“But I think the thing that appealed to me most [about SF and Fantasy] was the drama; the grandeur; the pretentiousness, which isn’t the bad thing we generally make it out to be. After all, what is the difference between pretentiousness and seriousness? Only a contract between the speaker and the author. People call things “pretentious” in order to put them in their place; if a thing has been conceded to actually occupy a place of seriousness, it’s immune from charges of pretension. I’m really suspicious of this process — it seems cliquish to me. At the same time, though, one has to concede a big difference between the seriousness of heavy hitters like Faulkner or Joyce and the would-be gravitas of stories about dragons that can talk.”
