Why is speculative fiction looked down upon?

It’s mostly snobbery. People from particular social and educational backgrounds dominate the publishing industry, including the prestigious book awards, and for a long time they have favored literary realism as a style–that’s a genre also, BTW. SF and mystery and romance were all originally written to be cheap entertainment for mass audiences. Parts of the Establishment still look down their noses at them. While other parts of the Establishment make billions of dollars from it. Read what you like.

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.