Author John Scalzi discusses science fiction, saying it’s a commercial genre. “Academia generally wants you to show you can write [hence literary fiction]; science fiction generally wants you to tell a story.” The idea is that if you can write and tell a great story, then you have a blockbuster or enduring classic on your hands, but that ain’t necessarily so.
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Scalzi’s complete comments along with a boisterous discussion thread (which happens any time Heinlein’s name is invoked) is here:
http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=191
There’s more to it than Scalzi declaring what “is” and “isn’t” speculative fiction. It’s a refutation of those who would demean Heinlein and, through him, others who are said to reflect that author’s style.
By my definition of “literature” Heinlein succeeded. His works have suvived and spoken across generations, although I think the ones that will be remembered more 50 years from now are not his more pretentious later works like “Stranger in a Strange Land”, but rather his earlier enjoyable reads like “Starship Troopers”.
Time judges literature by a far different scale than the pretentions of the concurrent literatsi.
I’ll agree with you on time’s judgment and try to look into the other part.
Scalzi has an interesting essay on his site, by Charles Stross (one of the leading lites of current sf) on how it’s highly unlikely man will ever travel (ie. colonize) the stars. I wonder what Heinlein would think of that? (I agree with Stross; the distance are much too great to make any attempts plausible… as far as I can see.)