SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I detest this contemporary trend to destroy the traditional hierarchy of genres.
I don't want to be held down by genres so much.
I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.
Genre, to me, is not all that important, and it never has been.
I think the rising and falling popularity of areas like hard SF and far-future SF is, to a considerable extent, the same as any other fashion.
I keep waiting for a paradigm shift to happen that will let network and studio execs see that sci-fi is the same as any other genre in terms of how you approach it - logically, character-based, with challenging ideas and forward thinking - but I worry that it might never happen in my lifetime.
My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.
I believe that if it were possible to scrap the whole of existing literature, all writers would find themselves inevitably producing something very close to SF ... No other form of fiction has the vocabulary of ideas and images to deal with the present, let alone the future.
Genre boundaries are good for marketing but they all but disappear when you're a player.
The SF genre, of course, is really an organically evolved, marketplace-determined, idiosyncratic grab bag of themes and signifiers and characters and icons and gadgets, some of which hew to the realistic parameters and paradigms embraced by science, others of which partake more of fantasy and magic.