And, speaking as a uberfanboy myself, if I suddenly earned the respect of the Literati (the creatures who scoffed at Tolkein) I would know I had done something very wrong in my writing. The whole point of creating our own little separate faction in a literary ghetto is to celebrate those things the world rejects, visions of the future among the stars, and dream of elfland in the twilight.

Ever since I published my first fantasy novel back in 1996, well meaning friends, family and total strangers have said, with the best intentions, I suppose, “You write so beautifully! Haven’t you ever considered writing in a more–mainstream/literary/real/blah blah blah ?” You know those comments, right?  For years they’ve gotten under my skin, hurt my feelings, annoyed me, amused me, all depending on the state of my emotional landscape at the given moment, and I responded in various ways, most of them defensive. However, with age comes wisdom and I think I’ve finally found the perfect reply. One night I was out to dinner with some of my husband’s academic colleagues and one of them —who’d read several of my books and liked them, much to his own chagrin, apparently—asked me the the Damned Question. Smiling sweetly, I replied. “But—why would I?”  His expression was priceless and he quickly back peddled. I plan to do it again as often as possible.

Thiago’s point makes a lot of sense, especially when you look at the market today.  Fantasy crosses over into other genres more smoothly than hard SF, and is more easily embraced because, let’s be honest, all fiction is on some level fantasy.   Everyone fantasizes, and we grow up on fantasy, whether in children’s books, Saturday morning cartoons, or games we play.   It gets wider acceptance, from the Twilight books to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, because of these factors.  I think it is harder for the speculative fiction, such as a lot of Atwood’s work, because when you talk about the future, or alternate presents, or even some sorts of satires of fables, the resemblance to SF is greater, and they do not want to be pigeonholed.  Conversely, Hard SF, being so firmly grounded in the tropes and conventions of Science Fiction and being based more on fact and scientific extrapolation, is the sort of tale that cannot often shake off the label that it resembles. 

Personally, I love genres.  For a lot of reasons, even though they can be frustrating and one can feel disparaged when writers like Atwood spurn the label.  But Vonnegut’s “meaningless social aggregations” have consequences for how one’s writing is read, marketed, and culturally positioned.   If more people saw genres as guidelines and inspiration, rather than stereotype or hard fact,  these questions about “mainstream” would be moot.  And I think writing and literature would be a lot more interesting.

Kurt Vonnegut deny they write science fiction

That is not what heard when i saw him speak.

Now and then I’m asked at cons why I don’t write fiction of the respected sort. You know, he is a professor and she is a professor and they are having adulterous affairs, and they are almost overcome with guilt and angst, and there is no God, and scientific progress doesn’t enter into it, and just about everybody in the world is upper middle class.

I think he just described the plot of every Chuck Palahniuk novel ever written…but i may be mistaken.

Iain Banks gets a lot of praise for his “literature” novels, but Iain M Banks still writes “yarns” – good at what they are, well-told, but somehow lesser.

I rememeber a quote from a literary critic that was printed on the back cover of the Wasp Factory..it simply read “Rubbish!”