it sounds like the age-old debate about whether “literary” books are better than just “normal” books is very much alive and well in the science fiction world.

I suspect it is very much a false dichotomy.

The real question is, do the readers enjoy the book?

I think the best authors in any genre are able to make their works complex enough and are aware enough of what came before them, and do something to move the genre forward (I guess you could call these literary techniques), while still making the work easy enough to read that the less patient reader will not have to work hard to read the book (think Ulysses).

I would put Ursula Le Guin, Frank Herbert in this category.

Renai

As the OF Blog pointed out, there are things in my argument that bear further investigation. I may or may not get to such since blogging thoughts of the day are far different than writing a treatise that would stand up to academic review.

I do, however, still maintain that there is a major difference between works written as “genre science fiction” (perhaps all genre fiction) and works written as “literary fiction” (whatever that may mean).

Roberts (and some of his followers) apparently make a routine of spasming annually during Hugo awards time. They have never explained their reasons for doing so and I find that much more interesting, because when it comes down to it, attacking one award in favor of another is an absolutely ridiculous and seemingly “unacademic” activity: the presence or absence of one award has virtually no impact on another: author’s are (usually) keen to collect as many as they can, regardless of the origin or intent (simply because it looks good on the book jacket and the website and the promo sheets); arguing against an award that you yourself might one day be nominated for is just plain stupid. And, no matter how reasoned and (possibly) correct your argument may be, if you are attacking an award for which you have never been nominated, in favor of one for which you have been nominated on multiple occassions, there really is only one conclusion that anyone can come to about your motivations (whether they are correct in their assumptions or not) and anyone with half a brain can figure out in two seconds that it’s just better to keep quiet.

However – back to the main subject. To my mind, and in my fledgling theory, there is a divide between genre science fiction and literary science fiction, one which expresses itself in both presentation and intent. Genre science fiction evolved from the ‘just tell a decent story and collect a paycheck’ pulp markets into something very specific that puts story telling and sense of wonder first, one which does not concern itself or worry about whether or not it has achieved high literary values as that is of secondary concern. While literary science fiction starts from the premise of utilizing those things that make for good literary convention and then adds SF tropes somewhere along the way. I’ll have to pick a few examples and strip them down to see if that contention bears any fruit – but I suspect that you could substitute any window dressing for the SF and still have a “literary” novel.
Not worth wasting a bunch of time on though – the only real reason to “study” literature is to figure out how that author put something together that sold. We can heap up the history of literary critiquing and make up all the schools of thought and nifty-sounding names for things we want to – but no matter how deep it gets, its still an entirely subjective enterprise that results in various very small groups of people agreeing that something is good or it isn’t. I don’t know about you guys, but I make those kinds of decisions for myself.