Why literary authors can deny writing SF...

...and write it anyway.

I've collated a couple of articles I found that at least explained the rationalisation literary writers use for denying writing SF on my blog post Writers and Science Fiction.

It's fairly long, so I don't want to copy it here, but for those who are as frustrated with the likes of Margaret Atwood as me, or who hated Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, it's two interesting takes that dovetail.

I always just thought it was just snottiness, like some fantasy books that aren't called fantasy (well, they're not sword-and-sorcery, but that's not the only kind of fantasy) so that they'll be in the "fiction" section instead.

But I never really paid attention to it much either way, so I look forward to this discussion.

I think "rationalization" is the right word ... and that bluesalamander hit the nail on the head ... however, it was interesting to read about a theory regarding the other side of the coin ... about how many sci-fi readers don't enjoy "literary" books that include some apparently sci-fi trappings, like Lives of the Monster Dogs ... I'd love to hear more from people about this.

#1 - I popped over to your blog and the read the articles.
You can make arguments about the disaster tale predating sf by centuries, so mainstream writers could claim they are writing in an older tradition but that doesn't really answer the question.

The answer to the why literary authors deny writing sf is simple - sf (and fantasy) is still perceived by a significant number of people as fundamentally adolescent.
I remember reading one article that blamed 'Star Wars' for effectively ending any credibility the sf had earned. After that film cinema was deluged with bad sf films, and sf in general went back to being seen as juvenile.
Therefore, if you are a literary author with any creditability you don't want to be associated with the sf genre and claim to writing a novel of ideas.

I don't agree with the claim that sf writers can't go the other way - J. G. Ballard is now seen as one of the UK's leading novelists, and his early disaster novels get widely praised. (Of course, you could point that the sf world didn't always warm to Ballard). Other British sf&f writers like Michael Moorcock, Brian W. Aldiss & M. John Harrison have all published mainstream works which have been warmly received. On the other hand, the only US genre writer I can think you has a good critical response recently for a mainstream work is John Crowley, with The Translator. (Again, Crowley is no superstar in the fantasy field but someone out in the margins).

Yes. the second view had, I think a lot to recommend it. people writing outside their genre use the tropes differently, To habitués of the genre they are borrowing they can seem to be mishandling them. The way authors handle the tropes can and does distinguish them from genre works, This is equally true of some works within the genre though good works are not bound by tropes. rather they transcend genre. When a mainstream writer falsely claims their novel is not SF they are claiming to transcend the genre often though they are merely replacing one set of tropes with another.

4>

Maybe the edges of genre are a lot more fuzzy in Britain than in the US. As well as your examples I can think of Iain Banks who more than dabbles both sides of the divide. There is also Peter Ackroyd who approaches the edges from the mainstream side. A lot of his novels have strong genre leanings and I don't think he is that sniffy about labels. I think I can remember an interview with him (from years back) where he said that his next book would be science fiction (that was possibly Milton In America).

As part of a recent set of BBC documentaries looking at British SF (both written and visual) Doris Lessing was interviewed. Although her SF novels were not as well received within the genre as they could have been (they still got mainstream critical praise) I don't think she regards SF as a lesser form of writing nor does she show the kind of snottiness alluded to by bluesalamander.

Also I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if Rushdie's publisher hadn't withdrawn Grimus from the SF novel competition it had been entered for (just when it looked likely it would be the winner as well).

Monster Dogs if a nifty name. For one thing, KT, a lot of us will never ever know it exists. Then if we did pick it up because someone on a LT mentions and it seems a tad pretentious and/or dodgy might think :-

Why would I want to bother when I have H.G. Wells, and for a look at the thing from another point of view, Top 10, or Sirius, or Watchers or We3 or Breed To Come or even Absolution Gap etc. etc. etc.

Then, I suppose there is the considerably higher probability it is boring, or just plain bad ;-)

Multiple ways to be bad, too. The writer could be just plain ignorant of anything that may have gone before, producing something that will seem like a bad pastiche. It could be bad because trying something like that is a stunt, or going to be just generally beyond them, given their proclivities.

So the risk would be too high in a time and/or money sense to even bother, given the likely underlying rating probability distribution for that particular set of books.

To put that more plainly, if, as mdbenoit mentions, the chances are higher that I get something crappy like The Sparrow and not Sirius then it is not worth the effort of even thinking about doing.

6> yes the British tradition has a much fuzzier edges than the american which can never seem to escape its pulp roots. Although nowadays Doris Lessing is less dissmissive of sf as a genre this was not always the case she made a lot "I don't write sf" type remarks in the early days.

andyl: I think you're right that the edges between literary and SF are more blurred in the UK than the US or Canada.

In Canada, it is virtually impossible to be considered a "serious" writer if you write anything other than literary fiction. Even incredible writers such as Holly Phillips who is absolutely stunning (her latest, The Burning Girl is nothing short of literary) is considered strictly SF.

SimonW11: Another writer who is completely dismissive of SF is Margaret Atwood. Yet, The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake and even parts of The Blind Assassin are SF. This rejection is what led me to find out the "why" of that.

On livejournal, there is a book community that I considerred joining for a while. The description sounded great, discussing books, etc, until the part where they said, if you like SF, this is not the place for you. We just don't consider it literature.

I have to wonder if some of these people who dismiss SF as not literary have ever actually read (any of it at all) any of the really good stuff - not necessarily what we would consider classics or important, but just SF that is written extremely well. Complex books that have lots of character developement as well as world-building and plot.

Or would they go into it with the mindset of "this is SF and therefore beneath me" and just not see it?

I think a more interesting question is why it is so important that these writers acknowledge some connection?

I must disagree with you #7, The Sparrow is a phenomenal book and while it may not be scientifically accurate, it is as much a novel of ideas as any other great SF novel. Mary Doria Russell has never denied that her novel is a first contact novel, therefore science fiction, but would you blame her if she didn't want to be put into some kind of genre box? I believe it also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award which has a superior record, IMHO, of searching out great science fiction irregardless of genre marketing.

As far as something being "literary" much depends how you are defining it. Literary suggests something of lasting value, which speaks to our common values, something which uses the literary form and language as part of it's art. It goes beyond just good storytelling. Much of SF & F and mainstream, while often interesting and entertaining reads, fall far short of this.

Why is it important that we show the connection between genre and some parts of the mainstream?

I would have thought that was obvious. The alternative is to accept the ghettoisation of science fiction. It seems strange that there are readers who seem immediately put off by the label and writers who pander to that by fiercely avowing that what they write isn't SF although it is in the future and features cloning (for example). At times it seems we are no further forward than when Kingsley Amis was banging the drum for genre in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

I have seen people claim that the maybe some of the problem is down to The Two Cultures Of C.P. Snow - that too many people see science as hard, not part of their world, and hence science fiction will either be not enjoyable or relevant to them. Well either that or associate science fiction with the worst excesses of TV space opera.

"Literary fiction" is as much a genre. as any other.There is I think a feeling that its followers control and manipulate media attention to its benifit and the detriment of other genres that chick lit crime SF are dissmissed not for their quality but for not being part of the correct social set. (Shrug) there is some truth in it.

andyl, my question was meant to be provocative. While you and I may understand why this is so, others might not.

And while we all bemoan the ghettoisation of the genre and are indignent over genre boundaries, we are also the same people who through our actions reinforce such boundaries. Genre functions in this country largely as a marketing niche. SF & F readers want to be able to walk into a separate, special aisle/s of the bookstore and recognize the kinds of books they like by their covers. And so on.

I think, andyl, that you may be right in your last statement also. There are people who are just not interested in science or future-orientated stories. I don't think it's because it's necessarily hard, but they just don't relate to the world that way. But there are just as many people not interested in post-modernism or surrealism, for that matter.

15> you hit a lot of nails on the head there avaland.

thank you, simonw11, I am occasionally handy with a hammer.

Also interesting because there has been quite a bit of talk about the 'death' of literary fiction, at least as far as Australia is concerned. People just aren't reading it, apparently. It certainly doesn't seem to be around as much as half a dozen years ago, anyway.

Is this is the same anywhere else?

Actually, I have some very nice conversations with several Aussies about literary fiction. If it's dead, someone needs to tell them.

Note the quotes on the word death.

People still write Westerns, as well. :)

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/11/1092102516301.html?from=storyrhs

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20459847-25132,00.html

for a couple of articles about that sort of thing, for example

Very interesting articles, I'm going to print them out so I can reread them again a little slower.

andyl and avanland: That's why the article on tropes was so interesting to me. Readers like to find what is familiar to them, from themes to concepts, to structure.

SF is also the only one who's successfully (more or less in some cases) multi-media: books, magazines, TV programs, movies, games, etc. which somehow dilutes, IMO, the overall quality (The killer, to me, are the fan conventions). Exclusivity, after all, is found in its rarity.

Literary fiction does not translate well to other media; most movies based on literary novels are usually lacking and disappointing. Maybe the exclusivity lends them a cachet that SF has lost.

22>

I am not sure I follow your point about SF conventions (which have been around for 70 years btw).

However literary fiction has its magazines, the TV and radio programmes looking at an author's work, films and television and radio dramatisations, and quite a number of literary events and festivals. The Whitbread and Booker prizes feature on the news (both radio and TV). The Booker gets even more TV coverage than just having the winner mentioned on the news.

Games and comics are about the only thing where there is a difference. All the rest is just a matter of scale.

I would also mention that I think that films of SF stories are usually even more lacking and disappointing than those of literary works.

23> Wow, they mention literary prizes on TV in the UK? I'm sure the general public in the US has no idea what prizes are given out for literary excellence, even in this country! If it doesn't have a big, boring awards show with a red carpet, it doesn't exist!

Which is why the book industry initiated the Quill Awards... to promote reading and do for reading what the Oscars do for movies. However, it's a popularity award, not something voted on just by the book industry. Most of the winners are very predictable.

Yes the booker always gets a mention and quite often there is a controversy. One year the majority of Judges claimed they had not voted for the winner.
here are the 2006 article on the BBC website. profiles of the Short list reports on the bookies odds. a review of the winner. not major stories but they will get a mention.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5347028.stm

The Booker usually gets at least an half hour discussion programme on BBC2 or Channel 4 immediately after the award is announced.

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1231500.stm for details of the Beeb winning back the rights (yes they have two TV stations bidding to show a programme about the Booker) in 2001.

The Booker is also a big thing in Canada, mainly on the radio, though. Since we have a very strong public broadcasting network, here, the CBC, we do get apprised of all the literary awards, including the Nobel prizes.

But, andyl, I think you missed my point about media. In SF, the media isn't used to talk about an author. The media is the message (I had to put that in, couldn't resist). To my knowledge, there's never been long-running TV programs spun off from a literary work, or a program that says it's a "literary story". Literary fiction has no fandom or conventions where fans go to it dressed in their favorite character. Literary magazines (which are few and far between) don't have lurid or colorful covers. There has never been a game made about, let's say, The Great Gatsby.

Yes, there are literary dramatizations, both on TV and in the movies, but they're either disappointing or a one-time thing.

We have a saying in French: Culture is like jam: the less you have, the more you spread it. My take is that literary authors see SF like jam; it's spread very thin.

Further to #26 & #27 - something disturbing happened last year, the tv coverage was dropped. This seems even more incredible now that BBC4 exists, which is a more highbrow BBC2 - they have done serious 1 hour (no breaks) interviews with Stephen King, Philip Roth, Terry Pratchett; a series on romantic novels; a series on British science fiction.
At one point they used to have a panel show which involved discussing what would have won the Booker in 1854, for example.

Mdbenoit - I do agree with some of what you say. SF works become franchises, rather than remaining just books. You can argue that this doesn't detract from the initial novel(s) but it does - it gets hard to see the value of the original work when it's hidden behind a wall of plastic figures. Literary authors rarely say "that book was a big success so I must write more of the same."
One of the reasons I started reading less and less sf was that I was tired with author's bringing out endless prequels and sequels, long after they had anything to say. Why didn't Frank Herbert end the Dune saga with Children of Dune? The subsequent 900 novels by him and his son are just pointless.
When I read a literary novel I know I am reading a self-contained work, a carefully constructed well-written novel that the author will not exploit endlessly.

To my knowledge, there's never been long-running TV programs spun off from a literary work

Well how about the BBC dramatisation of The Forsythe Saga - 26 one hour episodes. But that is unusual in length. Literary works are more suited to short mini-series and there have been plenty of those. Austen, Bronte, George Eliot, Hardy, E.M. Forster and Paul Scott all have had high profile dramatic productions. For me this is a better hit-rate than film/tv treatments of SF works especially major SF works.

I also disagree with your point about TV not being used to talk about an author and their work. In the UK I can think of programmes and interviews with a number of SF writers - both on ITV and BBC. OK there are not that many as few writers are well-known enough to the general populace but they do exist.

High profile literary magazines are few and far between sometimes do have covers full of colour (and are sometimes garish). Look at the back-issues of Granta for example. But you are right that literary magazines and SF magazines have a different heritage. SF magazines are much closer to their readership in my opinion and that is no bad thing.

But in essence what you are saying is that the craplow-end populist stuff is drowning out the good stuff. That literary (and mainstream) authors are not able to see past that and the surface glitz to get to the good stuff within the genre.

12

Avaland, I did fail to find any ideas in The Sparrow, especially none even remotely close to the 'great sf novel sense'. Poorly cobbled together crew screws up, dumb western religion problems included. Or even suckers answer alien singing. All done decades before.

28

I think something similar might be said about French these days, as far as the jam thing goes? ;-) What is up with all that Asterix! :)

Literary awards over here get attention on NPR, perhaps PBS on TV; the author might show up on BookTV. The Booker probably gets less attention here as it might in Canada or Australia. I think it is rare over here in the states for a SF fan to also be interested in literary fiction (it would be more common among the writers of SF & F). That said, if they're to be found, they're probably on LT:-)

31 bluetyson, well, I'm not going to try to educate you on the attributes of The Sparrow, we can agree to disagree.

29 I, too, have moved away from reading a lot of SF, perhaps for the same reasons. I started Dan Simmons Ilium but tossed it as soon as I realized it was incomplete and one would have to read the second book (I hate that kind of manipulation). Of course, there seems to be more than enough people who are interested in continuing sagas and series, ready to immerse themselves for years on end with the same characters and settings.

I rarely get through a trilogy, my exceptions to that would be Asimov's robot novels, Charnas' Holdfast Chronicles and Miéville's Bas Lag novels (although the latter is hardly revisiting the same characters).

#32 I wonder if one of the reasons that sf&f readers are not that interested in literary fiction is due to an inverted snobbery. The sf community is usually quite dismissive of mainstream writers who use sf tropes, while often seeing sf writers who move into the mainstream as betraying their roots. There is a belief that the genre reader knows the truth, that the real masterpieces of modern fiction are not in the mainstream but in the genres. The problem with this theory is that while sf has a number of very imaginative writers, it doesn't always follow that they are good prose writers.
The doyens of sf - Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein - were capable of invoking that 'sense of wonder' but they weren't the best writers, the prose was of secondary importance. The heyday of sf was probably the sixties and early seventies when a number of very good writers all appeared at the same time, lured by the freedom of the genre. Nowadays you don't need to write sf or fantasy to get that freedom, the mainstream is more free.
You could alter the question above and ask, why do so many good sf writers want to deny sf and join the mainstream?

" invoking that 'sense of wonder' but they weren't the best writers, the prose was of secondary importance"

in #33 That may have been true in the 60s and 70s but for some writers its hardly true today. Cherryh is (as always) my rime example but there are others.

Well, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck, and you say it isn't a duck, what is that telling your readers of that sort of thing?

Dismissiveness is likely to come when the story is hackneyed, I think.

Or, average writing + good story > fancy writing + nothing happening/bad rehash/mishandling

Mainstream could mean Michael Crichton money, presumably. :)

I definitely have a bit less patience for 'long books' and series at the moment, anyway (and haven't read Ilium either

Very stormy discussion, in the sense of bringing relief from pressure to some long-cherished opinions, I think.

Genres are marketing categories, which we all seem to take as genuine, up-from-the-roots differences in writing quality and style. Someone above mentioned Peter Ackroyd's Milton in America as an sf-style novel...would it surprise all to know that sf mavens in many places deride the subcategory "alternate history" into which this allohistorical tale fits most comfortably?

All is vanity, for vanity read marketing....

36>

It doesn't surprise me at all, but then I could probably dig up an SF fan who would deride nearly any subcategory of SF.

I wonder if people make a distinction between counter-factuals, allohistoricals, uchronia, and alternate histories.

The Sidewise Award (named after a 1934 story by Murray Leinster) is for alternate history stories and is awarded at either the Worldcon or NASFiC.

I think Turtledove sums it up when he says "Science fiction writers write it. And it uses a very science fictional technique: change one thing and extrapolate from that."

I think we all acknowledge that genres are marketing tools, and that readers like them. If you are an sf or crime buff do you want to search through walls of books to find the books you want. It's really self-ghetto-isation, sf writers and readers claim the genre is overlooked but still want it separated in the bookstore because it's better for business.

Do literary authors and sf authors use an sf idea for the same purpose?
Literary authors often have hackneyed sf ideas but the idea is usually just a springboard to talk about something completely different - very few are remotely interested in exploring why something is, or what happened, or the world they have created. It's why Ballard was so easily embraced by the mainstream, his disaster novels don't explain anything. Ballard is not interested, he's only interested in the workings of his characters. Are they sf novels or does this lack of interest make them fantasies?

# 34 - Cherryh is guilty of exploiting the same idea again and again, everything now seems to be part of a series. She also needs to slow down, write less and edit more.

#36 - I think everybody on this thread is au fait with sf and it's sub-genres. Everyone also reads sf which suggests on some level we believe there is quality writing in the genre. I just read less and less sf because I'm struggling to find good writers. But then I'd rather read good writing that has something interesting to say now than something with a strong central idea but is handicapped by the writing, and lacks depth.

What do people think of individual works by literary authors, that could be seen as sf? Are they better or worse? For example,
The Alteration - Kingsley Amis
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth

#38 " Cherryh is guilty of exploiting the same idea again and again, everything now seems to be part of a series. She also needs to slow down, write less and edit more"

Some of that I'd agree with, her main idea is certainly how contact with the new changes people and how you can adapt.

Series' is tricky. A "believable" world takes a lot of effort to create I'm quite happy to have continuation in this world, than a new but less detailed world every time. Literary writeres don't have this investment of effort in their world. they just look out the window.

I don't think the charges of write less and edit more are applicable, her writing hasn't changed from the early books, and the editing is always first rate, she dosen't leave plot holes etc.
Her books are long, and dense. Always have been and probably always will be. To me they are well writen long and dense, and as such I don't notice. She focuses primarily on the characters, not the world in which they live.
There are many many writers, particularly fantasy writers, who series' books bloat as they become more popular, and who only write one or tow series' each infinitely long. None of this is applicable to Cherryh.

I've not read your examples, so can't comment.

I suspect some writers would prefer to be seen as mainstream, because mainstream works sell more books! and have bigger print runs etc, After all they are writing to make a living. Only the financially independant are writing for the art, and I haven't read any of these.

1 and 4, never heard of those books (or him, I think, in the case of 4??)

2 is good.

3 = way too boring for me to get through. So, an example of perhaps the decent writing/nothing happening problem, as far as I was concerned - that was 15 years ago.

Although a thought just struck me, if the literary thing is declining, and the sf thing is declining, that might make a combination of such send publishers running? Which might lead you to finding nothing new if that is the sort of thing you like?

I am not the person to ask if you are looking for suggestions, though. If you are more interested in 'characters go to Mars, proceed to talk about the angst of being a neglected housewife and raising children while others work' than 'characters go to Mars, proceed to talk about the society and what is going on' dichotomy.

andyl, #30:But in essence what you are saying is that the craplow-end populist stuff is drowning out the good stuff. That literary (and mainstream) authors are not able to see past that and the surface glitz to get to the good stuff within the genre.

That's exactly what I mean. In addition, the more we're having this discussion, the more I see cultural and attitudinal differences between the UK and North America. Canada, in some ways, is closer to the way UK thinks, except that Canada more forcefully rejects SF. Most Canadian SF authors are published in the States. There is only one SF publisher in Canada: Edge.

How about Australia, NZ, or any other country? Anyone here not from UK or NA?

Yes, I am from nowhere near those places. I am sure most SF authors would be happy to be published in the USA. Plenty of fantasy and some SF around here, certainly more than there used to be. If I can believe what I read, etc., consumers are rejecting the literary side.

Canada/Australia have got similar population/size of market issues, but Canada is not far from the USA of course. Middle aged type writers growing up here would have had more exposure to the UK because of book importing monopolies, until more recently. US influence is most certainly growing, bookshelves and otherwise.

Way back in the Golden Age etc., US magazines etc. were flat out banned here up until a certain point.

And on the book thing, like the lack of Adam Roberts for example that Bob was talking about, when younger, a whole bunch of publishers and authors just passed me by from the American side, until more recently.

#32: avaland

And what of Robert Jordan? I read the first two and then I heard there were supposed to be nine of them. I was so angry I refused to read anymore, especially since I thought the second book could've been cut in half, there were so many extraneous words. I find fantasy titles and authors especially do that like Jordan and Eddings, and Anthony, to name a few.

40> The Alteration is really, really, good. Don't hesitate, go out and beg, borrow, or steal it (or you could just buy it) and read it today.

I agree with you on The Handmaid's Tale and I haven't read the Pynchon or the Roth.

I think people are confusing literary with mainstream. Literary fiction is littered with books that have minimal print runs. all hoping to get put on the booker shortlist.

Hmm. Where to start?

#45 I think literary fiction is a part of mainstream, at least over here in the US - if we're refering to mainstream as a marketing genre.

#43 I don't really have a problem with all those epic/heroic/sword & scorcery fantasy series because I don't read them. However, many people do. It's the bestsellers, after all, who fund the publication of the worthy underappreciated novels and poetry.

I spent many years, while my children were young, devouring every SF novel in sight; it's about the only literature I could digest between diaper changes, teacher conferences and Girl Scout meetings. Most of what I read had great stories, many had that sense of wonder, and most had really interesting ideas behind them. However, these days, like #38 above, I look for a lot more.
I suppose I look for depth, fine writing with an understanding of the novel form as an artistic medlum and or maybe originality of some sort...

Mark me down as another fan of The Sparrow.
Of course, I'm as much a fan of Literary Fiction as SF/Fantasy. I often list as my two favorite novels: Les Miserables and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

As to television productions of literary novels, I think primarily of Masterpiece Theater productions...which were fairly successful.

There have been some great successes adapting literary works to the stage, and from there to movies.

George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalian -- became My Fair Lady
Shalom Aleichem's Modern Children -- became Fiddler on the Roof
TS Eliot's Ol Possum's Book of Practical Cats -- became Cats

I'm not too happy with the film versions of Les Miserables, but the Broadway/London musical has been enormously successful.

andyl, what is The Alteration about?

It is an alternate-world story where there Protestant reformation never took place and Martin Luther became pope. The story is set in 1976 and the main character is a young boy (a fan of Time Romance fiction and Counterfeit World fiction) who is a gifted chorister. The "alteration" of the title is that which is required to try and preserve his voice - namely castration.

#48 & #49 - it reminds me a little of Pavane, probably because both are set in worlds where the reformation didn't happen.

Kingsley Amis was a leading literary novelist in the UK, he won the Booker etc, but he loved sf (to a degree), and detective stories (to a degree). He wrote one of the first serious critical works on sf, New Maps of Hell. The reason I qualify his love sf is that he couldn't stand the developments in the field that happened in the 1960s. Mind you, he couldn't stand any social developments in the 1960s either, apart from women's skirts getting shorter.

His son, Martin Amis is one of the best stylists currently writing in English. Although he hasn't written any sf, he has written about admiration of Ballard, and wrote the script to Saturn 3. He also wrote a book on early video games but that usually gets forgotten now (anyone who has a first edition of this book though could get a nice holiday out of it).

Kingsley Amis wrote the first non Fleming James Bond novel, I know that. Colonel Sun.

re: 32: series

Quick point, maybe made in another post: Long series, books in SF vs. stand alone books in literary fiction: A lot of the literary works of the past came in multiple volumes (same book, multiple volumes). It is not just non-literary genre fiction that gets the multi-volume treatment.

Just wanted to point that out. Differing ideas of length of story, and where and when a book ends and a new one begins.

>37 andyl:, andyl, you said I wonder if people make a distinction between counter-factuals, allohistoricals, uchronia, and alternate histories...I will bet dollars to donuts that most (outside this board, of course) don't have any idea what those categories are! But they, poor souls, should hie them hence to http://www.uchronia.com/ for a full explanation.

And I heartily encourage any and all to seek out The Alteration as strongly as andyl did.

Jargoneer (message 50): Martin Amis wrote a book of sci-fi short stories called Einstein's Monsters ... they were okay, maybe a little too earnestly anti-nuclear ...

#54 - I forgot about Einstein's Monsters. Your summary of the book seems fair enough. One of the criticisms that was aimed at Amis through the 70s and early 80s was that he was superficial, people admired his writing but said he wasn't actually saying anything. I think he took this criticism too much to heart - with books about the holocaust, Russia, terrorism, etc.

...Might as well pile on, then, and mention his Time's Arrow, too.

(Which might reinforce the actual topic of discussion, about literary authors denying it when they 'commit' SF.)

Jargoneer at #50 - you were referring to Invasion of the Space Invaders? (touchstone not working....) I've been idly looking for a copy of that one for 20 years or so....

#52, yes, thanks, I'm an English major and well aware of the history of the novel form; I was, in #32, speaking of my contemporary reading habits. I don't disparage readers who enjoy multi-volume novels, endless sequels, and continuing sagas, I just find that I can't do it myself. For example, I read the first three Dune novels but found each successive one less interesting than the first.

Alternate world geek castrati fiction, there's a sub-genre for you. So different world, not different history?

Given that certainly doesn't want to make me read it, this is good, then, why?

Or : Geek boy, clipped, sing good. The end. Anything in the middle?

I couldn't tell you what an allohistorical is, that is for sure. That sort of thing doesn't usually interest me.

bluetyson, I'll vouch for The Alteration...it's good, and worth a read - but I view it as little more than a mainstream knock-off of Roberts' Pavane.

(I guess the larger sub-genre would be "alternate post-Armada fiction")

avaland: me too. I read and enjoyed Dune, but I actually stopped half-way through the third book, never to return.

(Edited to finally close the tag. Sorry.)

58>

The history is different - for example not everyone has electricity. No birth control. No Henry VIII, different wars.

The main point of conflict in the book is that the lad (and his family) are not quite as welcoming to the idea of castration as the Church would like. There is incident along the way with the kidnapping and ransom of the lad.

But above all it is shot through with witty observations of character.

I won't tell you (or anyone else) if the boy gets castrated in the end or if he escapes to America.

i get the impression that another reason why literary writers don't want a book to be labelled sf is because of the stigma that sf, being genre, is easier to write and thus takes less skill. not that i know many lit writers! but i also get this impression from snobs who won't read sf.

sf, by its very definition, is written within the boundaries of science, technology, the fantastical, etc and i think lit writers feel that boundary guides and in fact aids the direction and content of the novel. in same cases it provides a formula.

its as if they think that sf writers sit down and go

"hmm... what'll i write... well, since i am writing sf it makes it easier! all i have to do is have a scientist invent a new proton drive and then his best friend can steal it etc, etc, etc... or! i could have a guy wake up in a strange wasteland and he proceeds to try to find the reason etc, etc, etc"

of course, some sf IS formulaic but not all.

(by the way, we seem to have gone all italics now...!)

NO comment just closing the italics tag left open by someone. Please check your posts!



Hopefully that should do it.

Right a comment. Not being a writer or knowing any I'm not sure how qualified I am to say but I feel that sometimes writing within a genre must be harder than setting it in the real world. After all everybody knows what the world is like so with a little observation there you have it. In a genre you have to invent it from scratch but still make it believable. This has to be a difficult thing to do, without losing any of the plot or character development and keeping the length down to something reasonable.

how do you even open the italics?

See HERE

please post questions in the FAQ group rather than that answers group though, so that the answers don't get lost the way they are in the FAQ!

I agree with reading_fox (and joechip) but would add that writing novels set in the real world is a genre in itself. Both literary and pop fiction can be quite formulaic at times, omitting things that could add to the texture of the work but gets ignored as it's taken for granted that the readers know this or that already and the text shouldn't be cluttered with inessentials.

I think it's sad that a lot of people don't get to read certain books because of their prejudices but the loss is on them and as I'm not particular towards novels set in a contemporary environment (I try every now and then but almost always gets disappointed) I think it's nice that I can find books without having to consider/browse through stuff I probably won't like.

I imagine those who won't read SF or fantasy feels the same way ;-)

And that's why authors and publishers want to tag the/ir works?

yeah, i think you're right Busifer, and i think its especially the case with some writers where they ascribe to particular rules and conventions. although i don't think the lit writers see it that way : )

Yep, I am quite sure it is harder to write say Alastair Reynolds' version of 'man has crappy job is depressed', because it will involve near lightspeed travel, orbital mechanics and high energy physics.

The garden variety version means the person only has to be able to write. (Assuming that both guys know what men, jobs and depression are already :) )

#68 Why would it be any harder to write about physics that it would be to write about, say, race, as Octavia Butler might do?

Actually, for Mr. Reynolds, it is probably pretty easy to write about orbital mechanics and high energy physics. It would be very hard for Ursula Le Guin to do.

Difficulty is a relative thing, I suspect.

I am looking at it this way :-

X is the fraction the people on the planet that can write at an acceptable, adult and readable level.

100% of them could write a readable story about a crappy day on the job in current everyday life that makes sense.

#70 I think your theory actually proves the opposite.
Since everybody can write a story about everyday life to write a good story about it takes real skill. That puts you in the top 1%.
Now if only 10% can write about physics, then you don't really have to be good to be among the best writers. Therefore a good literary author has more 'skill' than an good sf writer. (Didn't Vonnegut say he started writing sf because the competition was so weak he knew he would be published?).

No, I think you just said the same thing again.

This has nothing to do with being good enough to be published, just the probability distribution of the ability.

The physics number is going to be a lot lower than one in 10, I would think, not that it matters.

If, for example it is a 1000/1 ratio (or even 10/1), but the number of novels or whatever published is a 5/1 ratio in the market, then the publishing thing would be harder, certainly, but that is not what I was talking about.

If all commercial sf publishing disappeared tomorrow except for 1 book a century, for example, thus making publication almost impossible, that would have no effect on the abilities of the writing population right this minute, even though being the one published sf author would be far harder than being a published mainstream author.

71> I think you will find it was Richard McKenna who started with SF because the writing quality needed to be published was less there.

In Sweden it is IMPOSSIBLE to get published if you write SF. Fantasy, maybe, if you clearly state that the proposed audience is underage...

The only sf/fantasy works published in the swedish language is translations from english. Mostly Rowlings, Eddings, classics like Jules Verne and the like. Only big bookstores offer any selection of imported sf/fantasy.
In Stockholm we have a specialized sf/fantasy bookstore, but that's about it.

This does not make it more or less hard to write, but I think not many writers would write anything that won't get published... So here no one would choose to write sf only because the competition is less fierce.
But that do not mean no one here could write a good sf or fantasy yarn. Only, they don't.

The sorry sideeffect is that very few encounters the genres when young - you have to feel confident enough in you knowledge in the english language before you start trying... And by then you're very likely to have inherited the prejudices of our society that marks sf/fantasy as "bad" lit.

74>

Aren't you exaggerating a bit - I thought that Sam Lundwall was a Swede.

Indeed a little bit of googling comes up with this nugget of information from another web site "There are nearly 2,000 original works of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror in Swedish, and at least 4,000 Swedish translations of English-language and European works." (of course all of those won't still be in print).

Also SF fandom is pretty active in Sweden which seems strange if there is no home-grown product at all.

Looking at sfbok.se (which is in Gothenburg as well as Stockholm) I can see plenty of SF published in Swedish with a few Swedish looking names littered in the amongst the English writers.

Yes, I exaggerated, but those who exist are prescious few and have close to zero status as they mostly are precieved to be derivative.
That SF Bokhandeln had opened in Göteborg was news to me, but then I haven't visited there (Göteborg) lately...

I'd bet most of those 2,000 titles are Horror and YA/mystery, and Sam J Lundwall... well, that was a while ago! He was a name in the mid-80's, but at that time there was some SF-boom going on. Most of his work are either anthologies or books aimed at young adults, plus he is the man behind a lot of the translated stuff - during the 70's and 80's a lot of good books got translated, but they're mostly to be found at libraries by now.

If I want to find something that compares with those I enjoy reading today, as Neal Stephenson, Jon C Grimwood and ('though fantasy) G G Kay I'd search in vain.

(Disclaimer: I haven't actively searched/tried to find swedish SF authors/books to read; only noticed that those I've come by do not interest me)

I think this is generational as well. When I talk to older writers and readers of literary fiction, they are quite proud of their ignorance of & distaste for SF, even though they make claims for the literary merit of certain mystery authors. Younger writers, many of whom went through a Philip K. Dick phase or read SF as teenagers, seem less worried about being associated with the genre. William Vollmann, whose first novel had a lot of SF qualities, included a few SF novels when he drew up a list of his favorite books. Johnathan Lethem, even though he's no longer thought of as an SF writer, was involved in the genre--he attended one of the SF workshops--Clarion? Lots of writers--David Foster Wallace, Matt Ruff, George Saunders--use SF tropes in their work, but I don't think it could be appropriately marketed as SF.

Personally, I'm a reverse snob - I read genre fiction (primarily SF&F, then mystery, romance, etc) rather than anything marketed as mainstream. Too many times I've read a mainstream story and found that the beginning of the book was "people in a bad situation", the middle of the book was "people being nasty or actively attacking others because of their situation", and the end was "same people in similar or worse situation". In SF or mystery, there's nearly always a problem to be solved, and the solution to the problem improves things - not entirely (or it feels like a deus ex machina) but still it tends to end with "people in a better situation than they started in". Romance of course ends 'better off', but there's only a tiny fraction of them where there's more to the story than 'great sex equals perfect love'.

Admittedly, there's a lot of SF I won't read - anything by Stephen Donaldson, for example, precisely because it fits the description of mainstream fiction above. I got to the beginning of the third Thomas Covenant book, saw it was repeating itself and quit. I got most of the way through A Man Rides Through before I realized I hated both the protagonists because they were making me depressed. I looked at the author, realized it was Stephen Donaldson, and quit. Very annoying because I love his concepts/universes - white gold magic, mirror magic - and cannot stand his characters.

Still, in general, looking through the SF shelves in a library or bookstore is much more likely to find me a book I will enjoy and find interesting and remember than looking through the mainstream or 'literary' fiction shelves.

re: 78

Oh, but people not learning anything and being miserable to each other and living depressing lives is supposed to be realistic. When authors write those stories, they're being artistic and commenting on the human condition and all that.

I don't read them either.

#78 Having read all of Stephen Donaldson's works, although you might not believe it, they do actually all end up in a better situation than they started in, evil is vanquished and true love and friendship exists.

He also writes contemporary fiction under the name of Reed Stephens its all called A man who. I've not read any, so I dion't know how well it fits your general plot.

Some thoughts from Jason Silverman at www.wired.com:

Writers, Directors Fear 'Sci-Fi' Label Like an Attack From Mars

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is set during a nuclear winter. Two survivors walk south, breathing toxic air, seeking out the continent's last canned food while ducking bands of flesh-eaters.

Describe it as "post-apocalyptic," as most critics did, or as a masterpiece of dystopian literature. Just don't call McCarthy's novel "science fiction."

Even when clearly appropriate, film studios and publishers avoid the phrase "science fiction." So do the novelists, film directors and editors in their employ. McCarthy's book, which is about to become a blockbuster -- Oprah Winfrey will tout it on an upcoming TV show as part of her book club -- is just another example of how the powers that be dodge the term, especially when it applies to "serious" fiction or cinema.

You won't find the words "science fiction" in Random House's bio of Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author China Miéville. Instead, he's called the "edgiest mythmaker of the day." Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep? It's classified as comedy, drama, romance and fantasy, but not sci-fi, at Amazon.com.

Even Battlestar Galactica, the flagship show of (hello!) the Sci Fi Channel, keeps a distance. "It's fleshed-out reality," explains executive producer Ronald D. Moore in the sci-fi mag SFX. "It's not in the science-fiction genre."

The nose-thumbing is nothing new. In the '50s, Robert Heinlein dismissed the term, opting for "speculative fiction." (What fiction isn't?)

But today, one might imagine that the term could gain traction. Our lives are entangled with everyday gadgetry Heinlein could only have dreamed of. The impact of science on culture -- climate change, stem-cell research, the internet -- is the subject of continuous debate. Writers including McCarthy and Margaret Atwood (another despiser of the term "sci-fi") and filmmakers like Gondry, Richard Linklater and Darren Aronofsky have explored the terrain of traditional sci-fi.

Plus, the term itself -- isolated from its pulpy origins, the fanboy confabs and the endless sniping over its definition -- remains an evocative one. Science fiction: stories that engage with science.

Chris Barsanti, a critic who dared to reference The Road in terms of sci-fi literature, said the phrase "science fiction" summons images of "space battles, aliens, mad scientists, time travel and the like ... fantasy with testosterone." So publishers, wary of putting their book into an "artistic ghetto," twist themselves into knots to avoid using the label.

In the face of its shrinking reputation, some institutions are attempting to legitimize science fiction. In 2004, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen opened Seattle's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation gives grants to those who incorporate scientific subject matter into their fictional works.

The University of Kansas and the University of California at Riverside have substantial sci-fi collections. And the University of Liverpool offers a master's degree in science-fiction studies and publishes the scholarly journal Foundation.

"There's been a vast increase in the popularity of science fiction: big special effects movies, TV, games," says Andy Sawyer, head of Liverpool's sci-fi department. "But you rarely see it in the best-seller charts, unless it's dropped the name 'science fiction.'"

Some of this is echoed in a brief piece I read in the current Publishers Weekly (or it might've been last week's). Robert Sawyer is quoted in the piece, noting the closure of many SF&F specialty bookshops and the decline in genre magazine readership and saying something about the SF label being more of a marketing liability these days (probably a poor paraphrase of what he said). This isn't quite what is being said in the piece above but relates on a commercial level.

82>

Sawyer says SF label being more of a marketing liability these days.

But surely that is addressing a different point altogether. That seems to point to the SF market shrinking (which I believe it has done in the US - esp. the midlist). I am not convinced that the SF label has ever been other than a liability in the US when it comes to marketing to the mainstream and literary crowd.

It seems a good time to re-ignite this question with Kurt Vonnegut dying. Despite making his name in sf he was always at pains to point out he wasn't a sf writer, that he objected to his novels being categorised as sf. When you look at his novels, they use sf trappings regularly - most notably, his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five involves alien abduction.

Vonnegut's attitude probably sums up sf from the 1940s and 1950s, it was lurid bug-eyed monsters and metal brassieres on book covers, even when the material inside was more thoughtful. This is something that I still think is a problem with sf publication in the US, too many of the covers still have an infantile approach to genre. This creates a barrier to breaking sf out of it's ghetto, perhaps it is time to have a cover for genre readers, and an 'adult' one for the general reader.

>84 Jargoneer: jargoneer, Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan was straight-ahead SF, and he disowned the label because, like most people at the time, he associated the LABEL with pimplefaced teenaged males, as you surmised; but that was the 1950s. Vonnegut lived into the 21st century, and some of the best writing anywhere ever is being done in the SF ghetto. What was his excuse the past 25 years? Ugly covers?
>buzzer

My opinin is that personal preference has little to do with this issue (whether or not an author genuinely likes sf/f). Realistically, image is probably the brunt of the problem.

Authors are constantly being judged by their peers and fans. All it takes is one small slip for an author to lose all credibility. For a "serious" author (someone who writes literary or even mainstream fiction), a little dip into sf/f can ruin them. This is all due to the image of sf/f.

If you were to ask the average person what they think of when sf/f is mentioned, generally they'll conjure images of conventions, where adolescents and 40 year old virgins dress as elves and Luke Skywalker. Or they'll see a group of "nerds" in a basement playing D&D while taking hits from their inhalers.

Sure, it's a huge (and often inaccurate) generalization, but it's there. Sf/f just isn't usually seen as a credible or "mature" undertaking.

I certainly don't see how authors should be called snobs simply because they're protecting themselves and their careers from these sort of stereotypes.

Also, readers like their authors how they like their authors. People don't normally like seeing a favorite author venture into a territory outside of what they came to love them for. And that works both ways. Someone who loves a "literary" author won't enjoy seeing them veer off into sf/f, just the same as someone who loves a sf/f author won't want to see them go off into literary or romance.

85>

I can think of plenty of very tasteful, non-threatening, covers on SF books. Air, or, Have Not Have for example, or Orb's reissues of George Alec Effinger's Marid Audran books.

That isn't the point. There are at least two other points that go against a nicely presented book (in the minds of those who disparage all SF books). The film/TV treatment of SF is still very much space-opera and milsf for the most part. And the books with nice and interesting covers will still shelved in the SF section, a section that many mainstream readers have trained themselves to ignore.

What my local bookshop has is a shelf at the front for new hardbacks. All types of new hardbacks are shelved there - some non-fiction, SF, fantasy, mystery and mainstream. Hopefully that may entice a few people to try a book they otherwise wouldn't (and that goes for people on both sides of the genre fence).

And the books with nice and interesting covers will still shelved in the SF section, a section that many mainstream readers have trained themselves to ignore.

True as a broad generalization perhaps, but much depends on the publisher, imprint, and how it is categorized in the publisher catalog or by the library of congress (at least here in the states). Most bookstores would use these factors to decide where a book ultimately gets shelved. For example, Elizabeth Moon's Speed of Dark was published in trade paperback under the Ballantine imprint and the mass market under the Del Rey imprint. Del Rey publishes many quality trade paper SF titles, why didn't they do the trade of Moon's book? (notice the difference in the covers). The answer is that they were attempting to sell it to a wider audience. The trade in our bookstore shelved in mainstream, the mass market in SF. It should be noted that Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow is also a Ballantine book. I should also mention here that sometimes where a book goes depends on where most of the author's other books are; one tries to keep them together whenever possible (alas, someone comes along like Dan Simmons...)

As a consumer of a fair number of UK-published books, I do think the covers across-the-pond to be a bit more genre-neutral.

Interestingly, at the bookstore I just "retired" from we used to have all the fiction hardcovers together but decided to pull the SF&F hardcovers out and put them at the beginning of SF mostly in response to consumers who wanted it that way. We did it as a trial and it has worked out (they sell more now). We also shelved books in more than one place if we thought it offered some advantage... Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, for example.

Have any of you read John Ringo's Ghost? (and the series derived therefrom). That book has gotten some _serious_ weirdness in its categorization. It's usually shelved with SF although it's current/recent day - probably because Ringo is an established SF author. But Borders (at least near me) has it shelved with mysteries(?!) and it apparently won an award as a romance (????!!!!???). Adventure, yes, I could see that. Better than SF, actually. But it ain't a mystery and it sure as _heck_ isn't a romance! Though at least (as far as I've seen) nobody's tried to categorize it as mainstream fiction...

Another thing I've noticed is that many of the sf/f books in my local library (a fairly small branch) are categorized as Young Adult. I found most of Lois McMaster Bujold's works there. Maybe the first Miles Vorkosigan book fits YA because he was 18 in The Warrior's Apprentice, but certainly none of the later books belong in YA, and neither do her other non-Miles books. Robert Jordan shows up in YA, and so does CherryH.

Moral: if you want to get sex and violence in front of teens, write it as science fiction. ;)

what is a "trope?"

i have never really thought literary fiction and science fiction were exclusive of each other.
i grew up with "Classics Illustrated," which led to a "Library of Classics" and these titles in the classics (literary classics) were definitely sci-fi:

from the earth to the moon -- wells
war of the worlds -- wells
the invisible man -- wells
stranger in a strange land --
bradbury
the martian chronicles -- bradbury
fahrenheit -- bradbury
1984 -- orwell
brave new world -- huxley
journey to the center of the
earth -- verne
20,000 leagues under the sea--
verne
more modern "classics" surely
began life as sci-fi, such as

contact by carl sagan
lord of the rings -- tokien
dune -- herbert

and much more i disremember this minute. no. there is no clearcut line between sci-fi and literature. if that were so, and we attempted to toss out the sci-fi, we would lose at least one-fourth of our library materials. by the way, what is a "trope?"

"Trope" - I know what it means, but I can't define it.

Google define:trope gives a bunch of definitions, none of which is what is meant.

Ah, Wikipedia knows:

Trope (literature), a familiar and repeated symbol, meme, theme, motif, style, character or thing that permeates a particular type of literature

Non-human intelligent beings is a science fiction / fantasy trope. Having a story set on a different planet or even in a universe where the physical laws are different is another biggie. I would guess that some readers of "literature" just can't suspend their disbelief enough to allow for these things, and so can't take science fiction or fantasy seriously.

#93 - the point is that literary writers produce works that are sf and then deny they are sf (see earlier in the thread for details). These books are taken seriously by non-genre readers and/or critics.

#92 - I would dispute some of the titles that you say are sf classics and literary classics, i.e., Stranger in a Strange Land, The Martian Chronicles, Dune, Contact & The Lord of the Rings. I'm not saying that this books don't have merit, I enjoyed two of them (Dune & The Martian Chronicles) but when I attempted to re-read them was much less impressed. Contact & Stranger just aren't well enough written, I would also say the same about Tolkien but since he's now critic proof it's pointless.

BTW andyray, Stranger in a Strange land was written by Heinlein, not Bradbury.

This is definitely an interesting question and definitely related to the "Defining Science Fiction" topic in the SF Fans Group.

The 'problem' with Genres like SF, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Romance, etc. is that essentially these are all adjectives used to define fictional works; adjectives that are now nouns used to define a whole group of writers/texts... Ideally, good (or bad) fiction should stand on its own regardless of thematic or other elements. Also, many of these terms have changed over the last few hundred years to accomodate the Business/Market of Publishing. When Sir Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte D'Arthur he did not expect (or in his worst nightmares envision) that the term 'Romance' would come to have its present day connotation....
Surely Poe would be shocked to be placed alongside most of Stephen King or that hack Koontz (Ligotti would be a different matter altogether); Dickens or Doyle next to contemporary 'mystery' novels; Tolkien or even Ovid next to Robert Jordan or 99% of the 'fantasy' books out there... i'm sure there are numerous more examples others can cite, and I'm just picking on the more obvious ones.

But, there are some 'Literary' writers who are not explicitly against being classified as SF or put in the same stream. One good example is Alasdair Gray who is definitely a literary writer equally popular with Academics, as well as 'regular' readers. Gray calls his novel A History Maker a work of Science Fiction without qualms, though most certainly I doubt you will find that book alongside Asimov or Heinlein in the bookstores.
This has to do with marketing of course, and also how many readers essentially have their little genre niches and almost exclusively only read within those genres with which they are comfortable...
The backlash with 'serious' writers -- or writers that do not want to pigeon holed into pulpy shelves next to the dime hacks -- is to fight against being categorized into genre, and this is understandable. Other writers are able to transcend, or skirt genres, as for example J.G. Ballard whose work might be found in SF, as easiliy as in the 'Literature' section (some of his work has explicit SF themes/location/ideas, and much of it does not ...).

I guess a new question could be whether we need genre categories like SF, Fantasy, Romance etc. or if those terms are more helpful for the mediocre novels to have a happy place among their less demanding readers? That way, those readers who only want a good romance, action/war, SF book can easily find something to placate their escapist desires, without having to delve too deeply into 'Serious' novels which may also contain those elements they crave....

Also, whether a Genre is studied in Academia means little in terms of validation, since Academia is constantly on the lookout for little 'niches' to keep their academics employed.. the machinery of professors keeps working and these folks need their own little place to call their own. That is why you might encounter an 'academic' (or regular reader for that matter), who exclusively reads/studies works by, let's say, American-non-white-Women-of the 1940s-exploring-the-themes-of-Colonialism-and-Patriarchal-forms-of-penetration.

BTW, I also agree with many of the comments posted previously who rightly criticise some of the 'literary' authors who try avoid having their work classified, or just described as SF, Fantasy, etc.

Perhaps writers like Atwood are simply afraid of snobby readers or critics disdaining her work if classified as SF, and that is elitism at its worse unfortunately.
If The Handmaid's Tale had been published by ACE SF then would it have received the same literary praise? (short listed for the Governor General's Award it actually only won the Arthur C. Clarke Award ironically?)
Some academics are more broad-minded and I do recall a university class where the Handmaid's Tale was studied alongside Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, among others.....

Perhaps one distinction (and this could give good debate) is that 'literary' writers don't set out to write a genre novel as the main reason for a story, but use the elements of future, dystopia, fantasy, horror, mystery, etc as thematic tools towards a larger point or purpose? While genre writers simply set out to write a story in their particular chosen area? So a SF writer might sit down and think, 'what is a cool idea for a planet/spaceship/invention that i can wrap a fun plot around, as opposed to thinking 'i have a great idea for a story about the relationship between a father and son, where a post-apocalyptic setting would be perfect'?

1. I don't think calling genre readers "less demanding" is accurate ... their "demands" are just different from those readers who prefer "literature."

2. The taxonomic urge to classify things seems to be instinctive in people ... it makes it easier to market to people, etc., but I don't believe marketing is the reason behind creating all these niches ... people create niches and differentiate things on their own.

3. I think patriarchal forms of penetration are now illegal in most states.

re: 98
whew... thanks for the much-needed laugh on your point #3 (I live in Canada where the laws are in general more relaxed?...)
;)

1. you have a point regarding my use of "less demanding" though I do still feel that those readers that exclusively read genre fiction, 'demand' less from the text in terms of prose style, lofty themes, innovation, etc. but that could go with your point about 'different demands' or expectations than those who prefer 'literature'. the problem i have is that i both enjoy Literary works as well as certain genres/authors, but I (perhaps incorrectly) expect the same level of erudition, or literary skill, in genre works as i do in Literature. I also want to be entertained at times, without having to over-exert the tiny gray cells but not insulting them either.

2. The Taxonomic urge has to do with the 'power of naming' or classification, perhaps? It would go back to the myth of Genesis in the Old Testament where god gives Man (Adam) the power/control to name all the animals, etcetera? But I think you are right that humans tend to huddle together close to familiar fires, and we do create/differentiate on our own (but a thing is what it is, regardless of what we 'name' it; does naming/classifying it change what it is?). But let's be honest, since the current stream in marketing (not just for publishing, but music, clothes, films) is to target audiences before a product has even been created? so maybe you are right, and marketing was not the original reason, but i think the wind has shifted and nowadays the production of taste is even more manipulated than in past centuries?
-This also makes me think that certain authors who did write Fantastical or 'Science' Fiction in the past had trouble finding publishers for their work since they were exploring new ground/themes, and maybe that is the 'goal' of Literature to find new ways to surprise/shock/excite/delight us? -- which is why works that used fantasy or other elements were truly innovative and ground breaking. But now we have the opposite effect, where if i go and peruse the Fantasy shelves I will be looking at a lot of rehashed ideas/theme in new clothes/creatures (i might still be entertained for a couple hours, like watching tv, and that is ok too), but have trouble finding that 'new' work that will take me down the rabbit hole to wonderland, or question my own pre-conceived notions of reality.

The downside, in my opinion, is that Genre readers might actually enjoy/appreciate certain 'literary' works by authors who are relatively close to the reader's own preferred genres, but because they are not found in the same bookshelves etc. this could be a deterrent. And the obverse is also true for those readers who prefer 'literature'?
If we placed everything under one category of Fiction (and this is already a distinction from Non-Fiction and other texts) then there would be an even playing field where books sink or swim on the same terms? Then again, the sheer scope of previously published works, and present/future publishing is too vast so that a reader looking for a particular 'type' of story would have trouble sifting through thousands of dustjackets...

Avaland,

One of the worst anthologies I ever read was 'SF For People Who Don't Like SF', it was ghastly SF and certainly not literature.