Guy Gavriel Kay
Canadian fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay has stuck the boot into one of the judges of this year’s Man Booker Prize, declaring his attitude towards science fiction to be “hall of fame-quality idiocy”.
The prize is awarded to the best novel each year written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth and has a 50,000 pound prize. Earlier last month, the shortlist for the prize was announced, but no science fiction books were to be found on it, spurring American sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson to lambast the judges of the award for what he said was a misguided focus on historical fiction.
In an article published by UK newspaper The Guardian, Booker judge and University College London professor of English John Mullan, made some rather disparaging comments about sci-fi literature.
“One of this year’s Booker judges, John Mullan, replied to Robinson’s comments with an almost definitively asinine comment,” wrote Kay in a column published in Canada’s Globe and Mail last week:
“”It was Hall of Fame-quality idiocy. After first noting that he was “not aware of science fiction” (which might normally preclude going on to comment), he proceeded to declare, through the foot in his mouth, that it was “bought by a special kind of person who has special weird things they go to and meet each other.” I do admit to wondering what size shoe Professor Mullan wears, and how it fits between his teeth, and whether he teaches grammar.”
Kay has published eleven fantasy novels, commencing with his applauded trilogy The Fionavar Tapestry. He has won a number of major awards and been nominated for many more. His next novel, Under Heaven, is slated to be published in April 2010.
Kay’s comments come as part of a wider debate within the sci-fi and fantasy community about whether the broad genre is being discriminated against by the literary establishment.
American fantasy author Janny Wurts recently argued in a podcast that the fantasy genre was chronically marginalised by its immature image by book critics and readers, a theme she expanded on in a recent interview with Keeping the Door.
And Canadian author Margaret Atwood, considered to be a ‘mainstream’ novelist, has taken a stance that her latest novel The Year of the Flood is not to be classified as science fiction, despite the book containing a dystopian vision of the future including mutated versions of humanity. American sci-fi and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin has criticised Atwood’s stance.
Ultimately, Kay is optimistic about the future of the sci-fi genre, concluding his Globe and Mail column by noting that speculative fiction themes are embedded in many younger writers, a theme that is eroding prejudice and genre assumptions on the part of the literary mainstream.
