STORY IDEA ABOUT THIS 9 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO READS THE NEWSPAPER TO HER GRANDMOTHER AND IN READING IT SHE AGES A YEAR OR TEN YEARS PER ARTICLE SHE READS AND BY THE TIME SHE FINISHES THE NEWSPAPER SHE IS AS OLD AS HER GRANDMOTHER ALSO WHAT SHE DOES NOT KNOW IS THAT SHE IS BEING MONITORED BY THE GOVERNMENT AND EVERYTIME SHE MAKES A COMMENT ON WHAT SHE IS READING THEIR IS A HORN THAT BLOWS AND SOMEBODY IS KILLED

Slipstream is a kind of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, andmainstream literary fiction.

The term slipstream was coined by cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling in an article originally published in SF Eye #5, in July 1989. He wrote: "...this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility."^[1] Slipstream fiction has consequently been described as "the fiction of strangeness," which is as clear a definition as any of the others in wide use^{[citation needed]}. Science fiction authors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, editors of Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, argue that cognitive dissonance is at the heart of slipstream, and that it is not so much a genre as a literary effect, like horror or comedy.^[2]

Slipstream falls between speculative fiction and mainstream fiction. While some slipstream novels employ elements of science fiction or fantasy, not all do. The common unifying factor of these pieces of literature is some degree of the surreal, the not-entirely-real, or the markedly anti-real^{[original research?]}.

In 2007, the first London Literature Festival at the Royal Festival Hall held a Slipstream night chaired by Toby Litt and featuring the British authors Steven Hall and Scarlett Thomas.^[3