Someone named Cale McCaskey who "writes a bit" and says that sci-fi is really his thing, has published an amazingly idiotic critique of the best-selling literary genre - ROMANCE. My guess is that I could write any sort of irate, eloquent defense and make no impression a'tall upon Mr. McCaskey. Instead of crawling on a soap-box, I've pulled out a parody pen. LET'S APPLY THE MCCASKEY LOGIC TO HIS FAVORITE GENRE - SCIENCE FICTION.
Sci-Fi novels sell inexplicably well. The fact that we have an illiteracy rate of almost 50% might be partly to blame for the popularity of science fiction. Many people don't have the ability to read books written at a level any higher than children's books or science fiction novels. Regardless, sci-fi sells so well that there are more and more articles and interviews with science fiction writers where they are put on pedestals and treated as though they belong in the select company of writers of much higher standing - like romance novelists.
What readers need to understand is that science fiction novels - by their very nature - are meant to be inferior. Surely, no ivy league colleges will ever teach science fiction novels as part of the curriculum. No science fiction novel will ever be thought of as a classic alongside Spencer, Dickens, Quinn, Lindsey, Garwood or Woodiwiss. If a science fiction tale were that good, it would simply be known as drama or literary fiction or a classic horror tale. No one would ever call Well's "The Time Machine" or Bradbury's "Farenheit 451" science fiction novels. They would be referred to as classic scientific fiction.
The very thing that separates classic scientific fiction from sci-fi novels is that sci-fi novels must by default be bad, tacky even or they'll no longer be classified as sci-fi and will get placed in a higher category.
It's difficult to respect something deliberately meant to be a lessor work. One should always do great work. If a writer classifies his own book as science fiction, that tells me that even he doesn't think much of it. If that's the case, readers shouldn't think much of it either.
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The logic makes as much sense when applied to science fiction as it does when applied to romance now, doesn't it? That is to say - it makes less sense than I do at 6 a.m. before my morning coffee. Truthfully, science fiction is a fine genre with some amazing work and there are writers out there putting out some steller stuff. Yes, some of it may even be taught in colleges one day - right down the hall from courses on romance.
Wait - courses on romance have been taught in some amazing colleges, haven't they? And Eloisa James, a graduate of Harvard, Yale and Oxford is a Shakespeare professor at Fordham University. Oh, yes, and she's written many New York Times bestselling ROMANCE NOVELS. (But don't tell Mr. McCaskey. The strain of wrapping his brain around that information would probably be too much for him.)