[JenB]

Actually... I have never been in a library where the SFs are shelved seperately. Sure, the paperback racks are seperated into "SF/Fantasy" - they call it all sci-fi, the danes - westerns, romances, mysteries... but to say that all the other genres are literature and SF is not is most unfair. It's not the segregation of the books I object to; it is the ghettoization of the SF fandom, which is more prevalent than you might think. It sounds dramatic, but how would you like to have to defend your choice of reading to anyone who happens by? People who read Forest Fire in the Timnberland of My Heart get fewer stares than people with spaceships on the cover.

And yes, I appreciate having an SF section in bookstores, but they also take the "literature" out of everything else and hide it so those of us who want our space fic don't have to paw through Faulkner and Joyce. Ever notice how the SF section is prominent, but the so-called great works are buried with the cookbooks?

[PJ-Comix]

Ever notice how the SF section is prominent, but the so-called great works are buried with the cookbooks?

Because way too many folks are reading SF (or Fantasy) almost exclusively because they think it is more FUN to read. To me, a lot of SF is like eating highly calorated air. Look, I've read and enjoyed a lot of SF but at some point I decided to check out literary novels.

Nothing wrong with reading Asimov or Vonnegut but how about reading them AND James Jones AND Robert Penn Warren AND Ralph Ellison AND Tolstoy? As to the SF ghetto, way too many people volutarily put themselves in that ghetto by reading SF and Fantasy almost exclusively.