Quote of the Day (Kurt Vonnegut, on the Prejudice Against Science-Fiction Writers)

“English majors are encouraged, I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad.  And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors, and they are squeamish about technology to this very day.  So it is natural for them to despise science fiction.

“But there are those who adore being classified as science-fiction writers anyway, who are alarmed by the possibility that they might someday be known simply as ordinary short-story writers and novelists who mention, among other things, the fruits of engineering and research.  They are happy with the status quo because their colleagues love them the way members of old-fashioned big families were supposed to do.  Science-fiction writers meet often, comfort and praise one another, exchange single-spaced letters of twenty pages and more, booze it up affectionately, and one way or another have a million heart-throbs and laughs.”—American novelist and short-story writer Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), “Science Fiction” (1965), in Kurt Vonnegut: Novels and Stories 1950-1962 (2012)