. But I think the most characteristic feature of literary fiction is the absence, or at least the downplaying, of plot, and of narrative in general.

After the fashion of Carrie Bradshaw, doyenne of Manolo Blahniks and really large closets, I ask the readers of this blog this question: are the set of characteristics I've listed above a reasonable description of much New Zealand literary fiction, and if so, are they distinctive enough to act as a set of rules for literary fiction?

In other words (Carrie sits cross-legged on her bed, looking down at her laptop):

• Is literary fiction a genre?

The MA in Creative Writing: The Controversy Resumes

The Victoria University MA in Creative Writing is an object of desire (for those thinking of applying), hope (for those who have applied), envy, and controversy. It plays such a large part in the New Zealand literary scene, especially in Wellington, that it would be most surprising if this were not the case.

My own feelings about the MA (now joined by a PhD in Creative Writing) are mixed. For the record, I have neither taken, nor applied for, the MA. I have taken two undergraduate creative writing courses at Victoria: a Writing Short Fiction course taught by Robert Onopa in 2000, during which I wrote the first draft of "The Wadestown Shore", one of the stories in Transported; and the Writing the Landscape course taught by Dinah Hawken, in 2003.

Both courses were valuable, but I have particularly fond memories of Writing the Landscape and of Dinah's tutelage. About 1/3 of the poems in All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens were written for, or during, that course, and it sparked my most productive period as a poet. (I'm down to about three poems a year now!) So, on the basis of my own experience, I have no reason to think that the MA, being longer, wouldn't be even better.

The two complaints most commonly made about the Victoria MA (and creative writing MA/MFA programmes in general) is that they lead to work that is written for an audience of one — the assessor — or several — the classmates; and that the products of the course are too homogeneous. The second, if true, may well be an outcome of the first.

I'm aware that many fine books (such as Mary McCallum's The Blue and Johanna Aitchison's A Long Girl Ago) have come out of the Victoria MA. In my experience, the books produced are surprisingly diverse. So I'm not too bothered about those issues.

My concern is more about the market power of the Victoria MA and other such courses. Quite apart from the benefits to the participants' writing, there appears to be a clear commercial benefit to graduating from the Victoria MA. Graduates' work is more likely to be published in such literary journals as Sport, more likely to be published in book form, more likely to attract Creative New Zealand funding, and more likely to gain literary awards.

Viewed one way, that's a fair reward from the amount of effort and stress people have to go through to to be accepted for the course, let alone complete it; but from my viewpoint, in such a small literary market as New Zealand, the Victoria MA exerts an undue dominance. The published books of MA graduates are, in my experience, never poor, and often excellent; but what other voices might be heard, what other books might be published and promoted, if the MA did not loom so large?

These musings were sparked off by this post by Joanna Preston on the vexed subject of creative writing courses (and here's a contrasting viewpoint about the role of the workshop instructor). What do you think? Is the Victoria MA in Creative Writing good, bad, or indifferent for New Zealand writers and New Zealand literature?

Transported: Reviews

I thought it was time to collect the reviews of Transported that are available online into one post. So here they are:

• The Nelson Mail review by Jessica Le Bas. (Rather bizarrely, this could be found online for a while, via a Russian website, then disappeared - so I posted much of it on this blog.)
  
• The Listener review by Steve Walker - and my subsequent reaction to it.
  
• Trevor Reeves' review in Southern Ocean Review (about halfway down this reviews column)
  
• Majella Cullinane's review in The Short Review (UK) - plus an author interview.
  

That's all the online reviews I know of. If you've seen another, please post a comment with the details.

New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors

My fantasy novel Anarya's Secret, set in the universe of the Earthdawn roleplaying game, was on the ballot for Best Adult Novel at the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand's local equivalent of the Hugo Awards. The award was won by Russell Kirkpatrick's novel Path of Revenge, and I was impressed by the quality and range of the novels and other works up for awards, and the number of them that had found international publication.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ) has provided a measure of this upsurge in New Zealand science fiction and fantasy by listing books in the field by New Zealand authors. The listing was based on one created by Jack Ross, subsequently updated by Alan Robson.

Although the listing (split into A-L and M-Z) is short on bibliographic detail in places, it does show that a lot more New Zealanders have successfully written science fiction and fantasy than is commonly assumed by those outside - or inside - the field.

There's more to come, too - for instance Helen Lowe's forthcoming YA fantasy novel Thornspell, about to be published in the US, and her subsequent fantasy tetralogy for adults, Wall of Night. Although it has flown mostly under the radar so far, New Zealand science fiction and fantasy is becoming hard to ignore.

UPDATE: There's more about Helen and her new book on the HarperCollins (Eos) blog.