Don't you just love it when journalists pontificate on the subject of science fiction and/or fantasy: "Read any good novels lately? Read any bad novels lately? My guess is that if you've read anything, for pleasure or interest, it hasn't been fiction. Book sales of fiction, particularly literary fiction, are down. By fiction I don't mean fantasy, as in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, I mean a story about our lives created from an author's imagination." Susan Mitchell in "Australian Financial Review", 19-20 March.
By way of explaining my position on this, it is noted that Susanna Clarke's novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, has been nominated for Best Novel in this year's Hugo Awards, and it was Longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize; and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which made the 2004 Man Booker Shortlist, has also been nominated for this year's Nebula Awards. But then, if it's good it can't be science fiction by definition, can it?
If you believe some people, sf is just space octopusses and ray guns. This wasn't true in the 1950s, so I can't see how it might be relevant now.
[Thanks to Damian Warman and Dave Langford's Ansible 213 for this quote.]
