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

[twiin.livejournal.com]

Catch-22 isn't progressive. Neither is Thunderball. That's my point. I haven't read the Neanderthal books yet, so I can't really comment on them.

What I'm saying is that in my experience, science-fiction alienates female readers (for a variety of reasons) far, far more than any other genre does. Part of it is gender roles. Part of it is technobabble. Part of it is an assumed language, and part of it is the fact there are so few female authors that there aren't a terribly high number of well-developed female characters.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I'm disagreeing with you on the gender role point. I can see the rest of them, but I was under the impression that most published authors, period, are male.