Why Is Science Fiction Snubbed By Literary Awards? (galacticbrain.com)

Slashdot reader bowman9991 quotes an essay from GalacticBrain: 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, [in 2009] 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".
The article ends with a simple question. "Will science fiction authors ever escape the publication ghetto?"

Comments

Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Nova Express]

Due to the Social Justice Warrior influx, the genre's awards are no longer given on merit, but rather on meeting the proper criteria of political, ethnic and gender correctness.

If you question this turn of events, expect to find yourself expelled from Worldcon for voicing anti-Social Justice Warrior thoughts.

Before the SJW invasion, the Hugo Award used to mean something, and the best of science fiction was gaining increased literary respect. Neither of those are true anymore.

And if SF awards have become meaningless, this designation applies doubly to literary awards. Quick, name the last ten winners of the National Book Award for Fiction. Outside a small circle of literary devotees, no one knows or cares.

Re:Science Fiction is busy destroying itself

[Anonymous Coward]

> Professional Victim

You're trying to use words that describe SJWs but you're not even doing it right, nowhere he claimed to be a victim.

Sci Fi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the real SciFi has been associated with tennage boys and young men.
That in itself makes it a SJW target.
And then there are some movies associated with that type of fiction....
While bookstores lump SciFi and Fantasy together, so do the Literary awards judges.
To be inclusive of other neglected genres, lets not be too specific.
No awards for Harlequin Romances, associated with teenage girls and young/old women... this includes 50 Shades...
No awards for murder mysteries, comedy or otherwse..... graphic novels included...
No awards for westerns, with hero or heroine....
No awards for gangster tales, crime novels.

OOPS! I forgot - some of these do get awards based on sales.

Of course, to be fair, the writing/plot/attention-to-detals in any of these genres may be good, bad, boring or mediocre.
But people buy them, so they will be written.
( when Tolkeins son and Herberts son tried to continue, it was evident they could not write for poop)

If they literary judges weren't so anal about intellectual stuff ( HUTA ), then these should get awards:
Asmov - I, Robot and the Foundation Series.
Herbert - Dune.... only Dune.
Clark - 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles.

Disclaimer - I like a cheesy novel...

Not sure

[nospam007]

The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling won the Nobel prize 1907)
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Booker 1981, uses an SF-nal element (telepathy).
The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Pulitzer 2007, is post-apocalyptic and thus firmly SF.
The Glass Bead Game aka Magister Ludi, Hermann Hesse, Nobel 1946 (a work set about four centuries from now, centering on a game of intellect.)
Slaughterhouse Five
1984
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451
Solaris ...