SF ILI GLAVNOTOKOVSKA KNJIZEVNOST?

[Nyarlathotep]

Istinu zboris. Sreca sto ja nikad necu biti slavan... (osim ako se ne proslavim sa Mehom u vec zacetoj muzickoj trupi)

[Kastor]

(osim ako se ne proslavim sa Mehom u vec zacetoj muzickoj trupi)

E, pa ovaj tvoj avatar mora na CD cover.

[Ghoul]

Radi brzeg prepoznavanja. Narod ga vise pamti po tome, no po knjizevnim delima, antropoloskim studijama, slikama ili uticaju na bit generaciju.

nyarla, mislim da je očigledno da ne izlazite u iste kafane i ne pijete sa istim 'narodom'!
kornelijev narod i za poa kad/ako čuje, verovatno kaže: 'a, to beše onaj pijanica?'

[Meho Krljic]

Sem toga, zašto podilaziti narodu? Ako već ne možemo da ga bacimo u okove i viđamo samo kad se uveče pod budnim okom stražara vraća iz rudnika, onda barem možemo da ga obrazujemo...

[Kastor]

Uzmi u obzir da njegovi (Barouzovi) "poroci", za razliku od Poa, provejavaju kroz gotovo svako njegovo delo, tako da takve asocijacije nisu nimalo čudne.

[Cornelius]

Barouz nije od svog zivotnog stila pravi neku misteriju. Naprotiv, kao i svi iz bit generacije, on je to uneo u svoje delo.

[Tex Murphy]

Ajme. Izgleda da su ljudi već počeli da prihvataju da ne znam ništa ni o čemu, te je i ovo moje blatantno izjednačavanje dvojice Barouza prošlo bez ikakvih komentara tipa "Idiote, TO ne znaš???". Počinjem da se brinem. (Al sam se samo šalio, da se zna.)

[Meho Krljic]

Ja sam znao da se šališ, Harv, čak mi je i bilo smešno, pa sam stavio smajlija. Eno, idi, proveri, ne lažem.

[Tex Murphy]

Vidio sam!   To je vjerovatno zato što si relativno mlad (u smislu forumskog staža). Sa rastom istog (mislim staža) raste i oguglavanje na moje neduhovite pošalice i sehualne aluzije (kao što je ona na početku ove rečenice).

[Cornelius]

Istinu zboris. Sreca sto ja nikad necu biti slavan... (osim ako se ne proslavim sa Mehom u vec zacetoj muzickoj trupi)

To je u Alahovim rukama, efendi-Nyarla.

[Meho Krljic]

Ako je sudeći po dosadašnjem iskustvu, Nyarla ne samo što nikad neće dostići slavu svirajući sa mnom nego će napustiti muziku i biti srećan ako izbegne prodaju u belo roblje...

Sa rastom istog (mislim staža) raste i oguglavanje na moje neduhovite pošalice i sehualne aluzije (kao što je ona na početku ove rečenice).

Ma kakvi, ja sam apsolutno odan najprizemnijim seksualnim aluzijama. Ne možeš ti toliko da ih napraviš koliko ja mogu da se na njih debilno kikoćem.

[Cornelius]

Ako je sudeći po dosadašnjem iskustvu, Nyarla ne samo što nikad neće dostići slavu svirajući sa mnom nego će napustiti muziku i biti srećan ako izbegne prodaju u belo roblje...

Jarane, ako Nyarla nije prešao u pravu veru, vala ti ga prodaj. Na veliku našu žalost, kako je pismen, neće dostići neku cenu. To se nigde ne traži.

[Meho Krljic]

Istina. Samo je Princ Valijant uspeo da na pismenost unapredi svoj ropski položaj i smuva se sa gazdinom ćerkom. Al pre toga je trpeo bičevanje. Nyarla, hvataj beleške, da ne prođeš i ti ko on.

[Nyarlathotep]

Ako je sudeći po dosadašnjem iskustvu, Nyarla ne samo što nikad neće dostići slavu svirajući sa mnom nego će napustiti muziku i biti srećan ako izbegne prodaju u belo roblje...

Da li to ima veze sa onim gorkastim katoncicem koji si mi dao da sisam, i s onim dok si satro stimovao bubanj nesto mantrao sebi u bradu, pa sam tokom citave probe video te prekrivenog krljustima, sa slomljenim krvavim serafimskim krilima iz kojih je zracila neka mutna crna aura? A Nikola se sve vreme, video sam, poput mene znojio i epilepticno kolutao ocima, dok su pojacala pomamno pishtala, chichala i grmela, ispustajuci jedva cujne, a opet pakleno mucne frekvencije zvuka?  

Mozda da pustim snimak sa probe unazad? Plasim se sta da ocekujem...
Belo roblje bi bilo spas za moj umorni duh, nakon svega.

[lilit]

znaci, proba je bila potpuna nocna mora?

[Nyarlathotep]

ako tako i ostalima deluje, plasim se da smo blize cilju no sto smo mislili.

[Cornelius]

Da li to ima veze sa onim gorkastim katoncicem koji si mi dao da sisam.

Meho, Meho. Opet zloupotrebljavaš ove što su na stažu.

[Meho Krljic]

Preteruje Nyarla, meni ti, er, kartončići imaju sasvim prihvatljiv ukus... Sa malo senfa su skoro pa prijatni.

[Ghoul]

ono što mnogi ne uviđaju jeste da je barouz daleko bliži jednom filipu diku nego, recimo, džeku keruaku ili bilo kom drugom bitniku (od kojih se i sam ograđivao - kao da ta distanca nije već više no očigledna svakome ko je čitao njega, i njih).
odnosno, da je dik beskrajno bliskiji barouzu nego li, recimo, klarku, asimovu, hajnlajnu...
goli ručak je beskrajno bliskiju ubiku nego li posranom 'on the road'-u.

da i ne govorim o neporecivoj (i obostrano priznatoj) bliskosti između barouza i balarda.

u tom smislu, barouz je NEZAOBILAZNO ime za svakoga ko se OZBILJNO bavi sf-om.

površno gledano, nijedan barouzov roman nije zaista sf.
to je, pored ostalog, zato što je barouzov um vrlo malo pripadao sadašnjosti, i boravio u dalekoj budućnosti.
on će tek da bude prepoznat kao 'savremen' i aktuelan u vreme kada klark, asimov, hajnlajn i bratija budu samo fusnote u nekim istorijskim knjigama.

[Cornelius]

Pa, to kaže i Sollers u gorenavedenom tekstu.

[Cornelius]

Nekrolozi posvećeni američkom piscu Kurtu Vonegatu (u dnevnoj štampi više zemalja i na više jezika) prave vrlo izarazitu razliku izmedju naučne fantastike (žanrovske književnosti) i glavnog toka. Vonegat koji je nekada imao muke da se probije iz NFa u Gornje carstvo, danas više sa Donjim carstvom nema nikakve veze. Većina tekstova Vonegata poredi sa Markom Tvenom ili Oldosom Hakslijem, govoreći o njegovoj satiričnoj strani, humoru, o zanimljivom načinu mešanja stvarnosti i fikcije, o zen kratkoći njegovih misli, o poetici... Zanimljivo je koliko svi paze da njegovo ime ne unize bilo kakvim dodirom sa naučnom fantastikom, što dokazuje da NF i dalje u glavama većine ljudi (iz informativnog establišmenta) predstavlja podknjiževnost.

[Boban]

to je tako, bilo i biće, svuda i uvek, u dalekom svetu i kod nas jednako, eto, čuh od vrlo vrlo uticajnog čoveka u beogradskoj književnoj čaršiji kako za ZŽ dela govori da nemaju nikakvu šansu za NINovu nagradu zbog SF kamena oko vrata autora.
SF je, hteli mi to ili ne, bolelo nas to manje ili više, jednostavno niža vrsta književnog stvaralaštva.

[Ghoul]

to je tako, bilo i biće, svuda i uvek, u dalekom svetu i kod nas jednako

na žalost, jeste.

nedavno, kad je poginuo bob clark, svi su pisali: 'umro režiser filma A CHRISTMAS STORY', bez obzira što je svoj najveći pečat ostavio na exploatacijski, B film, pre svega kroz svoja 2 horora i 2 teen komedije.

itd.

[Ghoul]

a deo hintova u pravcu RAZLOGA za takav stav može se naći i u intervjuu sa režiserom najboljeg filma iz 2006. koji, strogo gledano, jeste SF, iako ga niko ne reklamira kao takvog:

   
Cleaning Up After the CHILDREN
Thursday April 12 12:38 PM ET

Five writers are credited for the Oscar nominated screenplay of the new DVD Children of Men. But in reality, it bears the imprint of only director Alfonso Cuaron and writing partner Timothy Sexton.

By Pam Grady, FilmStew.com

If it was not for a nagging feeling, the new DVD Children of Men might never have gotten made. Alfonso Cuaron's loose adaptation of P.D. James' dystopic novel, which garnered critical acclaim and three Academy Award nominations, was originally a no go for the director as he searched for a knockout project to follow the one-two punch of Y tu mamá tambien and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

The 45-year-old Mexico City native was not familiar with James' book when a screenplay based on it was pitched to him. "The script sucked," he asserts candidly during a recent interview with FilmStew in San Francisco. "I read 15, 20 pages of that script and I passed. I didn't even finish it. I said, 'OK, bye bye!'"

But he found that he could not shake the story's premise, the idea of the human race facing its own extinction as infertility sweeps the globe. "I had to stop at some point and reconsider why the premise was haunting me when I didn't even want to go and finish reading the script. That's when the whole process began," he remembers.

Cuaron regards James as an inspiration, the trigger for the creative process, but he confesses that as he and his writing partner Timothy Sexton worked on the screenplay, he never read the book, afraid of being sidetracked from what he saw as his main themes. Instead, he asked Sexton to read it and incorporate what was relevant to their vision into the screenplay that would eventually evolve into a tale of a bureaucrat (Clive Owen) in a nightmare future England who is aroused out of his resigned apathy when he is recruited to help smuggle a young and very pregnant refugee (Claire Hope-Ashitey) out of London.

"I understood that the premise could work as a metaphor for the fading sense of humanity, of the fading sense of hope that humanity has and also contemporary humanity's lack of care and respect for the next generation," Cuaron says. "I realized I could use that premise as a point of departure to a film, not a science fiction film, not a film about the future, but to try to do an exploration about today."

"Because of that, you explore which themes are shaping this decade and you can't go very far with that without hitting the environment and immigration," he adds. "And then we chose to follow a story line based upon immigration, the immigration issue."

Recreating today in the world of tomorrow was crucial to Cuaron's conception of the story, his way at getting at the problems of today through the prism of the future. "It's not the ancient or the future," he suggests. "It's the present. Everything you see that seems archaic and brutal is stuff that is happening in this world. All the visual references in the film are of stuff that has been happening over the last few years. It's not even in the remote past. That was part of the point in making the film."

"It's interesting when people say, 'OK, when you go into the refugee camp, it's a reference to Auschwitz, right?' We never even thought of Auschwitz while we were doing that. We were thinking Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the Maze, the prison in Northern Ireland. Those were our visual references, but in a way, that shows how atrocities of humanity, they are ageless."

He was also very clear on what he wanted the England of 2027 to look like. The first day he met with the art department working on the film, they regaled him with fantastic concept drawings of futuristic gadgets, cars, and buildings. The work delighted him with its creativity, but finally he had to break the bad news. "I said, 'OK, thank you, guys, but this is the opposite of the movie we're going to do.'"

"Then I brought out my own file of photographs that were from Iraq and Palestine and Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka and the Balkans and Chernobyl and said, 'This is the movie we're going to do,'" he continues. "'The rule is here we're not going to be making anything. We're not going to create everything. I know that you guys are very talented and imaginative, but this is about referencing reality.'"

That idea of a future looking very much like the present even extended to the characters. Michael Caine, for instance, plays Jasper, Owen's best friend, who with his long flowing hair and granny glasses looks for all the world like an aging hippie. He and Sexton always referred to Jasper as the Michael Caine character as they were writing, Cuaron reveals, and the actor was very much involved in the character's evolution. The first time they met, the director's excitement at meeting a living legend was tempered when Caine's conversation consisted chiefly of chatting about his famous pals, particularly John Lennon.

"[It was] John Lennon this, John Lennon that, and this guy's just bragging about the cool friends he had until he said, 'The reason I'm telling you all these stories about John is because I want to play this character as an older John Lennon," Cuaron remembers. "When he dressed for the character for the first time, his wife didn't recognize him. He was so excited. He said, 'OK, this is the way I'm going to play this.'"

Like his friends and contemporaries Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Cuaron is a truly international filmmaker, whose work has spanned Mexico, the United States, and England. But something else sets him apart in that he moves easily between family films, such as The Prisoner of Azkaban or 1995's A Little Princess, and the much more adult fare of an Y tu mamá tambien or Children of Men. What unites them all is his desire to reach out to youth.

"I enjoy doing children's films and I enjoy working with children, but in every single film I've done, the people I care to communicate with are young people," he explains. "I don't know how good a communicator I am with older people in the sense that I just feel more comfortable trying to communicate with young people. For me, that's where hope resides."

The way he sees it, evolution has moved at lightning speed when it comes to technology and knowledge, but at a snail's pace when it comes to ethics and politics. His hope is that this will start to change with the generation behind his own. For while he acknowledges that plenty of people of his generation and older are struggling to address issues such as global warming and immigration, he has no faith in the politicians.

Cuaron points to the tale of two walls as an example, recalling that when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the democratic world celebrated. "Because walls don't work. Now the conversation is, 'Let's put a wall between Mexico and the States.' Everything's going into very archaic solutions, very archaic ways of seeing things," he says.

"I do believe in the younger generation, people that were born in this reality," he adds. "Part of the problem of the older generation is that everything is a regressive thing, 'Let's go back to this paradise.' That's not going to happen. The younger generation, they know that this is the world they are living in. They have to transform this world."

With all that is going on in the world today â€" war, environmental degradation, global warming, massive migration, etc. â€" putting it in a future context in Children of Men that would resonate created a challenge. "That was the toughest thing about making this movie," Cuaron admits. "Coming together with a universe that could be plausible, eloquent, but more important, that would be make a comment about the state of things. As Emmanuel Lubezki, the cinematographer, kept saying, 'We cannot afford to let one single frame of this film go without commenting on the state of things.'"

It is a bleak vision, but not entirely without hope and neither is Cuaron. "I don't think humanity is going to go extinct, but a lot of casualties can happen along the way," he observes, adding with a laugh. "Eventually, people will learn how to live in a North Pole that is going to be tropical."



recimo da je ova deonica bitna:
"Coming together with a universe that could be plausible, eloquent, but more important, that would be make a comment about the state of things"

tipičan SF pristup bio bi: što više fensi gedžeta, fensi scenografije, vrdalama, džidžamidža...
to je žanr.
kuarona to ne zanima.
to su površne tričarije.
on ima priču, ima IDEJU.
ne trebaju mu te šarene kulise...

[Cornelius]

Isak Asimov se nikada nece pribliziti glavnotokovskoj knizevnosti, jer je njegovo pisanje okrenuto ka povrsnosti, jednostranosti i brzoj konzumaciji. Pored 400 romana i pripovetki, on je napisao i neverovatan broj naucnih vulgarizacija, vodica kroz Bibliju, kroz Sekspira i vazda drugih cudesa. Predavac i popularizator nauke i kulture, Asimov je imao knjizevni stil zasnovan na "show must go on". Sva njegova briga je okrenuta strukturi zapleta i kako odviti akciju u zeljenom pravcu. Njegova proza se sastoji od dijaloga koje vode protagonisti i time guraju radnju. Zato je on upotrebio najlinearniju mogucu strukturu, koja je dala fluidnost u pripovedanju. Istovremeno, njegova naucna erudicija horizontalnog tipa, daje njegovim delima zapanjujuchu "sirinu". U pitanju je mitologija nauke, nauka vidjena kao religija, a Isak kao ucitelj veronauke. Medjutim, u Asimovljevim delima nedostaje psiholoske razrade, dubine, materije i visih ciljeva.

U jednom od tekstova, Lem citira Asimovljeve reci upucene mladom kriticaru koji je poznatog americkog pisca okarakterisao kao zastarelog i prevazidjenog. Asimov je odmah naveo tiraze u zadnje dve godine, dokazujuci kako nije zastareo. Lem, potom, nastavlja razmisljanje o trivijalnoj literaturi (u koju svrstava i Asimova) i kaze da po takvom arsinu Dostojevski ne stize do kolena Agate Kristi.

[Cornelius]

Asimov: By my own definition, SF is the branch of literature which deals with the response of human beings to changes in the level of science and technology.  


Charles Elkins
Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION Novels: Historical Materialism Distorted into Cyclical Psycho-History

1. It is difficult to put one's finger on precisely what element or elements so fascinate readers. From just about any formal perspective, THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY the foundation trilogy is seriously flawed. The characters are undifferentiated and one-dimensional. Stylistically, the novels are disasters, and Asimov's ear for dialogue is simply atrocious. The characters speak with a monotonous rhythm and impoverished vocabulary characteristic of American teenagers' popular reading in the Forties and Fifties; the few exceptions are no better—e.g. the Mule, who, in the disguise of the Clown, speaks a pseudo-archaic courtly dialect, or Lord Darwin, who speaks like Elmer Fudd, or the archetypal Jewish Mother (...)

(...)Nor is this merely a question of literary niceties. If language is both a symbolic screen through which we filter reality and an instrument by which we explore and change reality, then Asimov's style is totally inappropriate. He has imported a watered-down idiom of his time—the banal, pseudo-factual style of the mass-circulation magazines—into a world twelve thousand years into the future, with no change at all! The consciousness of his characters, as it is objectified in speech, shows absolutely no historical development and hence fails to evoke in the reader any feeling for the future universe they inhabit.

(...)Instead of events growing out of the inner logic and premises of the narrative situation, the plot and characters are forced to conform to a predetermined template. Thus, not only is the concept itself questionable, but its use as a structuring and thematic device leads one to suspect a deficiency in imaginative vision. As a guiding framework for SF, it has as a rule disastrous consequences. Damon Knight rightly argues that it is not SF, "any more than the well known western with rayguns instead of sixshooters.... It's of the essence of speculative fiction that an original problem be set up which the author is obliged to work out for himself; if the problem is an old one, and he has only to look the answers up in a book, there's very little fun in it for anybody; moreover, the answers are certain to be wrong.

etc.

[Cornelius]

Pročitah pre nekoliko dana knjižicu "Dnevnik Adama i Eve" velikog majstora Marka Twaina. Listajući njegovu bibliografiju i biografiju, setih se svima znanog romana "Jenki na dvoru kralja Artura". Taj roman je, u neku ruku, tokom mog detinjstva prošao kao roman za decu i omladinu. Medjutim, on predstavlja kritiku američkog političkog sistema s kraja 19 veka. Istovremeno, "Jenki" je prava NF literatura sa upotrebom putovanja kroz vreme. Pored svima znanih Twainovih zasluga za modernu američku književnost, on ima i zasluge za NF književnost. Darko Suvin smatra da je Twain mogao da preuzme Wellsovo mesto "the major turning point in the tradition leading to modern SF", samo da je dovršio i objavio odredjena započeta dela.

Twainova zbirka "Tales of Wonder" prikazuje mikro svetove, medjuzvezdane prostore, budućnost i tehnološke špekulacije. "Tri hiljade godina kod mikroba" je roman u kome je čovek smanjen do mikroskopskih dimenzija i ubačen u ljudsko telo gde upoznaje svet mikroba. Ponovo, naučna fantastika služi Twainu da izvrgne ruglu svoje savremenike i svet u kome živi.

U jednom teorijskom tekstu, razmatraju se pokušaji Ketterera da Twainu ustanovi mesto koje on zaslužuje u Nfu. "Pleasure Excursion" presents interstellar travel and missionaries to other worlds. Offering alternative visions of Earth and types of Utopias, "Gondour" and "Stormfield" represent the sub-genre of alternate worlds. "Stormfield" contains early non-humanoid aliens. "Gondour" presents "a rational Utopia" (xviii) with universal suffrage where the learned and propertied vote more times than "the ignorant and non-taxpaying classes" (10), depending on amount of education and value of their property. Praised as placing the best people in government, the amendment "enlarging" suffrage resembles the 3/5 amendment that effectively granted slaveholding states more votes. Whereas the educated gain "greater homage" than the wealthy, the legislation ironically devalues poor, uneducated people, who (with fewer votes) receive less respect than "important" people, a result intensified by custom, "that most powerful of all laws" (11). As this modified republic differs from American expectations, so does Stormfield's "materialist heaven [. . .] in interstellar space" from religious ones (xviii). Stormfield's comet ride there may suggest the rules for space travel in "Pleasure Excursion."

Uprkos svemu, Twainova NF i futurologija ostaju i dalje u zapećku, jer moderna teorija književnosti u njegovim delima pronalazi NF samo na nivou retorike, ali ne i žanra. Kurt Vonnegut, veliki obožavalac Twainovog opusa, imao je problem u drugom pravcu.


Mark Twain u laboratoriji Nikole Tesle

[Tex Murphy]

Lično, mislim da je taj Jenki strahovito grozna knjiga, ako izuzmemo povremene ničim izazvane trenutke briljantnog humora tipa "Predajte se, nemate nikakve šanse - nas je ovde pedeset, a vas ne može biti više od trideset hiljada".

[BladeRunner]

Cornelius

Uprkos svemu, Twainova NF i futurologija ostaju i dalje u zapećku, jer moderna teorija književnosti u njegovim delima pronalazi NF samo na nivou retorike, ali ne i žanra.

Meni je to slično djelima Mišela Uelbeka, naročito "Mogućnosti ostrva", i ne mislim da griješe u tome. Ako bi sve što u sebi ima element fantastike proglasili naučnom fantastikom, po toj logici bi i sve što ima element straha trebalo proglasiti hororom.

Sa druge strane, komentar za Kurta Vonegata je odličan i potpuno se slažem, pri čemu mi sve to, pa još i više, važi za Filipa K. Dika. Čudo kako je Pekić izbjegao tu sudbinu. Djeluje mi da bi kod domaćih kritičara bio mnogo manje omiljen da je knjige hronološki objavljivao drugim redosledom (čitaj: da mu je prva knjiga bila "Atlantida"). Ovo ne govorim zbog kvaliteta, nego upravo zbog žanra, a jako bi volio da vidim kako je tadašnja kritika dočekala ovaj roman.

Sve najbolje i pozdrav.

P.S. Zaboravih da dodam da mi, sudeći po tekstu i socijalnoj ironiji, Mark Tven jako mnogo liči na Džonatana Svifta. Nisam čitao djela, pa ne znam, ali ovaj opis za mikrobe i ostalo je čisti Svift.

[Cornelius]

U jučerašnjem dokumentarcu "Moebius Redux", pored ostalog, Moebius priča o stvaranju magazina "Metal hurlant": "Svi smo se složili da želimo da crtamo i pišemo naučnu fantastiku". U nastavku, on objašnjava da su pojedini njegovi stripovi bili samo neka vrsta prepričavanja šta je osetioi doživeo pod uticajem halucinogenih pečurki. Istovremeno, on priča o svom iskustvu sa sektama što ga je nadahnulo za neke druge stripove. Iz njegove priče proizilazi jedan zaključak - Moebius je želeo da stvara SF, ali se služio svojim ličnim iskustvima i izletima u ezoterično, nesvesno (automatsko crtanje)...

Meni to izgleda kao oneobičavanje stvarnosti, odnosno kao što to radi Bilal ili Vonegat. SF retorika je upotrebljena da bi se kazalo nešto drugo. Moebius, za razliku od Bilala, ne negira svoju vezanost za SF, ali je kroz objašnjavanje načina stvaranja, ipak negira. Žanrovski elementi dolaze kao "verovatno" okruženje za priču koja je vezana za fantastično. SF je za Moebiusa samo komunikacijska ravan, način kako da svoju poruku najlakše i najbrže saopšti sagovornicima. Uprkos svemu, Moebius se smatra za jednog od najvažnijih autora SFa, mada njegovo delo pravazilazi žanrovske granice ne samo u pristupu, nego i u svom umetničkom i duhovnom dometu.

[Cornelius]

Pierre Siniac
Carton bleme

Zbog neverovatnog povechanja kriminala, država je odlučila da štiti samo gradjane u dobrom zdravstvenom stanju. Lekarske kontrole su redovne i tada se dobija ili plavi karton (dobro zdravlje) ili bledi karton (loše zdravlje). Oni koji imaju bledi karton, više nemaju policijsku zaštitu, te su ostavljeni na milost i nemilost kriminalaca. Roman je pisan 1985 i smešten u 2005. Siniac je jedan od najvećih francuskih autora kriminalističkih romana. "Carton bleme" je napisan u formi naučno fantastičnog romana. Stil je vrlo jednostavan, skoro novinarski, a jezik nije književni, nego govorni. Uprkos svim elementima SF-a upotrebljenim u ovom romanu, on ne bi mogao da bude svrstan u žanr jer je prebacivanje radnje u blisku budućnost samo retoričkog značaja. Pored razmišljanja o integritetu policijaca i njihovom moralu, Siniac razmišlja i o mogućim posledicama današnjeg sistema. Medjutim, ni u jednom trenutku on ne postavlja novi svet, niti ima neophodan otklon od stvarnosti koji bi učinio da se njegov roman razlikuje od običnog prevoda poznatih situacija. Napisan živopisno i stripovski, Carton bleme upotrebljava posebnost SF žanra da bi jasnije ukazao na tretiranu problematiku i probleme našeg današnjeg društva. Znači, još jedan od vanžanrovskih autora, koji se kroz par hirurških zahvata, odlučio da svoj svet izrazi u drugom pakovanju.

[---]

evo teksta o slipstrimu, pa možemo tu štogod prodivaniti...

Bruce Sterling. Slipstream

---------------------------------------------------------------
bruces@well.sf.ca.us
---------------------------------------------------------------
CATSCAN 5  "Slipstream"

     In a recent remarkable interview in _New
Pathways_ #11, Carter Scholz alludes with pained
resignation to the ongoing brain-death of science
fiction. In the 60s and 70s, Scholz opines, SF had a
chance to become a worthy literature; now that chance
has passed. Why? Because other writers have now
learned to adapt SF's best techniques to their own
ends.
     "And," says Scholz, "They make us look sick.
When I think of the best `speculative fiction' of the
past few years, I sure don't think of any Hugo or
Nebula winners. I think of Margaret Atwood's _The
Handmaid's Tale_, and of Don DeLillo's _White Noise_,
and of Batchelor's _The Birth of the People's Republic
of Antarctica_, and of Gaddis' _JR_ and _Carpenter's
Gothic_, and of Coetzee's _Life and Times of Michael
K_ . . . I have no hope at all that genre science
fiction can ever again have any literary significance.
But that's okay, because now there are other people
doing our job."
     It's hard to stop quoting this interview. All
interviews should be this good. There's some great
campy guff about the agonizing pain it takes to write
short stories; and a lecture on the unspeakable horror
of writer's block; and some nifty fusillades of
forthright personal abuse; and a lot of other stuff
that is making _New Pathways_ one of the most
interesting zines of the Eighties. Scholz even reveals
his use of the Fibonacci Sequence in setting the
length and number of the chapters in his novel
_Palimpsests_, and wonders how come nobody caught on
to this groundbreaking technique of his.
     Maybe some of this peripheral stuff kinda dulls
the lucid gleam of his argument. But you don't have to
be a medieval Italian mathematician to smell the reek
of decay in modern SF. Scholz is right. The job isn't
being done here.
     "Science Fiction" today is a lot like the
contemporary Soviet Union; the sprawling possessor of
a dream that failed. Science fiction's official dogma,
which almos

t everybody ignores, is based on attitudes
toward science and technology which are bankrupt and
increasingly divorced from any kind of reality. "Hard-
SF," the genre's ideological core, is a joke today; in
terms of the social realities of high-tech post-
industrialism, it's about as relevant as hard-
Leninism.
     Many of the best new SF writers seem openly
ashamed of their backward Skiffy nationality. "Ask not
what you can do for science fiction--ask how you can
edge away from it and still get paid there."
     A blithely stateless cosmopolitanism is the
order of the day, even for an accredited Clarion grad
like Pat Murphy: "I'm not going to bother what camp
things fall into," she declares in a recent _Locus_
interview. "I'm going to write the book I want and see
what happens . . . If the markets run together, I
leave it to the critics." For Murphy, genre is a dead
issue, and she serenely wills the trash-mountain to
come to Mohammed.
     And one has to sympathize. At one time, in its
clumsy way, Science Fiction offered some kind of
coherent social vision. SF may have been gaudy and
naive, and possessed by half-baked fantasies of power
and wish-fulfillment, but at least SF spoke a
contemporary language. Science Fiction did the job of
describing, in some eldritch way, what was actually
*happening*, at least in the popular imagination.
Maybe it wasn't for everybody, but if you were a
bright, unfastidious sort, you could read SF and feel,
in some satisfying and deeply unconscious way, that
you'd been given a real grip on the chrome-plated
handles of the Atomic Age.
     But *now* look at it. Consider the repulsive
ghastliness of the SF category's Lovecraftian
inbreeding. People retched in the 60s when De Camp and
Carter skinned the corpse of Robert E. Howard for its
hide and tallow, but nowadays necrophilia is run on an
industrial basis. Shared-world anthologies. Braided
meganovels. Role-playing tie-ins. Sharecropping books
written by pip-squeaks under the blazoned name of
establi

shed authors. Sequels of sequels, trilogy
sequels of yet-earlier trilogies, themselves cut-and-
pasted from yet-earlier trilogies. What's the common
thread here? The belittlement of individual
creativity, and the triumph of anonymous product. It's
like some Barthesian nightmare of the Death of the
Author and his replacement by "text."
     Science Fiction--much like that other former
Vanguard of Progressive Mankind, the Communist Party--
has lost touch with its cultural reasons for being.
Instead, SF has become a self-perpetuating commercial
power-structure, which happens to be in possession of
a traditional national territory: a portion of
bookstore rackspace.
     Science fiction habitually ignores any challenge
from outside. It is protected by the Iron Curtain of
category marketing. It does not even have to improve
"on its own terms," because its own terms no longer
mean anything; they are rarely even seriously
discussed. It is enough merely to point at the
rackspace and say "SF."
     Some people think it's great to have a genre
which has no inner identity, merely a locale where
it's sold. In theory, this grants vast authorial
freedom, but the longterm practical effect has been
heavily debilitating. When "anything is possible in
SF" then "anything" seems good enough to pass muster.
Why innovate? Innovate in what direction? Nothing is
moving, the compass is dead. Everything is becalmed;
toss a chip overboard to test the current, and it sits
there till it sinks without a trace.
     It's time to clarify some terms in this essay,
terms which I owe to Carter Scholz. "Category" is a
marketing term, denoting rackspace. "Genre" is a
spectrum of work united by an inner identity, a
coherent esthetic, a set of conceptual guidelines, an
ideology if you will.
     "Category" is commercially useful, but can be
ultimately deadening. "Genre," however, is powerful.
     Having made this distinction, I want to describe
what seems to me to be a new, emergent "genre," which
has not yet become a

"category."
     This genre is not "category" SF; it is not even
"genre" SF. Instead, it is a contemporary kind of
writing which has set its face against consensus
reality. It is a fantastic, surreal sometimes,
speculative on occasion, but not rigorously so. It
does not aim to provoke a "sense of wonder" or to
systematically extrapolate in the manner of classic
science fiction.
     Instead, this is a kind of writing which simply
makes you feel very strange; the way that living in
the late twentieth century makes you feel, if you are
a person of a certain sensibility. We could call this
kind of fiction Novels of Postmodern Sensibility, but
that looks pretty bad on a category rack, and requires
an acronym besides; so for the sake of convenience and
argument, we will call these books "slipstream."
     "Slipstream" is not all that catchy a term, and
if this young genre ever becomes an actual category I
doubt it will use that name, which I just coined along
with my friend Richard Dorsett. "Slipstream" is a
parody of "mainstream," and nobody calls mainstream
"mainstream" except for us skiffy trolls.
     Nor is it at all likely that slipstream will
actually become a full-fledged genre, much less a
commercially successful category. The odds against it
are stiff. Slipstream authors must work outside the
cozy infrastructure of genre magazines, specialized
genre criticism, and the authorial esprit-de-corps of
a common genre cause.
     And vast dim marketing forces militate against
the commercial success of slipstream. It is very
difficult for these books to reach or build their own
native audience, because they are needles in a vast
moldering haystack. There is no convenient way for
would-be slipstream readers to move naturally from one
such work to another of its ilk. These books vanish
like drops of ink in a bucket of drool.
     Occasional writers will triumph against all
these odds, but their success remains limited by the
present category structures. They may eke out a fringe
foll

owing, but they fall between two stools. Their
work is too weird for Joe and Jane Normal. And they
lose the SF readers, who avoid the mainstream racks
because the stuff there ain't half weird enough. (One
result of this is that many slipstream books are left-
handed works by authors safely established in other
genres.)
     And it may well be argued that slipstream has no
"real" genre identity at all. Slipstream might seem to
be an artificial construct, a mere grab-bag of
mainstream books that happen to hold some interest for
SF readers. I happen to believe that slipstream books
have at least as much genre identity as the variegated
stock that passes for "science fiction" these days,
but I admit the force of the argument. As an SF
critic, I may well be blindered by my parochial point-
of-view. But I'm far from alone in this situation.
Once the notion of slipstream is vaguely explained,
almost all SF readers can recite a quick list of books
that belong there by right.
     These are books which SF readers recommend to
friends: "This isn't SF, but it sure ain't mainstream
and I think you might like it, okay?" It's every man
his own marketer, when it comes to slipstream.
     In preparation for this essay, I began
collecting these private lists. My master-list soon
grew impressively large, and serves as the best
pragmatic evidence for the actual existence of
slipstream that I can offer at the moment.
     I myself don't pretend to be an expert in this
kind of writing. I can try to define the zeitgeist of
slipstream in greater detail, but my efforts must be
halting.
     It seems to me that the heart of slipstream is
an attitude of peculiar aggression against "reality."
These are fantasies of a kind, but not fantasies which
are "futuristic" or "beyond the fields we know." These
books tend to sarcastically tear at the structure of
"everyday life."
     Some such books, the most "mainstream" ones, are
non-realistic literary fictions which avoid or ignore
SF genre conventions. But hard-c

ore slipstream has
unique darker elements. Quite commonly these works
don't make a lot of common sense, and what's more they
often somehow imply that *nothing we know makes* "a
lot of sense" and perhaps even that *nothing ever
could*.
     It's very common for slipstream books to screw
around with the representational conventions of
fiction, pulling annoying little stunts that suggest
that the picture is leaking from the frame and may get
all over the reader's feet. A few such techniques are
infinite regress, trompe-l'oeil effects, metalepsis,
sharp violations of viewpoint limits, bizarrely blase'
reactions to horrifically unnatural events . . . all
the way out to concrete poetry and the deliberate use
of gibberish. Think M. C. Escher, and you have a
graphic equivalent.
     Slipstream is also marked by a cavalier attitude
toward "material" which is the polar opposite of the
hard-SF writer's "respect for scientific fact."
Frequently, historical figures are used in slipstream
fiction in ways which outrageously violate the
historical record. History, journalism, official
statements, advertising copy . . . all of these are
grist for the slipstream mill, and are disrespectfully
treated not as "real-life facts" but as "stuff," raw
material for collage work. Slipstream tends, not to
"create" new worlds, but to *quote* them, chop them up
out of context, and turn them against themselves.
     Some slipstream books are quite conventional in
narrative structure, but nevertheless use their
fantastic elements in a way that suggests that they
are somehow *integral* to the author's worldview; not
neat-o ideas to kick around for fun's sake, but
something in the nature of an inherent dementia. These
are fantastic elements which are not clearcut
"departures from known reality" but ontologically
*part of the whole mess*; "`real' compared to what?"
This is an increasingly difficult question to answer
in the videocratic 80s-90s, and is perhaps the most
genuinely innovative aspect of slipstream (s

cary as
that might seem).
     A "slipstream critic," should such a person ever
come to exist, would probably disagree with these
statements of mine, or consider them peripheral to
what his genre "really" does. I heartily encourage
would-be slipstream critics to involve themselves in
heady feuding about the "real nature" of their as-yet-
nonexistent genre. Bogus self-referentiality is a very
slipstreamish pursuit; much like this paragraph itself,
actually. See what I mean?
     My list is fragmentary. What's worse, many of
the books that are present probably don't "belong"
there. (I also encourage slipstream critics to weed
these books out and give convincing reasons for it.)
Furthermore, many of these books are simply
unavailable, without hard work, lucky accidents,
massive libraries, or friendly bookstore clerks in a
major postindustrial city. In many unhappy cases, I
doubt that the authors themselves think that anyone is
interested in their work. Many slipstream books fell
through the yawning cracks between categories, and
were remaindered with frantic haste.
     And I don't claim that all these books are
"good," or that you will enjoy reading them. Many
slipstream books are in fact dreadful, though they are
dreadful in a different way than dreadful science
fiction is. This list happens to be prejudiced toward
work of quality, because these are books which have
stuck in people's memory against all odds, and become
little tokens of possibility.
     I offer this list as a public service to
slipstream's authors and readers. I don't count myself
in these ranks. I enjoy some slipstream, but much of
it is simply not to my taste. This doesn't mean that
it is "bad," merely that it is different. In my
opinion, this work is definitely not SF, and is
essentially alien to what I consider SF's intrinsic
virtues.
     Slipstream does however have its own virtues,
virtues which may be uniquely suited to the perverse,
convoluted, and skeptical tenor of the postmodern era.
Or then again, m

aybe not. But to judge this genre by
the standards of SF is unfair; I would like to see it
free to evolve its own standards.
     Unlike the "speculative fiction" of the 60s,
slipstream is not an internal attempt to reform SF in
the direction of "literature." Many slipstream
authors, especially the most prominent ones, know or
care little or nothing about SF. Some few are "SF
authors" by default, and must struggle to survive in a
genre which militates against the peculiar virtues of
their own writing.
     I wish slipstream well. I wish it was an
acknowledged genre and a workable category, because
then it could offer some helpful, brisk competition to
SF, and force "Science Fiction" to redefine and
revitalize its own principles.
     But any true discussion of slipstream's genre
principles is moot, until it becomes a category as
well. For slipstream to develop and nourish, it must
become openly and easily available to its own
committed readership, in the same way that SF is
today. This problem I willingly leave to some
inventive bookseller, who is openminded enough to
restructure the rackspace and give these oppressed
books a breath of freedom.

THE SLIPSTREAM LIST

ACKER, KATHY - Empire of the Senseless
ACKROYD, PETER - Hawksmoor; Chatterton
ALDISS, BRIAN - Life in the West
ALLENDE, ISABEL - Of Love and Shadows; House of
Spirits
AMIS, KINGSLEY - The Alienation; The Green Man
AMIS, MARTIN - Other People; Einstein's Monsters
APPLE, MAX - Zap; The Oranging of America
ATWOOD, MARGARET - The Handmaids Tale
AUSTER, PAUL - City of Glass; In the Country of Last
Things
BALLARD, J. G. - Day of Creation; Empire of the Sun
BANKS, IAIN - The Wasp Factory; The Bridge
BANVILLE, JOHN - Kepler; Dr. Copernicus
BARNES, JULIAN - Staring at the Sun
BARTH, JOHN - Giles Goat-Boy; Chimera
BARTHELME, DONALD - The Dead Father
BATCHELOR, JOHN CALVIN - Birth of the People s
Republic of Antarctica
BELL, MADISON SMARTT - Waiting for the End of the
World
BERGER, THOMAS - Arthur Rex
BONTLY, THOMAS - Celestial Chess
BOY

LE, T. CORAGHESSAN - Worlds End; Water Music
BRANDAO, IGNACIO - And Still the Earth
BURROUGHS, WILLIAM - Place of Dead Roads; Naked Lunch;
Soft Machine; etc.
CARROLL, JONATHAN - Bones of the Moon; Land of Laughs
CARTER, ANGELA - Nights at the Circus; Heroes and
Villains
CARY, PETER - Illywhacker; Oscar and Lucinda
CHESBRO, GEORGE M. - An Affair of Sorcerers
COETZEE, J. M. - Life and rimes of Michael K.
COOVER, ROBERT - The Public Burning; Pricksongs &
Descants
CRACE, JIM - Continent
CROWLEY, JOHN - Little Big; Aegypt
DAVENPORT, GUY - Da Vincis Bicycle; The Jules Verne
Steam Balloon
DISCH, THOMAS M. - On Wings of Song
DODGE, JIM - Not Fade Away
DURRELL, LAWRENCE - Tunc; Nunquam
ELY, DAVID - Seconds
ERICKSON, STEVE - Days Between Stations; Rubicon Beach
FEDERMAN, RAYMOND - The Twofold Variations
FOWLES, JOHN - A Maggot
FRANZEN, JONATHAN - The Twenty-Seventh City
FRISCH, MAX - Homo Faber; Man in the Holocene
FUENTES, CARLOS - Terra Nostra
GADDIS, WILLIAM - JR; Carpenters Gothic
GARDNER, JOHN - Grendel; Freddy's Book
GEARY, PATRICIA - Strange Toys; Living in Ether
GOLDMAN, WILLIAM - The Princess Bride; The Color of
Light
GRASS, GUNTER - The Tin Drum
GRAY, ALASDAIR - Lanark
GRIMWOOD, KEN - Replay
HARBINSON, W. A. - Genesis; Revelation; Otherworld
HILL, CAROLYN - The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer
HJVRTSBERG, WILLIAM - Gray Matters; Falling Angel
HOBAN, RUSSELL - Riddley Walker
HOYT, RICHARD - The Manna Enzyme
IRWIN, ROBERT - The Arabian Nightmares
ISKANDER, FAZIL - Sandro of Chegam; The Gospel
According to Sandro
JOHNSON, DENIS - Fiskadoro
JONES, ROBERT F. - Blood Sport; The Diamond Bogo
KINSELLA, W. P. - Shoeless Joe
KOSTER, R. M. - The Dissertation; Mandragon
KOTZWINKLE, WILLIAM - Elephant Bangs Train; Doctor
Rat, Fata Morgana
KRAMER, KATHRYN - A Handbook for Visitors From Outer
Space
LANGE, OLIVER - Vandenberg
LEONARD, ELMORE - Touch
LESSING, DORIS - The Four-Gated City; The Fifth Child
of Satan
LEVEN, JEREMY - Satan
MAILER, NORMAN - Ancient Evenings
MARINIS, RICK - A Lovely Monster
MARQUEZ, GABRIEL GARCI

A - Autumn of the Patriarch; One
Hundred Years of Solitude
MATHEWS, HARRY - The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium
McEWAN, IAN - The Comfort of Strangers; The Child in
Time
McMAHON, THOMAS - Loving Little Egypt
MILLAR, MARTIN - Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation
MOONEY, TED - Easy Travel to Other Planets
MOORCOCK, MICHAEL - Laughter of Carthage; Byzantium
Endures; Mother London
MOORE, BRIAN - Cold Heaven
MORRELL, DAVID - The Totem
MORRISON, TONI - Beloved; The Song of Solomon
NUNN, KEN - Tapping the Source; Unassigned Territory
PERCY, WALKER - Love in the Ruins; The Thanatos
Syndrome
PIERCY, MARGE - Woman on the Edge of Time
PORTIS, CHARLES - Masters of Atlantis
PRIEST, CHRISTOPHER - The Glamour; The Affirmation
PROSE, FRANCINE - Bigfoot Dreams, Marie Laveau
PYNCHON, THOMAS - Gravity's Rainbow; V; The Crying of
Lot 49
REED, ISHMAEL - Mumbo Jumbo; The Terrible Twos
RICE, ANNE - The Vampire Lestat; Queen of the Damned
ROBBINS, TOM - Jitterbug Perfume; Another Roadside
Attraction
ROTH, PHILIP - The Counterlife
RUSHDIE, SALMON - Midnight's Children; Grimus; The
Satanic Verses
SAINT, H. F. - Memoirs of an Invisible Man
SCHOLZ, CARTER & HARCOURT GLENN - Palimpsests
SHEPARD, LUCIUS - Life During Wartime
SIDDONS, ANNE RIVERS - The House Next Door
SPARK, MURIEL - The Hothouse by the East River
SPENCER, SCOTT - Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball
SUKENICK, RONALD - Up; Down; Out
SUSKIND, PATRICK - Perfume
THEROUX, PAUL - O-Zone
THOMAS, D. M. - The White Hotel
THOMPSON, JOYCE - The Blue Chair; Conscience Place
THOMSON, RUPERT - Dreams of Leaving
THORNBERG, NEWTON - Valhalla
THORNTON, LAWRENCE - Imagining Argentina
UPDIKE, JOHN - Witches of Eastwick; Rogers Version
VLIET, R. G. - Scorpio Rising
VOLLMAN, WILLIAM T. - You Bright and Risen Angels
VONNEGUT, KURT - Galapagos; Slaughterhouse-Five
WALLACE, DAVID FOSTER - The Broom of the System
WEBB, DON - Uncle Ovid's Exercise Book
WHITTEMORE, EDWARD - Nile Shadows; Jerusalem Poker;
Sinai Tapestry
WILLARD, NANCY - Things Invisible to See
WOMACK, JACK - Ambient; Terraplane
WOO

D, BARI - The Killing Gift
WRIGHT, STEPHEN - M31: A Family Romance

[---]

U onom tekstu lepo kaže

Some people think it's great to have a genre
which has no inner identity, merely a locale where
it's sold. In theory, this grants vast authorial
freedom, but the longterm practical effect has been
heavily debilitating. When "anything is possible in
SF" then "anything" seems good enough to pass muster.
Why innovate? Innovate in what direction? Nothing is
moving, the compass is dead. Everything is becalmed;
toss a chip overboard to test the current, and it sits
there till it sinks without a trace.

To je čisti postmodernizam koji izražava jedan više nego jasan stav: da je pisac u potpunosti odbio bilo kakvu odgovornost za ono što piše - takva situacija postoji u društvu i zbog toga je ovo za mnoge prihvatljiv stav.

Tako je i "slipstream" u velikoj meri upravo eskapizam u postmodernističku jalovost tipa "može mi se - šta te briga". Nek radi ko šta hoće - dakle, svaka diskusija o vrednosti je unapred besmislena i neprihvatljiva za ovakve postmoderniste. Njihovo "bezakonje" je upravo njihov "vrhovni zakon".

Otud se, umesto jasnog književnog orijentira tu najčešće poturaju tribalizam, klanaštvo, prijateljovanje, baćkovanje, itd.

Mediokritetski raj - ništa drugo.

mislim da nisi najbolje razumeo. ovo je ironični deo u kom sterling konstatuje komercijalnu jalovost u kojoj se, po njemu, našao sf krajem osamdesetih. trilogije, nastavci, ogromne knjižurine-epopeje o ratovima svetova, ili kako bi sterling to bolje opisao: "shared-world anthologies. Braided meganovels. Role-playing tie-ins. Sharecropping books written by pip-squeaks under the blazoned name of established authors. Sequels of sequels, trilogy sequels of yet-earlier trilogies, themselves cut-and-pasted from yet-earlier trilogies. What's the common thread here? The belittlement of individual creativity, and the triumph of anonymous product. It's like some Barthesian nightmare of the Death of the Author and his replacement by "text."

i tu onda sterling kaže da je za neke ljude ovo super pozicija. oni prihvataju takvu situaciju: žanr je tamo neka polica u knjižari, nešto što sa stvarnošću nema veze, ali što ti omogućava da formulaičnim pristupom i uklapanjem u tržišni konformizam ti kao pisac ne moraš da budeš inovativan već da lepo zarađuješ i pričaš kako je sve mrtvo i već viđeno ida ti ne možeš ništa... e, to je za sterlinga mediokritetski raj. a ono što je za njega dobro i mogući izlaz - jeste slipstrim.

[scallop]

Potpuno sam saglasan sa konstatacijama o komercijalnoj jalovosti. Mene više more zaključci o ključnim doprinosima mejnstrima i postmodernističkog, naročito. Ja sam život proživeo u verovanju da se žanrovsko literarnim kvalitetima probija ka mejnstrimu, kad ono obrnuto. I tu ostajem zabezeknut. Nekako mi fale argumenti. Jer, i u navedenom spisku ja više vidim podeljenost dela, a ne autora. Gotovo svi su stvarali i ono što formalno ne pripada mejstrimu ili slipstrimu, recimo. Po meni, to nisu bile dvojne ličnosti, već dela koja su se razlikovala po motivaciji pisaca.

Budući da mene više zanima naša scena, ja vidim da je i kod nas na delu komercijalna jalovost, povlađivanje trenutku, pa se i angažovanost ili političke motivacije serviraju kao ustupak željama tržišta. Nedavno sam imao prilike da čitam jedan roman u kome je autor na trista stranica uporno pokušavao da poveže "suđenje ubijenom premijeru" i neku abrakadabra "mač i magiju". Ko veli - angažovano, aktuelno i popularno. To svakako ne pije vodu, ali, učinilo mu se da vredi pokušati.

Sa druge strane, svedok sam sve veće želje "prihvaćenih" pisaca da se ture u žanr i to im ne ide. Istovremeno, "žanrovski" pisci se ne moraju stideti u tom društvu. Kad Žika pročita Skrobonjine zbirke možda će imati da kaže koju reč. To je druga strana medalje: mejnstrim kritika kod nas je gadljiva na "trivijalno", pa ćemo radije raspravljati o Sterlingovom doprinosu.

[---]

naravno, pitanje je koliko je slipstrim opravdana kovanica. ja kao i lord kufer mislim da je to pokušaj izvlačenja i mimikrije postmodernizma, i to dosta maglovit. ali sterling jeste prepoznao jednu važnu pojavu u ondašnjoj mejnstrim književnosti - korišćenje žanrovskih, prvenstveno sf konvencija, njihovo inkorporiranje u tkivo proze kakva se dotad povezivala isključivo sa "visokom kulturom" i pravljenje jedne interesantne proze od te kaše.

objasniti šta ovo znači i biti koliko-toliko precizan i argumentovan je već malo duža priča. svi znamo istoriju i j ase izvinjavam što sad odlazim k vragu: kada se, s pojavom industrijalizacije, pojavio rast srednje klase, iscepkano čitalačko tržište, ciljne grupe, popularno štivo usmereno ka ukusu srednje klase, pojavila se i "visoka kultura" za obrazovaniji sloj, nastala je ta distinkcija, i tada se pojavila avangrada, prihvativši neke forme popularne kulture i naglasivši njihovu političku pozadinu. posle toga je došao modernizam sa napadom na umetničke konvencije, a postmodernizam je proistekao iz te dve tradicije. ili, kako je jedan tip napisao povodom antologije "američka postmodernistička proza":

"Pored modernizma, za postmodernističku književnost veoma je važno i nasleđe avangarde, a pre svega njenog napada na sve umetničke konvencije, tj. političko značenje avangardnog napada na veru u razum i progres. Takođe je važno napomenuti da se modernizam, čak i kada se služio popularnim formama kulture (kao Džojs u Uliksu), ipak držao ,,visoke kulture" i predstavljao optimističan pokret koji je doprineo njenom razvoju, dok je avangarda prihvatila popularnu kulturu i potcrtala njen politički aspekt. Postmodernistički pisci šezdesetih, poput Džona Barta, Vilijama Gasa, Donalda Bartelmija i Roberta Kuvera, oslanjaju se i na eksperimentalnost ,,visokog modernizma", ali se i bune protiv prezira koji su mnogi kasni modernisti osećali prema ,,zadovoljstvu u čitanju" što se uglavnom vezivalo za popularne književne forme. Tako su pisci i kritičari prigrlili naučnu fantastiku kao jedan od ključnih žanrova koji dobro opisuje postmoderno vreme, naročito u pitanjima o odnosu čoveka i mašine (što je naglašavala kritičarka Dona Haravej), simbolu ,,kiborga", bio- i kompjuterske tehnologije, itd."

tako je nastao američki postmodernizam i ono što je za nas na ovom forumu zanimljivo - njegova veza sa naučnom fantastikom. e, sad, u okviru postmodernizma ima svega i svačega, ali je brus sterling hteo da izdvoji jednu liniju po-mo proze koja se poigrava žanrovskom književnošću - i označi je kao slipstrim. i on je svestan da tu nije reč ni o kakvom žanru u uskom značenju te reči: "And it may well be argued that slipstream has no "real" genre identity at all. Slipstream might seem to be an artificial construct, a mere grab-bag of mainstream books that happen to hold some interest for SF readers."

sterling je samo nabacao neke kriterijume, dosta maglovite, pokušao da, kao ,kreira novi pravac, novo ime, da u maniru cyberpunkerske reputacije smišlja nove reči za maštovite izmišljotine koje će možda postati stvarnost. i to mu je to. ono što jeste intrigantno i što smatram tačnim u sterlingovom opisu slipstrima je ono što je izvukao od scholza: američki mejnstrim pisci (pod čime se zapravo podrazumevaju pisci van žanrovskog geta koji se i dalje smatraju za pripadnike "visoke kulture" i objavljuju u mejnstrim časopisima, izdavačkim kućama, edicijama i antologijama) počeli su da primenjuju karakteristične žanrovske postupke i da ih nadgrađuju - bilo tako što tim postupcima govore nešto važno o životu u savremenom svetu, naročito na tlu SAD-a i Zapadne civilizacije uopšte, što donose neke filozofske uvide i postavljaju pitanja koja su najdublje povezana sa našom teskobom ili našim veseljem danas/ovde, i šta ti ja znam... ili što donose nešto novo po pitanju književne forme...

naravno, polemike se vode i danas da li su ti pisci preuzimali žanrovske postupke ili su pisali "malo drugačije" žanrovske knjige. i nisam siguran da je rešenje pronađeno.

zgodno je tu ići po primerima sa liste. recimo, "city of glass" pola ostera. tu imamo i detektiva, i slučaj, i tipične hard-boilewd zavrzlame, gotovo klišee, ali se onda sve komplikuje borhesovskim postupkom, pitanjem dvojnika i odnosa pisac/junak romana, pitanjem ko je polo oster a ko danijel kvin, ko je lud i šta je ludilo itd. to je vrlo jaka politička struktura, zupravo zato što komentariše jedan žanr kao što je krimić.

ili, da se vrnemo na sf. keti aker i "empire of senseless". tu imate pozivanje na v. gibsona, robote, tipičan sf koji je naglašeno feministički - ali ne bih rekao da je to žanrovska sf knjiga. ili doris lesing. "four gated city" je regularan društveni roman čije se vreme samo malo "produži" i priča ode u sf. ali nikom nije palo na pamet da doris lesing nominuje za nagradu hugo.

[Lord Kufer]

Sterling je po mom mišljenju dosta omanuo i očigledno pokušava da od slipstreama napravi nakakav novi žanr ili, nedaj bože - književnu vrstu.

Ono što mnogi previđaju je činjenica da SF ne značu uvek i samo SciFi, nego je još pre toga Speculative Fiction, a Vonegat i Barouz su dobri predstavnici te VRSTE, odnosno pristupa pisanju književnog teksta, koji u sebi obavezno podrazumeva i kritički stav pisca a ne samo laprdanje radi laprdanja (što postmodernizam jeste, čak i onda kad su postmodernistički pisci imali i poštenu nameru).

Spekulativna fikcija je veoma stara, ima dosta takvih dela u antičkoj književnosti - Aristofan, pa i kod drugih grčkih pisaca, a naročito ih ima dosta u Rimljana.

Kada bi Rable danas objavio svog Gargantuu i Pantagruela, na ovom forumu bi se lomila koplja je li to fentezi, horor ili možda slipstream.

Don Kihot je spekulativna fikcija.

Šekspirova (Bejkonova) Bura je spekulativna fikcija.

Nisu ova dela žanrovska fantazija iako imaju mnogo fantazijskih elemenata upravo zbog angažovanog i kritičkog stava pisaca. Njihov pristup je sveobuhvatan i nikakva kategorizacija po rodovima ih ne može dotaći, osim formalno.

Sterling u ovom tekstu nudi raznoradne plodove mora - ali ipak na kraju kaže sledeće:

Unlike the "speculative fiction" of the 60s, slipstream is not an internal attempt to reform SF in the direction of "literature."

Dakle, ni on ne misli da je slipstream književnost, nego je to još jedan jalovi pokušaj da se potrošna roba proglasi za umetnost tako što će se KLASIFIKOVATI prema nekakvim sumnjivim kriterijumima koji su se pojavili tokom ere dominacije marketinga i slobodnog tržišta.

[PTY]

Pronicljivo i lepo sročeno, Kišobranac. 

E sad, naravno, kad na ovaj tvoj post nakalemim onaj ostatak koji si rekao povodom KN -  "ovo što skrobonja dalje veli, i što se može zaključiti iz toga što veli, ta priča da pisac može samo da šara svoje lažije i bude jedan, tako, običnjak u kapitalističkom društvu, da se pomiri sa svojom ulogom pisakarala koji tako piše neke knjige da ljude razgali, da pisac ne može da digne revoluciju i da treba da bude zanatlija-činovnik, politički idiot koji izmišlja detinjaste priče da se zaborave i on i publika - to je stav koji ja načelno razumem, naročito u datom ekonomskom periodu kroz koji srbija prolazi, kad su svi gladni tržišta, mirnog porodičnog života i kupovine u supermarketu, kad bi svi pisci da budu stiven king, a niko mišima, ali ne bih rekao da je iko branio piscima da budu šta god hoće, da glume klovnove i zabavljaju narod, ili da se bave nekim lirskim reminiscencijama, ili svojim turobnim detinjstvom. ja to volim, i to je potpuno u redu. no, oltvanji je nešto počeo da čeprka po srpskoj stvarnosti, i kritičari poput arsenića koji imaju svoje jasne (političke) kriterijume u književnoj kritici, dakle, vole prozu koja se hvata ukoštac sa stvarnošću i ima političke konotacije, odmah su se uhvatili za taj deo "kičme noći", koji liči na neko suočavanje sa stvarnošću, i počeli da pričaju o tome šta ih interesuje" – onda je prilično očigledno da Skrob tu i ne govori o slipstrimu - on zapravo govori o trivijalnoj književnosti.  (S te strane gledano, znam da Skrob ima afinitet za takvu vrst literature, pa mi je njegovo oduševljenje KN toliko razumljivije... uostalom, i Skrobov roman je glanc 'operisan od stvarnosti' na isti taj konkretno način, izgleda mi... jeste da se radnja nominalno odvija u Srbiji, ali ta Srbija nema nikakve veze niti sa stvarnom niti sa ikojim iole plauzibilnim modelom koji ja mogu da prepoznam.)

A u tom slučaju, s obzirom na dela navedena na ovoj listi, prihvatili mi slipstrim kao žanr ili ne (a nije žanr, po meni, u pitanju je naprosto literarni efekat), poslednja stvar koja im se može predbaciti je izostanak stava ili izostanak estetske (ili čak političke) dimenzije.

Iz čega mi dalje izgleda da to što Skrob krsti slipstrimom – mislim na domaći trend na koji se obojica valjda referišete, ne na dela sa ove liste – podrazumeva sva dela koja se poigravaju sa tim konkretno efektom žanrovskog žongliranja, bez obzira na teme i teze i načine na koje su one obrađene.

E sad, ako je to dovoljno za prepoznavanje trenda, onda okej, neka bude da je u pitanju trend. Ali volela bih da vidim jednu listu takvih konkretno dela, da se jasnije vidi o čemu se ovde zapravo radi.

Ovako ispada da osim KN (i eventualno Skrobovog romana) ja i dalje ne znam na koja se to konkretno dela pozivate, pošto se svi vi u obrazlaganju uvek referišete na anglo-saks korpus koji, izvini me ovako drsku, mi se čini maltene bogohulno prizivati kao ilustraciju u baš ovom kontekstu.   

[scallop]

Hvala što si to napisala umesto mene. Samo, teško je poći predloženim putem. Treba i pročitati dela kako bi se neka lista napravila. Većina nije pročitala KN, mnogi ni KR ili PS (ako se tu iscrpljuje ambicija da se koketira sa mejnstrimom). Mada sam sklon da verujem da naš mejnstrim više koketira sa žanrom, a da u pomenutim delima ima više napora da se pridruže mejnstrimu. Možemo da raspravljamo o tome koliko ko u tome uspeva, Žika i Kufer su već pokazali da im je postupak poznat. Banalno tandrljanje ko je kome prijatelj i ko koga gura je zaista samo kafanska priča.

[PTY]

idi u kafanu.

[scallop]

Idi ti u kafanu.

[Boban]

koji vam je kurac?
ako se ne trpite, pa okrenite leđa jednom drugom i živite svoj život dalje.

[pokojni Steva]

Alaj je ovde sve pameeetnooo....begam ja odavle...

[PTY]

Daj se smiri. To sa kafanom nije bilo brecanje, ni sa moje ni njegove strane, tako da se brecaš bez potrebe.

[---]

Dakle, ni on ne misli da je slipstream književnost, nego je to još jedan jalovi pokušaj da se potrošna roba proglasi za umetnost tako što će se KLASIFIKOVATI prema nekakvim sumnjivim kriterijumima koji su se pojavili tokom ere dominacije marketinga i slobodnog tržišta.

pa sad, ne znam, ima na toj listi zaista izvanrednih knjiga. zapravo, većina nije potrošna roba.

[Lord Kufer]

Očigledno, lista mu služi kao pokriće za onako ambivalentan tekst. Svako može da napravi listu i za to dobije Nobelovu nagradu.

Spekulativna fikcija je metod, pa je zbog toga "vrsta" književnosti a ne žanr (u modernom smislu). A u starinskom smislu, žanrovi su upravo određivani prema metodu i pristupu materiji (komedija, tragedija, satira). A palp nikad nije ni smatran književnošću.

Nego sad odjednom trgovcima treba pokriće za đubre koje uvaljuju narodu, pa palp počeo da dobija nagrade.

Follow the money...

[Melkor]

The rise of literary genres In an ever more tightly focused books market, divisions into niche appetites are ever more specific
   

   
•   Robert McCrum   
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 November 2012 12.44 GMT

   A week ago, writing about 62-year old Hilary Boyd's Thursdays in the Park (Quercus), I coined the term "gran lit". Hardly original, you will say, (no dispute there), but it caught on. Subsequently, variations on "gran lit" appeared in the Times, the Telegraph and the Independent, as well as getting recognition in Australia's Herald-Sun.
The gran in question (Mrs Boyd) also popped up on  both the ITV News at Ten and the Today Show, challenging the conventional wisdom: just because you're over 60, you're not interested in having a fling. I'm wondering how long it will be before gran lit  joins chick lit, and the rest, as a term of art. That's to say, as a shorthand for a now-booming genre of fiction for the "grey market".
The development of the literary marketplace in the past 30-something years has been echoed by a new, and acute, sensitivity to the place of genre within the trade. In a market-savvy creative economy, you could say that genre has become everything. I have been  able to identify 15 contemporary shades of  "literature". No doubt, readers will think of others, but here are some obvious first nominations.

1. Lit lit
Two versions here.
a) Poetry. No higher form - a straight line from Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth, Hardy and Hughes.
b) Fiction. Also known as "literary fiction"; a genre whose contemporary exemplars include Julian Barnes, Philip Hensher and Zadie Smith.
2. Ghost lit
A surprising number of successful books (bestselling memoirs especially) are written by ghost writers. But there are also ghosted novels, too. By definition these wraith-like creatures have no names and are known only to their fellow spooks – and the publishers who depend on them.
3. Graphic book lit
Manga novels have been a booming genre for the past 10 years. The Observer sponsors a graphic short story prize, but graphic books have yet to become an established part of the mainstream.
4. Chick lit
The motherlode. There's far more of this lit than most readers realise. If, as some  suggest, it began with Bridget Jones, there's now a second or even third generation.
5. Gran lit
A new entry: see my opening comments, above
6. Erotic lit
The quintessential expression of this genre is, of course, EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey, which has now begun to acquire some respectability with a  nomination for a National Book award. My own guess is that it's a craze that will soon (if it doesn't already) seem embarrassing and ridiculous.
7. Booker lit
Fiction that plays well with Booker prize judges is sometimes characterised as unreadable and pretentious, with some justification. On the other hand, the Booker's track record of winners is impressive.  As a prize, Booker is rivalled only by the Orange prize, now the women's prize for fiction. In a larger category – prize lit – Booker and Orange are the market leaders.
8. US lit
For me, the big names here are still Philip Roth, Paul Auster, and Don DeLillo.  Of course, US fiction (and poetry) is too vast a canvas to be reduced to a single frame.
9. Commonwealth lit
The literature of the Commonwealth  used to get a lot of commercial and critical attention. Changing readership patterns in the world have reduced the significance of "Commonwealth" writing, but it will probably survive, in some form, for another generation.  (see also: 10 and 11)
10. Oz lit
Australian writing, a sub-genre of 9, used to be fashionable enough to deserve a category of its own. The market leader is Peter Carey, followed by Christos Tsiolkas, Kate Grenville and Thomas Keneally, among many.
11. Indian lit
This could be seen as a subset of either Booker lit or Commonwealth Lit, and is represented by Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and many others. For a while, it seemed as if the English literary tradition would be sustained exclusively by writers from the sub-continent.
12. Kids' lit
The past 20 years have seen a wonderful flowering of writing for children, from Philip Pullman and Julia Donaldson to Michael Morpurgo and JK Rowling. Later generations will work out why this should have been so.
13. Translated lit
The British reading public's appetite for foreign prose and poetry is (compared with that of our European neighbours) patchy. There was a boom in translated fiction in the 1980s (Kundera, Vargas Llosa, Márquez etc) but that has slowed in the last decade.
14. SF/fantasy
Science fiction is the cockroach in the house of books: it survives on scraps and never goes away. Occasionally, as in the work of  HG Wells and JG Ballard, it becomes sublime.
15. Blog lit
A new entry to the field. Blogs that become books. The latest is schoolgirl Martha Payne's blog, which was published last week. Payne hit the headlines with her blog on school meals, won the support of Jamie Oliver and went on to raise £120,000 for charity after her local council banned her from posting photographs and scathing critiques of her school dinners online. Her book, written with the help of her father, takes its title from  her blog, NeverSeconds. A more serious example of a blog that became a book is The Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross.
Book blogs, generally, remain virtual: as they should.
   

[-_-]

Citajuci ovu staru temu, nesto mi je zapalo za oko, pa da pitam one koji se razumeju.

svi znamo istoriju i j ase izvinjavam što sad odlazim k vragu: kada se, s pojavom industrijalizacije, pojavio rast srednje klase, iscepkano čitalačko tržište, ciljne grupe, popularno štivo usmereno ka ukusu srednje klase, pojavila se i "visoka kultura" za obrazovaniji sloj

Posto ovo niko nije ovde demantovao, zanima me da li je citirani stav opsteprihvacen,
ili ipak postoji veci broj kriticara/pisaca/koga god - koji se sa ovim ne slazu.

[Albedo 0]

koji stav, ima ih 3-4 u toj rečenici

[scallop]

Ajkde, navedi te stavove pa da raspravljamo.

[Albedo 0]

1. industrijalizacija uzrokovala rast srednje klase
2. industrijalizacija uzrokovala iscjepkano čitalačko tržište
3. popularno štivo usmjereno ka ukusu srednje klase
4. pojava ''visoke kulture'' za obrazovaniji sloj