Beim Guardian findet sich ein exklusiver Auszug aus „A Man without a Country“ von → Kurt Vonnegut: → Hollow Laughter. Darin beschreibt Vonnegut auch seine Anfänge als „SF-Autor“:
Most of our critics are products of English departments and are very suspicious of anyone who takes an interest in technology. So, anyway, I was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.
I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I’d offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady. There are huge factories in Schenectady and nothing else. I and my associates were engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place.
I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.
P.S.: „A Man without a Country“ erscheint im Februar auch in deutscher Übersetzung (Harry Rowohlt!) im schweizerischen Pendo-Verlag: Mann ohne Land.