As that lone subway traveler who still occasionally rides to work brandishing a dog-eared edition of “A Canticle for Leibowitz” or “The Illustrated Man,” I realize I’ll never enjoy even a fraction of the social standing afforded to the umpteenth passenger who is just now cracking open a mint-condition copy of “The Kite Runner” or a fresh paperback of “A Million Little Pieces” purchased after it was discredited, and I don’t expect this to change any time soon.

But what truly shames me is that I cannot turn to any of these people, or to my friends, or to you, and say: Whether you read books because you have a genuine, lifelong passion for literature or because a feisty woman in Chicago tells you to — you should pick up this new work of science fiction I just finished reading, because you will enjoy it as much as I did.

I cannot do this in good conscience because if you were to immerse yourself in most of the sci-fi being published these days, you would probably enjoy it as much as one enjoys reading a biology textbook or a stereo manual.
And you would very likely come away wondering, as I do from time to time, whether science fiction has strayed so far from the fiction category as a whole that, though the two share common ancestors, they now seem to have as much to do with each other as a whale has to do with a platypus.

Sigh. The New York Times discovers science fiction, sixty years too late, and way too defensively.