Two Cultures And In Between Dept.

Sometimes I get the impression that the reason SF&F and the literary worlds tend to be at such odds — with exceptions, and I'll go into one such example separately — is because most of the folks involved with the latter surround themselves with an environment that discourages real experimentation.

I had my own brief experiences with this in my teenage years, during a summer creative writing course I took at a local university of major renown. Everyone involved was tremendously enthusiastic an...