More Tokens of Respectability

The Washington Post now has a regular science fiction and fantasy column.  (And they’re going to be getting a regular romance column soon, too.)

I’m not sure how I should feel about all this.  It used to be that no good ever came of science fiction and fantasy trying to gain literary respectability.  All that ever happened was that the sf and the fantasy thus produced were unpleasant mutant products that were – as the saying goes — neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring, and the arbiters of literary respectability didn’t like them anyway.

But now it seems that establishment respectability is finding us whether we go looking for it or not.  Which is fine with me, so long as sf and fantasy don’t lose their pipeline to those deep wells of don’t-give-a-damn-about-being-respectable which are the source of so much of their energy.

The liveliest art is always made on the wilder side of town.