Norman Spinrad

“Cat Rambo: Where do you think the perennial debate between what is literary fiction and what is genre is sited?Norman Spinrad: I think it’s a load of crap. See my latest column in Asimov’s, particularly re The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I detest the whole concept of genre. A piece of fiction is either a good story well told or it isn’t. The supposed dichotomy between “literary fiction” and “popular fiction” is ridiculous. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mailer, did not have serious literary intent? As writers of serious literary intent, they didn’t want to be “popular,” meaning sell a lot of books? They wanted to be unpopular and have terrible sales figures to prove they were “serious”?I say this is bullshit and I say the hell with it. “Genre,” if it means anything at all, is a restrictive commercial requirement. “Westerns” must be set in the Old West. “Mysteries” must have a detective solving a crime, usually murder. “Nurse Novels” must have a nurse. And so forth.In the strictly literary sense, neither science fiction nor fantasy are “genres.” They are anti-genres. They can be set anywhere and anywhen except in the mimetic here and now or a real historical period. They are the liberation of fiction from the constraints of “genre” in an absolute literary sense.”

“[SF] was a commercial genre born in the old adventure pulp magazinesof the first third of the twentieth century, aimed primarily atadolescent males, which, over the decades, in fits and starts,evolved into an intellectually credible, scientifically germane,transcendental literature without losing its popular base.Of what other literature in the history of the western world can this truly be said?”

“You look as if you have bitten into a turd.”

“You can't make a revolutionary omelet without breaking heads.”

“We shall give up the things of childhood -- gods and demons, planets and suns, guilts and regrets.”

“The saddest day of your life isn't when you decide to sell out. The saddest day of your life is when you decide to sell out and nobody wants to buy.”