David Mitchell just won a World Fantasy Award for The Bone Clocks, and he’s one of the most exciting voices in speculative fiction right now. But he’s usually classified as a literary author—and talking to the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, he explains why that’s largely meaningless.
Says Mitchell:
It’s convenient to have a science fiction and fantasy section, it’s convenient to have a mainstream literary fiction section, but these should only be guides, they shouldn’t be demarcated territories where one type of reader belongs and another type of reader does not belong. …
It’s a bizarre act of self-mutilation to say that ‘I don’t get on with science fiction and fantasy, therefore I’m never going to read any.’ What a shame. All those great books that you’re cutting yourself off from. …
The book doesn’t care if it’s science fiction. The book doesn’t give a damn about genre, it just is what it is.
Check out the whole interview with Mitchell over at Wired.
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