Submitted by camidon on Sat, 09/06/2003 - 3:18pm

Herbie brought up a good point about mentioning to someone you write science fiction or fantasty. So often this genre is deemed as adolescent fiction, or adventure fiction, and therefore not worthy of literary statis.
Why do people think this. I have my own thoughts whch I'll toss out eventually.

One thing I don't tell people is that I'm a science fiction writer. I ONLY tell them I'm a writer, and then if they ask, I get more specific. I tell them the different things I have written or do write: newspaper articles, young adult/ childrens books, fiction, science fiction, etc. I'm a writer first, and then I let my ideas take me where they will, no matter what genre they may be.

I've never been one to focus on classifications, and I think the classification of science fiction has only served to dilute its literary value. Why is Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" worthy of the title "fiction" but Dick's "Do Android's Dream" or Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" get classified as scifi? They're all fiction. There's good fiction and bad fiction. There's good science fiction and bad science fiction. It's far too easy to classify all science fiction as unliterary.

I'll leave it at that for now, and jump in with more shortly