Goatscape

Oh, so it's George Lucas who is responsible for the ghettoization of sci-fi. Not post-modernism or the resulting knee-jerk insularity or anything. Another whiny article about how Star Wars ruined A) the movies B) sci-fi or C) the world. They still make great movies. They still make great sci-fi movies (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, anyone?) and still make great sci-fi books, despite evil, evil Star Wars. I especially liked the bit how they're glad SW brand of sci-fi is over at long, long last, as if it were some evil tyranny akin to the Empire lording over innocent sci-fi.

I'm a SW baby (obviously), and like Lucas, I'd never accuse the novel I've just completed, or any other I've written of being sci-fi in the strictest sense. My stories take place in settings neither sci-fi nor fantasy, but fantastic perhaps. Sci-fi properly concerns itself with ideas, technology, not so much character as literary fiction (and me) normally do, but what's sci-fi? By saying this is what it is, you're doing the job of literary snobs for you.

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