<<I don't know what science fiction you
read (or don't read) but I would wager that 90% of
anything ever published is absolute
crap>>
Which is, of course, Sturgeon's Law!
I would
say science fiction gets about as many tossups
written about it as contemporary mystery and pop
literature do, and is currently deemed trash. (Robert James
Waller, Frank McCourt, Sue Grafton, et al.) The qb canon
is stuff that's important for cultural literacy and
stuff deemed important by academe. And also stuff you
read in high school. That's what determines whether
something is lit or trash. Right now, with a few key
exceptions like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World and
Flowers for Algernon, SF just don't get no respect, so it
also don't get no access to the lit distribution.
It's perfectly fine to write your trash questions
about SF, though. No more than one per pack, of course,
to avoid jading everyone.
As an
analogy--there's plenty of hip-hop music of artistic merit, but
until it starts getting vastly more popular among
academics than among the rest of the world (like jazz), it
won't be a legit topic for fine arts questions
either.
--Fred, SF scholar