[Physicist]

Sounds like the British media is playing a game of let's-you-and-her-fight. The Sunday Times apparently has written a pig-ignorant piece about the fantasy genre and Rowling's place in it. Pratchett responds, as one of the genre's "made" men, to set the record straight. He's not writing so much to attack Rowling as to speak up for his colleagues (he needs no defense himself, as he belongs to the canon already). But then the British media paint it as some sort of churlish and unprompted attack on Rowling.

In 1977, I'll bet People magazine was full of articles about how George Lucas had reinvented Science Fiction, reinvigorating a staid and stodgy genre, blah, blah, blah. And I'm sure that if Asimov ever said, "nu, that's not quite right," the blogosphere would have said, "Sour grapes! Say it ain't so, Ike!"

[RightWingAtheist]

I wouldn't be surprised that Isaac Asimov did write such a essay; he would frequently in his F&SF columns make little quips over the media misunderstanding over what SF is and what it isn't. I've noticed that whenever the MSM does an article on the genre, the one SF writer they always seem to bring up is Philip K. Dick. And the only reason they know about him at all is that he has been the subject of more recent movie adaptations than any other American SF writer (non-Americans Wells, Verne and Doyle all far exceed him in that regard, tho). I wonder what Neil Gaiman's reaction to all of this has been. He's my choice for the best living fantasist, and he always has something intelligent and insightful to say.