Over at the science fiction blog io9, Charlie Jane Anders makes a case for why literary respectability might do the genre more harm than good, starting out with a really good point: “Literary fiction” is as much of a ghetto (or “cloistered scene,” if you prefer) as “science fiction” and “fantasy” are:
“Maybe at some point in the past the term ‘literary’ referred to works, from whatever genre, that had stood the test of time and gained classic stauts. But nowadays literary” refers to a particular type of writing… ‘Literary’ certainly doesn’t mean ‘good.’ It’s a description for one way in which writing can be good. But something can be literary and not particularly good, and writing can be good without being particularly literary.”
Anders cites specific cases of books classified as science fiction that are better than other books considered to be literary fiction that works in science fictional themes, and suggests that if sci-fi writers try to be “more literary,” it would result in a bunch of anti-heroic ambiguity dressed up in fancier language or, to be it more starkly, “more stories about middle managers, shuttling around below decks on the starcruiser and wondering if this is all there is to life.”