Quote of the Week

"Science fiction, for all its trappings, its talk of 'new horizons' and 'new approaches' and 'thinking things through from the beginning' and 'new literary excitement,' is a very conservative form of literature. It is probably more conservative than westerns, mysteries, or gothics, let alone that most reactionary of all literatures, pornography. Most of its writers and editors are genuinely troubled by innovative styles or concepts at the outset, because they have a deep stake by the time they have achieved any position in the field in not appearing crazy. This was certainly true in 1969 when the field was still a minor if marginally respectable genre. It is more true yet at the beginning of the eighties when it has becomes, for a concatenation of factors, perhaps the most predictably profitable part of the publishing subdivisions of many conglomerates and when licensing of Star Trek or the Lucas properties is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The conservative nature of science fiction today is no longer an intimation, not even a standard. It is a necessity."
- Barry N. Malzberg, "L'Etat c'est moi," in The Engines of the Night, 1980