I’ve been thinking a lot about genre lately. In part, to defend my love of fantasy and science fiction from the nay-sayers, but mostly to figure out my own biases when I’m comparing fictions to one another. You might say, since I’m not a professional writer or literary critic, that I should just accept my own taste and stop wasting valuable brain waves on pseudo-intellectual masturbation, but I guess that’s what you get from a liberal arts education and an English teacher mother.

Anyway, Michael Chabon’s introduction to McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories is up front on his site and deals with this topic nicely.

In my opinion, genre is really just a marketing tool and an implicit judgement on a book’s quality made by a Barnes and Noble employee somewhere. In other words, who cares? Especially when William Gibson is relegated to the sci-fi ghetto, while Tom Clancy and his ilk hold a permanent place in the holy fiction section.

Organ (Michael Chabon’s web site) - Introduction to McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories