Pool

BACKGROUND 'Pool' is an experiment in the 'slipstream' genre - a term coined by Bruce Sterling in 1988 to describe high-brow literary works that incorporate aspects of low-brow speculative fiction. There has been renewed interest in popular fiction as a mainstay of commercial publishing (Driscoll, Wilson and Carter 2016), but my creative practice takes up the idea of genre fiction as the wellspring for new literary works. Recent texts by Jane Rawson and Briohny Doyle show how our conception of literary fiction as anti-generic, and fundamentally realist, is inadequate when it comes to categorising an emerging literature of the Australian Anthropocene. CONTRIBUTION Based on notions of 'trans-genre', this short story explores the literary/popular nexus, in particular how self-professed 'weird' fiction uses, misuses and abuses aspects of both high and low forms. In an example of practice-led research, 'Pool' recasts a gothic ghost story for a new literary outlet with a work that sets itself up as literary fiction before slipping into something stranger. SIGNIFICANCE This research contributes a novel approach to writing the Australian Anthropocene: it evokes an uncanny sense of 'solastalgia' through a cross-genre experiment - telling a popular/populist plot via the 'intentionally aesthetic' literary mode. As a story that was written to be read two ways, at one at the same time (as a tale of fantastic possession and factual psychosis), it exemplifies 'shadowtime' in form as well as content. This short story was a runner-up in the niche Conjure awards as well as being published in this well-regarded outlet for quality fiction - where fellow contributors including high-profile speculative-fiction author James Bradley. These two outcomes demonstrate that the work successfully straddles the 'lit'/popular fict divide.