What free ride? A free ride by who? If one genre (and as you may have noticed, I don't write straight genre and rarely read it) is outselling another, there are all sorts of reasons that can be the case: better writing, sheer weight of numbers - a problem which solves itself in the end - or something in the concept of the genre or particular authors therein that fills a need in the public's reality.

And Sturgeon's Law (ahem) applies to every field. For every Sue Grafton there's a Robert Aspirin, writing fluff in another genre.

Jeez.

Wait, are you talking about reviews, as opposed to sales?

Oh. OK. Different deal entirely.

I wouldn't know. Believe it or not, I don't read reviews 99.99% of the time; only the ones I need (of my own stuff and friends). And I wouldn't read fantasy or scifi reviews in any event, because neither genre produces much that I choose to read, and the litcrit wouldn't mean anything to me.

Reviews, I'll take your word for it. Carry on.

She is also consistently cited as the only respect-worthy SF writer.

Well, Philip K. Dick too. And more obscure/literary people like Octavia Butler. Margaret Atwood gets tons of respect, even though she claims she's not writing SF (but she is!).

People like Karen Joy Fowler appear to making the transition to mainstream cred without stopping writing genre-ish stuff. Also Molly Gloss, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon (though Chabon is writing more genre as time goes on, and Lethem less) ...

I don't think anyone ever claimed Asimov was a great prose stylist, nor Heinlein.

Hecubus, as for that Salon article, I recall it being debated at length when it was first posted, but that might have been on LJ rather than here. I'm sure, whichever it was, Micole participated in it. *g*

Deb, I'm really not talking about actual value of the genres or writers but perceived value. How reputations rise and fall - separate from the actual merits of the work.

The writer in the article went on to cite a lot of mystery writers after Ross Macdonald that had gotten big buildups, but that he found wanting. Again, I'm not supporting or refuting his case, just wondering out loud if anybody else saw a broad general trend among the standard critical quarters with a bias toward mysteries being treated as literary, and science fiction and fantasy as purely locked in the genre ghetto.

I don't think it's an either/or question.

See, I got from Hec's statement that he was talking about readers, not reviewers: the man/woman on the Clapham Omnibus, toting a book around that will make him/her appear intellectual.

Reviewers, huh. As I said, completely unqualified to debate on that one (me, unqualified, that is).

I'm sure, whichever it was, Micole participated in it.

I'm sure.

Here's the actual article. You need the Salon day pass.

People like Karen Joy Fowler appear to making the transition to mainstream cred without stopping writing genre-ish stuff. Also Molly Gloss, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon (though Chabon is writing more genre as time goes on, and Lethem less) ...

None of whom is now marketed as SF. (Chabon never was; he had a Pulitzer in-hand when he started his genre book.)

It's as if P.D. James's books had stopped having "A Mystery" on the cover. (I just checked; The Murder Room both has a genre title and says An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery on the cover.)

My take on that Salon article was that the guy clearly wasn't reading the good stuff. You can't paint an entire genre with a single brush, because as Deb says, Sturgeon's Law applies everywhere.

It was stupid, but it got people clicking over to Salon to read it, which seems to be their pattern for a lot of the editorial posts nowadays. They make ridiculous sweeping generalizations which get linked to all over the place, thus driving up their hit counts. ::shrugs::

None of whom is now marketed as SF.

True enough.

ETA: Even Dick? How can you not market Dick as SF? ::boggled::

a broad general trend among the standard critical quarters with a bias toward mysteries being treated as literary, and science fiction and fantasy as purely locked in the genre ghetto.

But that's a different question. The quotes you gave were all "All mysteries are bullshit, and here's why". Which raises all my hackles.

But, yes, write a serious literary book published by TOR's SF side, and monkeys will fly out of Clive James's ass before you get a serious review in the Times. By contrast, mysteries get treated seriously all the time. Similarly, there are big-name serious movies made from big-name mysteries all the time, with Mystic River the most recent. Name me one serious movie (as in Oscar contender) that's based on an SF novel.