His defense of the genre seems rather backhanded. Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, for example, gets points for plot, but information dumping, heavy-handed prose and a ‘daft’ and ‘confusing’ ending aren’t exactly ringing endorsements. It takes more than a good plot and “a few neat jokes” to impress the academy, Sam my son.

There is no thief like a bad book
--Italian Proverb

There is a huge snobbism concearning science fiction, or SF (Speculative Fiction) that must stem from its pulpy, scare-the-kids, cheap-thrills past. But most people forget that a lot of our "classic" stories and plot lines easily fit into the science fiction category: several couples get lost in the woods, they are aided by aliens with amazing powers ("A Midsummer Night's Dream," Shakespeare); one man finds that he has two personalities fighting inside him ("Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Stevenson) and of course "Frankenstein," by Mary Shelley. The sad thing about this snobbism is that when "serious" writers like Doris Lessing write SF, they are seen as slumming, or simply called "fabulists"-- storytellers -- and the fabulists don't like to be tarred with the SF brush. So there are lots of Nobel quality fabulists, but when you get right down to it, they are in fact writing stuff that under any other name would be just ol' S.F.

You're absolutely right that a lot of fiction has SF elements in it (or at least fantasy). But to get put into the drawer labeled SF (which, as Vonnegut said, serious critics often mstake for a urinal) seems to take something more. I can't define it. Romance has the same problem SF does, and the same mysterious way authors and works get stuck with the label.

The only secret is to get rid of all genres once and for all. Yeah! That'll do it!

(hides)

The way I see it, pulp magazines and George Lucas haven't made SF any favors in the eyes of conservative critics of books, and have associated the genre with cheap and shallow entertainment, ignoring the profound aspects of great SF writing that makes it so inspiring and wonderful to read.

If we include Speculative Fiction, that would mean these dry old farts sneer at books like 1984... and that's insanity.

I believe Science Fiction is the most important genre as it encompasses every other genre there is.

First of all, I think "mainstream" critics are quickly becoming irrelevant, but on a deeper note, I think Hollywood's attention has helped the genre a ton by giving science fiction writers a chance to actually write for a living, all because of rights-purchasing.

Richard Morgan wasn't a full-time writer until somebody bought the rights the ALTERED CARBON, and there are lots of other writers in the same boat: writing stuff they love for a pittance compared with "mainstream" advances. So screw the "serious" critics and the tea-drinking dandies. We can have fun without them.