Ashkok Banker Interview:
2009 / RACEFAIL RELEVANT EXCERPTS:
I won’t mince words here: SFF publishing in the US today is the Klu Klux Klan of the publishing world. It’s anachronistically misrepresentational in its racial mix, religious mix, cultural mix. The few exceptions to the rule only prove the endemic, systemic and deeply bred bias in the field...
...Because like the Klu Klux Klan, nobody respects a closed group of inbred rednecks and crackers. It’s about time the entire genre was dismantled, outed, exposed and shut down. SFF as a rigid, white-dominated, Judeo-Christian-pushing, American nationalistic genre has jumped the shark. The old guard is dead and gone and the young (and old) turks running the show are fighting a losing battle against the very progressiveness and futurism that the genre is supposed to espouse! Besides, SFF has permeated mainstream literature and popular culture. We don’t need to label a book SF or F to cater to the dwindling handful of snobs who think that the term SFF on a book means it’s superior in some way to other books.
For decades SFF has been accusing mainstream literary critics, readers and authors of being snobbish and denying them their due. In fact, it’s the other way around: SFF’s pathetic cries of outrage and refusal to change with the times are proof of SFF’s own snobbishness and bias. SFF is dead and rotting. Long may it stay dead! We who love the elements that make great SFF don’t need the label so Klansmen can recognize work by other Klansmen...
Emphasis mine.
I would fully add the gaming and comic industries right behind SF Publishing, but it's all of a piece now. It's all part of the Speculative Fiction Brand. They're all 'SyFy'; aiming for the dollar, losing the vision.
