Quote of the Day

[coalescent]

From the interview with Michael Chabon in the latest Locus:

"It's quite obvious to me that so much of what goes on in the world of science fiction has analogies with a ghetto mentality, with a sense of clannishness and that ambivalence that you have: on the one hand wanting to keep outsiders *out* and identify all the insiders with a special language and jargon so you can tell at a glance who does and doesn't belong, and on the other hand hating that sense of confinement, wanting to move beyond the walls of the ghetto and find wider acceptance. It's a deep ambivalence. You want both at the same time: you feel confined, and you feel supported and protected. I've talked about this with Jonathan Lethem, who says we seem to be moving in opposite directions; he's moving out of the genre and working his way toward a wider mainstream readership, while I wrote a fantasy novel and now I'm doing alternate history."