Science Fiction

[waterspyder]

I was going through a list of the top 100 science fiction books of the 20th Century, and realized that I've read many of them, or other works by the authors on the list and I started to wonder.

What is it about Science Fiction that makes it so stigmatized?

All of the books on that list are thought-provoking. Many are written with a finesse that is completely lost on the contemporary serial novelist. Is there a ton of science fiction out there that I haven't read that is abyssmally bad? Is the average reader incapable of fathoming the concepts that are presented? What is it that makes sci-fi so inaccessible?

Comments

[zenten.livejournal.com]

It's a genre. Genre's are disliked. Horror, fantasy, Romance, Westerns etc aren't respected either, even the really good ones. It probably doesn't help that a number of writers use the genre elements as props to hold up their story, instead of accents.