"Below a certain age, [children] don’t distinguish between ‘true’ and ‘not true,’ because they see no reason that a white rabbit shouldn’t possess a pocket watch, that whales shouldn’t talk, or that sentient beings shouldn’t live on other planets and travel around in spaceships. Science-fiction tropes aren’t read as ‘science fiction’; they’re read as fiction. And fiction is read as reality. And sometimes reality lives under the bed and has very large teeth, and it’s no use pretending otherwise."
—
from The Spider Women, by Margaret Atwood
The New Yorker: The Science Fiction Issue, June 4 & 11, 2012
"‘Pay no attention to the spaceships and post-holocaust scenery, or the mutants,’ you say. ‘My novel is not sci-fi; it is literature.’ But these days all such fancy dances begin to look quaint. I’m grateful to people such as Michael Chabon, who came crashing like a golem out of Berkeley across the genre walls and through the gated communities and left them in rubble."
—
from The Golden Age, by Ursula K. Le Guin
The New Yorker: The Science Fiction Issue, June 4 & 11, 2012
OH LOOK, all of my Michael Chabon feels conveniently wrapped into one perfect sentence.
"I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled ‘science fiction’ ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
— 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
