Submission + - Why science fiction authors can't win
bowman9991 writes: Science fiction authors have long been outcasts from the literary world, critics using the worst examples of the genre as ammunition against it. Unfortunately though, at times even science fiction authors themselves can turn on their own kind: “Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space,” mocked Margaret Atwood, one of her many attempts to convince people that she is not a science fiction author, even though one of her most famous novels, A Handmaid’s Tale, is exactly that. Considered by the literary establishment, and frequently by non-SF award-giving institutions, to be trashy, pulpish, commercially driven lightweight gutter fiction, it’s no surprise that very few works of science fiction have won major literary awards. Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the award-winning (not “literary” awards obviously) Mars novels recently hit out at the literary establishment, accusing the Man Booker judges of “ignorance” in neglecting science fiction, which he declared was “the best British literature of our time”.
