The Secret History of Science Fiction

Science fiction has been undergoing a kind of crisis of confidence. Some have worried that our stories are too often pitched at that narrowest of science fiction audiences, those who have spent lifetimes reading the stuff. The world building had gotten so complex that readers who are new to the genre get confused, then frustrated and then many give up. There has been a call for a more accessible science fiction, which still maintains the virtues of the genre.

—James Patrick Kelly I’ve thought about the domination of the literary arts by theory over the past twenty-five years — which I detest — and it’s as if you have to be a critic to mediate between the author and the reader and that’s utter crap. Literature can be great in all ways, but it’s just entertainment like rock’n’roll or a film.

It is entertainment. If it doesn’t capture you on that level, as entertainment, movement of plot, then it doesn’t work. Nothing else will come out of it. The beauty of the language, the characterization, the structure, all that’s irrelevant if you’re not getting the reader on that level — moving a story. If that’s friendly to readers, I cop to it.

—T. C. Boyle