Mary Johnson: exploring the inner universe

I really do wonder! You see, I'm the kind of person who instantly says, "Science Fiction" when you ask me what genre "incarceron" falls into. But my sister insists that book is fantasy, and I'd guess most of the world agrees with her, and not with me. (I LOVE "Incarceron" and "Sapphique, by the way. If you haven't read them yet, you really should.)

Then I was reading a recent book review of Ursula LeGuin''s stories, and some person (a man, I think) began slamming her for not writing "real" science fiction. Ursula LeGuin! One of the finest and most famous SF writers in the world! But she writes fantasy, too, of course, and her SF is concerned with people and societies and how they intersect. That her Hainish books deal with alien worlds and spaceships and cool tech like ansibles wasn't enough for the fellow who was criticizing her. As far as he was concerned, SF had to extrapolate what life would be like in the future, and had to do so based on hard science. I can't think of a single SF author I like (Fisher, Bradbury, Duane, LeGuin, Walter M. Miller, and several more) who actually writes science fiction defined that strictly.