J.J.:

If a great novel is written in the sci-fi idiom, it is at once de-categorized as “sci fi” and re-categorized as “mainstream.”

What is “Brave New World,” if not sci-fi? You don’t see it in sci-fi catalogs, though. Even Vonnegut’s sci-fi isn’t sci-fi (mostly) — it’s too well thought of (though not by me).

Sci fi is by definition a low category of literature. A really good novel is by definition mainstream… even if it’s sci-fi.

And in a way, this is right and just. After all, sci-fi readers aren’t looking for high literary merit, and don’t want it, or at any rate don’t much care whether it’s present or not. (Though it is NOT the case that they wouldn’t know it if they saw it. Lots of them — of us — would. It’s just that we don’t always want it.) What a sci-fi reader, in sci-fi-reading mode, wants, is, to quote Isaac Asimov, “those crazy ideas.” At the heart of every sci-fi story is a really cool idea. “Wow! Just imagine! What if…” If it comes attached to literary excellence, as it occasionally does, that’s really neither here not there.

Greatest sci-fi writer of the 20C: Robert A. Heinlein, by a mile.

Best book ever written ABOUT sci-fi: “New Maps of Hell,” by Kingsley Amis (before he was a Sir).