In my english class, we all underwent a rigorous 2 weeks of creative writing, ending with 3-4 days of presentations. As expected, most of them were either poetry or memoirs (for some reason my class thinks those two genres are the easiest), and the most "serious writer" in the class wrote a fictionalized series of articles and stories from WW2. (He has...problems.) My turn came, and I read my darkly comedic, Douglas-Adams style first chapter of a sci-fi novel about the afterlife. It was met with blank stares from the class, but my teacher reportedly found it hilarious. So...subversion?

How is writing WW2 based stuff mean he has problems?

This troper is involved in a sci-fi themed academic symposium held at his university. Hoo-boy it is a fight every year to justify our existence to those in charge, despite attendance by such well-known authors as Gail Carson Levine, Orson Scott Card (who comes every few years and actually helped create the symposium 26 years ago) as well as many other respected sci-fi/fantasy authors and editors; professors from several universities across the country; and even honest-to-goodness rocket scientists. Despite all that, ''every year'' we have to prove that we are serious and have academic worth.

Perhaps foolishly, this troper would suggest tracking down a copy of Heinlein's "Expanded Universe" and staging a performance of "Spinoff" as part of the academic fight to save the sci-fi symposium. Originally written as a transcript of the testimony that the Grandmaster delivered to a congressional subcommittee, it can with very little effort be expanded to cover the value of science fiction as a genre.

This troper once read an article by a reader in denial, who attempted to argue that the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett could not be fantasy because they were ''too good''. Apparently, the presence of dwarfs, trolls, vampires, werewolves, witches, wizards, a large pantheon of interventionist gods and occasional elves are not the defining factor, but the quality of the work in question.

This troper suggest that the reader in denial had been first exposed to fantasy... I'm sorry, I'll try that again... the first "fantastic"-style fiction which said reader had read was of the "GOR" level of quality, and subsequent stories went downhill from there. Defining a work as belonging or not belonging to a particular genre based on the writing quality is not just comparing apples to oranges, but comparing agriculture to meteorology: both are important and related to each other, but are fundamentally different aspects of the works in question.

This troper once read a [=LiveJournal=] entry that was the exact inverse; the person was claiming that the HarryPotter series was simply a fairy tale, and "low" fantasy, not worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as TheLordOfTheRings. The person making the claim was a fantasy author. Unfortunately, he can't find the relevant entry.

Having read both, but not the [=LiveJournal=] entry, I can readily understand the basis behind that distinction, and I can fully agree that Harry Potter is not at all on the same level as Lord of the Rings, although I'm not as certain about the fairytale distinction. To put it simply, Harry Potter is flat out outrageously unrealistic, and it doesn't have any real standards of its own it goes by, aside from the Rule Of Being Interesting. Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, although extremely fantastical, took to painstaking detail to flesh out its world and breathe into it a life and reality unto itself. Talking about realism in a fantasy setting may sound counter-intuitive (Makes you wanna say "It's fantasy! Of course it's unrealistic. Duh!", doesn't it?), but what I mean by realism is just how much the world of the story draws you in by really making sense.

To shorten the above paragraph in This Troper's own words: Harry Potter tells a pre-established story and throws in fantastic elements when needed; [=LotR=] creates a world filled with pre-established fantastic elements and rules and then uses them to make a story.

To shorten it further: In HP, the fantastic elements are used to tell the story; in [=LotR=], the story is used to show you how the fantastic elements work.

To shorten it further, the Lord of the Rings has some merit as a work of literature.

To be the shortest: LotR's dry & HP's fun.

I later realized that the writer in question happened to be a "high fantasy" author.

But don't you guys think that dismissing HP for not being as good as one of the most influential novels of the last century is a little bit too snobbish and over-the-top?

Aren't the HarryPotter s one of the most influential novel series of the last century?

The Lord of the Rings has been canonized as Great Literature, so academics can now pretend they always liked it. Harry Potter has not. This leads one to wonder: are fantasy fans who hate on Harry Potter just doing it becomes it's not a "classic?"

I would agree with the argument in that Harry Potter is "low" fantasy and Lord of the Rings is "high" fantasy, but I fail to see why it matters. That merely puts them in different subgenres - quality, and "classic" status, aren't necessarily part of that.

This troper was told in a creative writing class she took that no one was allowed to write genre fiction. She managed this until the final assignment, where her only idea was part of a longer work she was working on. It involved an alternate America where there was a strict caste system by financial status and slavery. She brought it in and was praised for it. It was never called SF, despite the fact it couldn't be anything but.

And this, tropers, is why SF remains such a reviled beast: it sneaks in anywhere, because innocently filling in the blank after "What If..." can lead to sparking the imagination, and we all know where THAT can lead.

Cookies?

All right, I'll bite. Actually ''thinking''? Voting for the "wrong" political party? (Sorry, I just read about a stupid, ''stupid'' bill to create Yet Another Faceless Bureaucracy, and I'm a little ticked off at the moment).

The funny thing is, this troper expected to be failed because of this story. She made no effort to hide the fact she was writing science fiction, and the last thing she expected was the teacher cornering her and going on about how good the story was. (since this was me writing, it wasn't much.)

"Genre fiction"? How can one write outside a genre? Tell your teacher that ''PrideAndPrejudice'' is a romance, ''CrimeAndPunishment'' a thriller.

Were you in my class? Introduction to Creative Writing (LTCR 10) with Julie Cox at UCSC? That was the only time This Troper ever ran into the situation or even heard of it, but agrees.

This troper brings graphic novels to school and reads them. I get a lot of weird looks and "Why are you reading ''that?''" Never mind a lot of the other girls bring manga and anime to school, oh no. ''They'' get off without a single snide remark.

Same with this troper, though sometimes the opposite effect. I got yelled by a teacher for reading ''Bone'' during "Drop Everything and Read" time (it was elementary school), claiming that comics are not literature (Scott [=McCloud=] would have fun hearing that), and in middle school had to perpetually fear being sent to the guidance counselor for reading ''JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'', since the school was ridiculously censorship-crazy (I've also been yelled at for reading ''BraveNewWorld'' in school). Ironically, a teacher did find me reading JTHM and said that it was a good read. Laughter and odd looks are not unusual when people find me making comics. People look at me like I'm an idiot when I try to defend the comics medium, and suppress chuckles when I talk about IsaacAsimov. What has this world come to?

The difference of reactions between manga/anime and graphic novels are, indeed, intriguing. Perhaps because manga/anime are foreign and therefore subject to different judgment? A school that is censorship-happy is an entirely different kettle of fish; there's an annual "Banned Book List" of which the contents belong in every school. This troper would dearly love to read about tropers who put ''BraveNewWorld'' away into their bookbags and pull out a copy of, say, ''NakedLunch''... As far as the idiots who chuckle when you try to defend comics and sci-fi... well, as the troper below points out, "Just because [they]'re too stupid to understand..."

I'd assume it's similar to the AnimationAgeGhetto. People still think that American comics are for kids, even though they might acknowledge that many Japanese manga are targeted at the adult market.

TrueArtIsForeign? This troper owns an ebook. I get more questions about the ''device'' than what's ''on'' it.

That's because once you're out of middleschool/a small highschool, no one cares what you read. Ebooks are interesting. Your taste in novels is not.

This troper has actually been a victim of comments directed at him for reading manga at school. Accusations levied by him from classmates included both that he was reading porn and stuff for children.

I wanted to do the mythological influences in ''StarWars'' for my Extended Essay (a 4000-word essay that people who do the International Baccalaureate, an alternate school thing, have to do), a topic that's pretty damned rich and requires a lot of research. Did they let me? No. I then, in a fit of pique and hoping to piss them off, decided that I would do my Extended Essay in History instead, on pirates. ''They said yes''. Un-freakin' believable. (Of course, it's pretty damn cool that they let me do that, but come ''on''...)

You got to write an essay on pirates. You have officially lost ''all right'' to complain about the sci-fi ghetto.

This troper's classmate got a lousy grade on an essay for comparing something-or-other we had to write about to ''StarWars.'' Because it wasn't "literature."

Technically since it's a movie it isn't literature, but that still sucks.

On the one hand, you could produce the novelization of Episode IV that Lucas wrote and published separately (it includes a more detailed description of Tashi Station, and Luke's nickname among his buddies) to demonstrate that it was, in fact, a novel and therefore literature. On the other, you could point out that, in the entirety of the world's movies, the same two characters show up more often than any others: SherlockHolmes and Dracula. After all, literature and theater were the only things that could be filmed, back when movies first started. But it sounds like your teachers are more used to putting things in well-defined categories than asking questions, so never mind...

Actually, the novelization was ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster, an acclaimed SF writer. So yeah.

This troper once got an F on a political cartoon assignment in his History class, since he compared the activities of a government to that of the Galactic Empire, despite the fact that Star Wars has been known to have layers of political commentary and parallels with historical events.

Weirdly, this troper's Mythology professor did a dissertation on Star Wars.

This whole example tree seems to be more a case of mislableing than actual Sci-Fi ghetto. Star Wars is not really literature, it's a movie. A novelization doesn't make it literature. There's a lot you can do with it that will be well recieved including literary analysis, but you'll usually wind up in trouble when you tag it as a literature project. If you ask your Mythology Professor, they'll likely tell you that they had quite a bit of trouble properly slotting the dissertation, but once it was set up, had no issue with it. The same is true with a political cartoon about the Galactic Empire. You'd have gotten a much much higher grade if you had then made the connections that Star Wars makes instead of leaving them for the teacher to fill in him/herself.

Wow, really? They didn't let you do it on Star Wars? That's ridiculous! I know a kid in my school a few years ago did his EE on Harry Potter, and I'm doing mine on American and Soviet animation.

This troper has been a sci-fi fan since early childhood, but unfortunately dwells in a very-redneck small town. She has spent her entire life defending the books and shows she loves to people who think professional wrestling is high art. She finally gave up on her logical, well-reasoned, and impassioned defenses in favor of something much simpler: "Just because you're too stupid to understand a show doesn't make it stupid; it makes you stupid."

Good strategy. Trying to broaden the horizons of those who want their horizons to get smaller is the most classic example of an exercise in futility this troper has ever heard of. Stay online and keep in touch with other fans, though. Clearly, you'll need the support.

As a fan of both sci-fi and ProfessionalWrestling, this troper kind of resents the above troper for using the latter as an example of how his neighbors are redneck morons. Methinks that sci-fi isn't the only thing in a ghetto around here... Still, good luck fighting the good fight against ignorance, even if you do choose poor comparison points.

Sorry if I offended anybody with that comparison- it's not that I have anything against professional wrestling, but more got extremely frustrated by the amount of times I would mention liking a sci-fi or fantasy show only to get a response of "How can you watch that weird (rude expletive deleted), it's so stupid and fake and pointless" followed by an impassioned discussion of how great last night's RAW was. This happened so often that the two things (dissing sci-fi and loving pro wrestling) became inextricably linked in this troper's mind. So blame my classmates, not me!

I understand what you mean. The first troper wasn't dissing Pro Wrestling. She was making the valid point that people will discount something for no other reason than it's label, even if it shares many of the same qualities as something they do like. This troper knows people who swear ''{{Lost}}'' is the epitome of TV drama, but say you like the ''XFiles'' or worse ''StarTrek'' and folks roll their eyes and say it's '''''unrealistic'''''. Yeah, unrealistic...cause a mystery island with smoke beasts and code-locked hatches is the height of realism...gimme a break! (And before anybody wigs out, I happen to respect ''{{Lost}}'' though I don't follow it.

A subversion of sorts - this troper wrote a practice essay for his Scholarship English paper, in which he talked about Heart of Darkness, Run Lola Run, The Magus...and ''BeyondGoodAndEvil'' (can't remember what it was specifically on). The teacher loved it.

Maybe your teacher thought you were talking about Nietsche.

Another subversion: this troper wrote final papers on the robots of IsaacAsimov, and on the science-fiction vs. fantasy argument over StarWars, for high school AP English. The teacher not only graded both papers "A", but continued to use the "Robots" paper as an example to future classes on what he was looking for in term papers.

Yet another subversion: This troper's university had and still has an entire semester course dedicated entirely to the serious literary critique of science fiction and fantasy themes, and their applicability to real-world issues. Discovering its existence and popularity was very gratifying, especially for fulfilling IT lib-ed credit reqs.

This troper has a similar class at his University, except on Comic Books and Graphic Novels. Seeing The Killing Joke, Marvel 1602, and Sandman sitting at the textbook sale right between the art history texts and the huge geology textbooks? Amusing, to say the least.

This troper is just amazed how narrowed the "level of acceptability" is, even amongst Fantasy and Sci-Fi fans. Her parents used mocked some of her Fantasy and Mecha anime, despite being avid readers of Mercedes Lackey and Orson Scott Card - who often explored some of the same themes. Fortunately they learned to knock it off.

Not to mention SF people who hate the very term science fiction or "skiffy", preferring speculative fiction. Because a rose by any other name...

Whereas this troper prefers the term speculative fiction because it avoids the incredibly pointless debate over weather some borderline cases are sci-fi or fantasy. (At least when he's not gleefully referring to most tv SF as science fantasy due to the lack of actual science in them)

This troper is surprised he got away with an essay on his state-level final exam in a high school English class that discussed Star Wars and Wheel of Time. He knows he got away with it because his grade on the exam was awesome. That said, he's also certain that, in a college creative writing class, he only got away with a story of a man stealing his infant son's soul at his shadow's urging because he didn't frame it in terms of magic, despite it having to be some kind of magic in order for that to work. He's certain that if he did his other idea, how an immortal creature could hide amongst humans (without constantly moving around), it would have gone over far worse.

ThisTroper recently had a conversation about this starting when a girl saw The Fellowship of the Ring in her bag and said "You actually ''like'' that?". She went on to say that she didn't like Fantasy because it wasn't real (actually a good reason to not read Fantasy, though it comes across as idiotic) and she preferred Realistic Fiction, like Jodi Picoult, because it's about things actually applicable to today's society, "like school shootings". Apparently the concept of metaphor completely escapes her, as well as reading a book for the story. I also asked her if she read Historical Fiction, but everyone was talking so loud I couldn't hear her answer.

So, how did this girl like Jodi Picoult's run on the ''Wonder Woman'' comic?

This troper loves SF and fantasy, but also loves medieval literature, to the point where she can read Middle English without slowing down. It seems like neither the SF fans or the literature crowd likes this.

They don't. I don't mind, though.

This troper had a sweet love of Graduate school in physics due to the inversion, with most professors being heavy critics of bad SciFi, but loving the good stuff. The only bad thing was taking a course in Nanotechnology that has made this troper an agnostic about nanobots.

Proving that the bias is not limited exclusively to literature, this troper was told on day one of a screenwriting workshop that we were there to create art, so "don't write genre crap like Star Wars."

And I had the opposite experience when I took a screenwriting class in college (granted, it was "Screenwriting for Non-Film Majors"). I wrote a ''Star Trek''-esque story, and the instructor not only loved it he wanted me to expand it out to a full 120-page script instead of the 40-page "treatment" we had to write for the grade.

When I took mine, it was from one of the professors who taught Sam "Evil Dead" Raimi when he went to Michigan State. My first short was a romance. Graded crap. My feature length was a cyberpunk-blaxploitation-comedy-action film. Four-point-oh.

This troper has seen plenty of aversions, subversions, and inversions:

A list of books for an optional summer reading assignment included ''{{Dune}}'', ''Childhood's End'', and the ''{{Lensman}}'' novels.

During philosophy class (which was basically an analysis of Plato's ''Republic''), the teacher showed ''PlanetOfTheApes'', because the ape society in the film strongly resembles that envisioned in the ''Republic''.

And ''TheMatrix'' is quite simply Plato's ''The Allegory of the Cave'' with sci-fi trappings.

This Troper's philosophy teacher showed ''TheMatrix'' and ''MinorityReport'', to demostration ''The Allegory of the Cave'' and predestination, respectively. It was enjoyed by all.

And then there's the assignments I've handed in. The crowning example was an assignment to write a story about a character different from myself. I simply took my current D&D character - a female tiefling warlock with a vendetta against demons - and wrote a story about her infiltrating and massacring an evil cult. In addition to the good grade, the teacher recognized that it was fantasy, commenting that "You are very much at home in this genre."

For his high school AP English class, this troper had to write an essay on angels and demons in literature. He picked the novel "Swan Song" by Robert [=McCammon=], specifically the Man with the Scarlet Eye (think Randall Flag from "The Stand," but in a post-nuclear war setting instead of a post-plague setting). I figured the teacher would want something different instead of more essays on {{Paradise Lost}} or {{The Screwtape Letters}}. I personally thought (and still think) it was some of my finest work. I walked into class the day it was due, handed it to my teacher, and was walking to my desk when she called me back to the front. She literally SHOVED the essay into my chest and said "did you think this assignment was a joke?" She proceeded to RIP into horror and sci-fi, saying there were no works of "comparable literary merit" in either genre, penned by authors who had no talent to create anything better and were the writing equivalent of PE teachers. I asked her to please at least look the essay over, and she snapped "I won't waste my time on horror authors." Of course, I had to respond "so I guess we can take the Edgar Allen Poe and Shirley Jackson novels off your bookshelf?" She gave me the weekend to rewrite my essay on a more "worthy" work. On Monday, I handed her my essay...a look at the angels and demons prevalent in ''GoodOmens''.

One of the lecturers at This Troper's university has averted this, hard. The reading list for the lesson is ''nothing but'' Sci-Fi, including ''JurassicPark'', ''Profiles of the Future'', ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'' and, erm, ''Digital Fortress''. To put this into perspective, the lesson is part of a computing course.

Tell me you guys only read Digital Fortress to rip into bad fiction or to explain how to fail at crypto. I read that, and it was impressively bad.

As a consistent supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, this troper was offended that Dan Brown considers him part of a rabble of irresponsible miscreants subverting the good and noble work of the National Security Agency.

{{theFirebottle}}'s university has a creative writing department that is a black hole of literary fiction snobbery. In response to an inquiry about an advanced fiction writing workshop which mentioned sci-fi, directed to a very well-respected professor in the department, came a rude response that said genre fiction was unacceptable for assignments. Before that, I took a basic CW class in which I submitted a ten page sci-fi story with most of the 'verse stripped out and still got blank looks from not only the professor but ''the entire class''. They could not grasp even the simplest elements of ''space opera''.

UCSC?

Mostly averted with me. In English classes in university (we're Russian), we used to watch movies in English, from ''Main/MrsDoubtfire'' and ''Main/WhatWomenWant'' to ''Main/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' and ''Main/BackToTheFuture''. And on one operating systems lecture, we watched ''Main/WarGames'' to analyze security flaws and exploits featured in the movie. However, in literature classes back at school, the only thing I remember that was at least vaguely SF was Zamyatin's ''We''.

In his graduate level creative writing course, this trooper ended up being the only genre writer in the midst of a bunch of experimentalists and "real writers". the ones that write ''real'' literature. He passed out a completely fantasy piece and most of the comments focused on things like, "I never knew wizards went to the bathroom". Personally he thinks his works were much better than the guy who wrote the same story five times, each time leaving out a different vowel.

This troper had to write an essay comparing The War of the Worlds (1953 film) to the book and then to Independence Day for GCSE English. Before this was varying essays on The Time Machine, A Sound of Thunder and other scifi short stories. A* all the way. In retrospect, I liked my English lessons!

This troper has been spared this reaction from others, to some degree, but mostly because all his friends love genres like this as well. However, being a snarker by trade and training, that hasn't stopped ''this troper himself'' from applying it to his work. Result being he can't write anything fantasy or sci-fi unless there is something different about it that can be explored throughout the story.

Sort of a subversion- when it came time for us to write a mini-essay proposing ideas for a project, this troper chose to propose a project based on comics. The teacher loved it. (Project wasn't done, though.)

This troper was extremely nervous when she submitted her first sci-fi piece three weeks into in a graduate level playwriting class. Each week, every student in the class had to submit that week's assignment, plus re-writes from the previous week, and EVERYTHING was read out loud (which, given that it was a playwriting class, made sense)--this gave the me the added ear of "Oh God, I Will Be Ghettoized My Peers" to the pre-existing fear of "My Award Winning and "Literary" Playwright-Professor is Going to Rip My Creativity a New One". The class was initially sniffy nosed, and "Oh, this is not ART, my 30-page 'Spoken Word Opera' about fucking God the devil in my father's hospital room (I really wish I was making this up) is ART!" but grew to love the installments of the two (very sci-fi) plays I wrote so much that I would get e-mails in the days leading up to class begging for spoilers. And professor? Right after that first read through, she started laughing and clapping her hands, and I thought "Balls". Then she said it was most inventive leap anyone had taken in the class in years, and straight up berated the rest of the class that they were being narrow minded by ghettoizing science fiction. I later found out that said professor once got Margaret Atwood to admit that "The Handmaid's Tale" was science fiction, while the latter was, ahem, slightly under the influence at a literary gala. Real life literary Crowning Moment of Awesome, well, at least in my book.

Seconded.

That professor wins an internet.

Subeverted in the life of this troper, who's gotten perfect grades on character analysis of Daniel Fenton and Harleen Quinnzel, and an in-depth study of the DannyPhantom special "The Ultimate Enemy".

Link please. I am intrigued.

As you wish: here it is, all in one place. You can probably tell which are newer.

This troper, a semipro SF writer himself, has seen this trope both inverted and straight: Inverted, in that his first essay for college was "Two Godless Undead Demons and a Little Lady" about Interview with the Vampire, to high marks...and that teacher helped him get started on his SF writing career anyway. Straight, in that he's attended several writing conventions and seminars, at the same college. In several of the seminars or workshops, he's seen rules that dictate "no genre fiction" or had the teacher explicitly state that genre fiction was lesser than Literary Fiction. His favorite example prompted this exchange: #QUOTE#"Genre fiction is necessarily limited by conventions, and cannot transcend them." #QUOTE#"What about science fiction, in the alternate histories of Philip K. Dick or the earthbound underdog stories of the cyberpunk movement?" #QUOTE#"Well, science fiction can't be literature, because it's about ideas." #QUOTE#"..."

Fortunately, the rest of the class begged the question...

An illustration of how fantasy is even more ghettoised than scifi: This troper took a module for final year Microbiology at university entitled "Introduction to post-rationalist biology" which entailed a group of us having a friendly chat with the professor in his office. The discussion entered the realm of perspective, and I brought up the Total Perspective Vortex from ''TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''. The professor was also familiar with this, and then spent some time comparing Douglas Adams to Terry '{{Discworld}}' Pratchett. He casually mentioned that they both wrote very imaginative and very funny science fiction.

"Only You Can Save Mankind" (by Pratchett) qualifies as science fiction.

subverted(I guess) This troper actually used both Doctor Who and the Borg in his English Literature final essays-- The Doctor as the epitome of a Byronic hero, and the Borg as example of what can happen when technology goes too far. The teacher in question showed us Gattaca and Star Wars, as well as 1984. I inhaled it all while my classmates asked dumb questions or slobbered over the actresses(vocally that is). As for the exams, I'm not sure what my teacher thought of those essays, but I passed with an A, sooooo....

This troper normally enjoys her creative writing class (and gets away with not being able to write fantasy by writing about geeks in their natural habitat instead), but she wanted to throttle several folks when they began to critique a fellow writer's pretty cool story about the Roman occupation of ancient Britain with "At first, I was so pissed off because I thought this was going to be some fantasy story, with orcs and crap...," and her blood pressure reached its peak when her professor herself said, "Perhaps you should establish that this is a historical setting earlier, and not the kind of fantasy setting that readers of Serious Literature want to see." To be fair, one of the designated defenders of sci-fi in the class got suitably annoyed: "I don't see why I can't write about Captain Valentine on the Spaceship Starborne and his struggles with meth addiction if he can write about Roman centurions' interpersonal relationships."

This troper had to take a written expression class at college. The main assignment was to read Jose Saramago's ''Blindness'' and write an essay on it. She got so bored and fed up with the anvilicious MagicRealism of the book that she ended up writing an essay in which she demonstrated that the theme of blindness as a metaphor on lack of empathy in the book had already been used by H.G. Wells in ''The Country of the Blind'' and John Wyndham in ''The Day of the Triffids'', and how only the magic realism tag was the only thing that separated Saramago from the SciFiGhetto and kept it in the High Literature shelves. She still passed :)

Like some of the others above, this troper had a class in college that was all about Science Fiction novels and their commentary on society. It was awesome (not least because the teacher was out of his gourd). Then, in his home life, it's played straight by his father, who loves westerns, but refuses to watch ''{{Firefly}}'' because it's sci fi, at one point dismissing it saying, "I don't want to watch anything with cutesy robots in it." Because if something's science fiction, it ''must'' have cute robots in it. *HEADDESK*

When did your father grow up? There was a time when having a cutesy robot was practically a rule. It wasn't until Star Trek that TV Sci-Fi matured and gained true literary merit (this actually depends on how you define Sci-Fi, but I'm talking about spaceship stuff here).

ThisTroper thinks she has you all beat: at both High School and University, she has submitted not just sci fi/fantasy works, but actual ''fanfiction'' of sci fi/fantasy. Yes, I got an A for writing HarryPotter fanfic.

This troper'll do you one better--she got an A++ on a ''{{Batman}}'' fanfic with a ''blatantly obvious'' MarySue. The teacher grading it said the piece was "masterful". She also turned in several chapters of an ongoing sci-fi epic she was writing at the time (that she ''swears'' she will do something with one of these days).

This troper got a B+ on a {{Yaoi}} fanfic, about Sora and Riku.

When I was fourteen I got my grade for the whole semester bumped up from a C to an A for writing Discworld fanfiction. I didn't even write it for an assignment. I wrote it for fun. Looking over it five years on, it's not even that good.

In eighth grade, this troper received a 110% on a ''Boba Fett'' story. It was the proudest moment of his middle school career.

This Troper aced an English-tentamen while in Junior High with a ''{{Runescape}}''-fanfiction.

This troper got an A* at GCSE for a Sandman Finfic revolving around Death.

About all this fanfiction stuff: A while ago, it would have surprised me to see self insert mary sue fanfiction be loved. However, considering the fact that Twilight, which is nothing more than a self insert mary sue (and marty stu) piece of fanfiction got published, I've realized, instead, that people simply have no taste.

I Object! Comparing anything to Twilight is an insult to bad fanfics everywhere!

''Most'' bad fanfics - I'll see your Twilight and raise you the early works of Stephen Ratilff...

There's nothing wrong with a well written Mary Sue. They also tend to be known as 'Protagonists'. It's only when you have the poorly written ones it becomes an issue.

Subversion - This Troper once made a sprite comic wrote a short folklore story for English class... both dealing with Pokémon. There was no problem with either one of those. Of course, it helped that one of those teachers was a Pokémon fan himself. Oh, and in a different year, we watched Star Wars (A New Hope) and compared it to the Odyssey.

This anonymous troper managed to get away with not only submitting fantasy fiction, but '''gaming fantasy fiction''' in his university English classes. (If you think fantasy has it bad, gaming fiction has it even worse.) While the assignments still didn't get very good grades, it was due to the fact that the writing was so lousy as to qualify for {{Old Shame}} status, as opposed to the fantasy settings this troper used.

A subversion: when asked to write an essay explaining why he wanted to go to the US Naval Academy, this troper wrote about D&D and paladins, and how he thought the military, in its better moments, shared some traits with paladins. Despite multiple warnings from family and teachers, he submitted it. He is assuming it didn't go over too badly, since he did get accepted. On a related note, he compared magic and artifice, also from D&D, with real-world engineering for a Massachusetts Institute of Technology essay, and got accepted there as well.

Judging by how many gamers there apparently are in the military, this troper is not surprised.

Considering how many gamers and pagans are at MIT, this troper is also not surprised.

Subversion - this troper once got away with writing a term paper on Marxist themes of ideology in... ''Mage: the Ascension''. He had to go to nearly every office hours period the professor had for three weeks, constantly presenting evidence from the various sourcebooks and how they lined up with Marx's theories of class consciousness (Awakening) and the hegemony (the Technocracy). Not only did he get the paper approved, he got an A- on it (because he didn't mention economics nearly enough).

ThisTroper's life has thankfully been filled with subversions. In high school, I got the ''cool'' English lit professor, who enjoyed what was largely an X-Men fanfiction (guest-starring Bill Clinton and Rush Limbaugh!), who showed us GATTACA, and who was interested in the BattleTech novels after ThisTroper mentioned them (specifically, the Clans) in comparison to GATTACA on an essay question for an exam. Then, in college, the prof ''went out of her way'' to get people to connect religion to pop culture and genre fiction. (ThisTroper's group did StarWars as compared with the world's major religions, but ThisTroper also talked with the prof after class and brought up VampireTheMasquerade.)

Oh boy:

One assignment was to write a story about the further adventures of Odysseus. One of the main points that everyone was told was that it could NOT be a time travel story (apparently, the year before every kid who did the assignment basically had a story about them meeting Odysseus or about Odysseus coming to the high school). So I just wrote a story about Odysseus getting lost in a forest. A forest where Nazis and Zombies are in a constant fight (I never CALLED them Nazis or Zombies, but anyone reading closely could figure it out by how they are described as looking). And Odysseus beats both sides by riding a dinosaur through them (of course, I described the dinosaur as if it were some type of Greek Mythological creature that had been lost to history).

We had the same assignment at my high school, except you had to reimagine two of his obstacles instead. I set the entire thing in space with the cyclopes made into a space-station/monster thing. I got a perfect score on this essay, one of only two such scores I got that year.

Creative writing assignment. I did a story about a InterdimensionalCafe. Everyone groaned until they actually read the freaking story, after which they generally admitted it was pretty good.

Subverted in this troper's Higher English class. The teacher said that she was not a fan of sci-fi, but I did a personal study on ''Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell'' and wrote a definitely sci-fi short story which the teacher was so impressed with that she wasn't even told to redraft it. I was one out of two people to get the best possible grade that year.

This troper was in a course on television production and had to make a short video about "a first day of school." All of the videos in the class were basic, Disney Channel-esque teen comedies, while this troper's video was about an alien going to a human school. Oddly enough, the teacher thoroughly enjoyed it, and it turned out to be one of the most popular videos in the class.

This troper almost got into an argument in a college short-story class over whether or not Ray Bradbury is a science fiction author. He thought that since Bradbury writes mostly ''fiction'' that takes place in the future amidst ''science'', he would be a sci-fi author by definition. Apparently it's only sci-fi if it's drowning in {{Technobabble}}. Honestly- it's a story that takes place on Venus. I'm hard-pressed to decide why it's not sci-fi. Of course, Bradbury writes TrueArt, but nowhere does it say that sci-fi isn't TrueArt. Argh. And when the professor asked if anyone in the class was a sci-fi fan, he said that in the careful tone of someone asking if anyone in the class reads porn.

Happy averted in this troper's senior year of high school, wherein he wrote his thesis connecting H.G. Wells and Charles Darwin. This troper forgets exactly what he proved, but his teacher ate it up.

Then, in college, there was a bizarre inversion/example of this trope. He wrote a 20-page short story for the class. In the first draft, the placeholder title was "Tips For Living In A Crumbling Society." Most of his classmates thought the story was too "sci-fi" or "futuristic," or that he "didn't do enough to convey the post-apocalyptic setting." What the hell? That's straight outta left field! This troper admits that his scenery detail sucked in the first draft, but the story was about MERCENARIES on present-day Earth. They go on a mission to retrieve something, end of story. To be sure, there was a scene of someone reading their email, but come on. I now know the power of titles.

Another subversion for this troper, when she was asked to write an essay analyzing an example, real-world or fictional, of a society often considered deeply flawed or outright evil, and why that appearance is or is not justified. She chose the Imperium of Man from ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'', and got an A on the paper.

In this troper's end of semester evaluation of the module (Introduction to Advanced Literary Studies, as part of an English/History degree) when asked what else could have improved the module, this troper suggested including Frank Herbert's Dune to broaden the syllabus somewhat. He has no idea if it will help, but at least he tried.

Slightly subverted: when discussing his favorite novel at the beginning of the year, following such books put forward by other students as ''To Kill A Mockingbird'' and ''Huckleberry Finn'', the same troper managed to argue his case for Peter F. Hamilton's Fallen Dragon. And did it pretty well, even if he does say so himself. Particularly given that he was the only male in the room.

This troper argued with his English teacher that {{1984}} was science fiction. The teacher refused to see it that way. As well, I have a Dad who raised me reading Discworld (without mention of rishathra) as a bedtime story. He refuses to see how Neon Genesis Evangelion could have any worth at all, let alone any other anime. At least I managed to finally get him to watch MysteryScienceTheater3000.

Why are you confusing Discworld and Ringworld?

Not ''entirely'' sure if it counts, but {{Nixon}}'s art teacher said he could count his YTPs as part of his folio. ''That''. Is. Awesome.

Only slightly related but in a university Systems Engineering class this troper was given the assignment to right about any subject from a systems analysis viewpoint. The subject I chose was the effectiveness of different heavy weapons in Warhammer40K (got a good grade on it as well).

Although this troper is not incredibly fond of his compulsory literature courses in the university (he studies linguistics), he is happy to see this trope heavily averted by his literature teacher, who openly calls classics like ''1984'' science fiction, and gets snarky about writers and professors who refuse to admit that some of the greatest works of English literature can be fit into the genre. Also, he wrote a lengthy essay about ''His Dark Materials'', trying to bring out both the anti-religious and religious views of the book out, pointing out for example that a true Christian should love the ending of the book, which involves the destruction of a false God, and that the Republic of Heaven is an excellent upgrade from the Kingdom of Heaven, considering the social shift to democracy in the Christian countries. The teacher, quite a religious person herself, gave him full score!

This troper was fortunate enough to have a course dedicated to Science Fiction in college. Of course, the key thing is that the books & movies had to be "hard" science fiction, not science fantasy (ie, ''Metropolis'' & ''The Day The Earth Stood Still'' [original] were part of the curriculum, but no ''StarWars'').

Metropolis and Day the Earth Stood Still are just as soft as StarWars, they just lack the magical element. Hell, Metropolis is as soft as most New Wave.

Averted. This troper's Religious Studies and Asian Studies professors, both unabashed sci-fi fans, have a rather open policy about sharing class materials. So Sakuramachi gives Krupt ''{{Madlax}}'' because it has Kierkegaardian themes, and Krupt gives Sakuramachi ''The Kraken Wakes'' because Japan saves the day in the end. Somehow, both are able to use ''ACanticleForLeibowitz''.

This troper was recently treated to the argument that a certain work couldn't be science fiction because it addresses the social implications of its hypothetical technologies.

That's a good 80% of sci-fi's function! Asimov? Verne? ''StarTrek''? ''GhostInTheShell''? Any of this ringing a bell?

Walter Miller dismissed as 'pulp'. I WISH I was making this up, I really do.

This troper feels himself quite lucky, because his friends usually know something about the basic sci-fi books and series, even if they are not fans. On the other hand, the TV stations in his country... for example, StargateSG1 ran on Saturdays afternoon for a while, then it was exiled to Thursdays 11 PM. There's only one dedicated SF channel, but it shows re-runs. Damn, this troper doesn't think he'll live to see the 8th season of SG-1 in his language :-S

What language is that?

Hungarian.

We ''do'' (more accurately: did) have [=SG-1=] Seasons 8 and 9 now in Hungarian, so it is probably still being translated. The main problem is that the channel feels obliged to restart the series when they are done with a season, which - [=SG-1=] being the longest live-action sci-fi show to date - takes a loooooong time. Also, some of the translations are worse then what I could have done at age 16, so I don't really ''like'' to watch it in Hungarian...

Yeah, BlindIdiotTranslation. Sometimes this troper wonders why don't they hire some fans who can speak English instead of these "professional" translators.

ThisTroper's college English textbook says at the very beginning "established literary fiction is to be distinguished from the tawdry pornography seen in spy, detective, Western, romance, science fiction, or fantasy stories." True Art is apparently two women washing laundry while talking about the death of their dog, I suppose.

"Tawdry pornography"? Part of why this troper doesn't read "established literary fiction" is the sordid portrayals of sexuality! You can find lots of SF, fantasy, and Westerns with no sex, or sex ''that has to do with romance'', and it's almost never the whole plot; huge swathes of mainstream "literary" fiction is nothing ''but'' lovingly detailed explorations of people's tawdry, self-indulgent adulteries—with emphasis on the goopy-sticky aspects of sex rather than the romantic ones. Yeah, there's a place for stories like that, but if they form the preponderance of your output you lose the right to call other people's stuff "tawdry".

This troper's English text her senior year in high school said that genre was not important for quality literature - it could take concepts and settings that don't exist and never will and still make them say something important. This surprised her.

{{rutheni}} seems to have been reading the wrong detective stories, Westerns, romances, science fiction, and fantasy stories, IfYouKnowWhatIMean

One of the two 4th year English teachers at this troper's high school used ''Dune'' as an assigned book. (I didn't have her, though)

This troper averted the trope, with his only worthwhile piece of work in his whole english GCSE. The creative writing piece required was pure and unashamed Sci-Fi, being the first chapter of the story of a test tube grown warrior woman who would ostensibly go up against a fascist world government (and at various points rode a hover bike). The teacher caused some confusion by handing the troper his work back scowling, it transpired that it was because it was the only piece she had ever awarded full marks. She then inquired as to the possibility of getting previous pieces redone, as none had previously achieved higher than a B.

This Troper's sister does not like fantasy. This means that nothing she likes is fantasy, including HisDarkMaterials by Phillip Pullman - it's ''philosophy''. This Troper tried to argue that it could be both, but was ignored.

It's religious fiction. Similarly, Richard Dawkins writes about religion, not philosophy, so they should not put his books there.

Another subversion by essay, on account of This Troper: When my English 111 course switched tack on a essay from "make your own conspiracy theory" to "find and disseminate a conspiracy theory" due to lack of entries, I requested to submit mine using the original assignment. The professor agreed... and the ensuing allegations that the Ze Balmary Empire was grooming Jérémie Belpois for a job in intergalactic tech support wound up being my only A in that class.

Subverted, when asked if I like Sci-fi by my father, I said that I don't really watch much Sci-fi, then my father brought up that I had watched MST3K, to which I responded that it isn't Sci-fi. I ''knew'' that it was Sci-fi, I ''meant'' that it focuses more on comedy.

This troper would submit that MST3K ''isn't'' Sci-Fi, but a comedy show that simply uses a science-fictional framing device. Seriously, replace the space station with a prison, the Mads with sadistic wardens, and turn the bots into fellow (human) prisoners, and the show's essential core -- forcing a prisoner to watch bad movies, while he keeps his sanity by mocking them -- would remain unchanged. True, it would lose a lot of its unique charm and be a lesser show for it (and some of the jokes wouldn't work if the Crow and Servo were humans), but the show's essential nature is comedy, not science fiction.

Anyone who knows what kind of ''hell'' the [=SciFi=] Channel put them through to play up the scifi-ness—only being allowed to do SF movies, though somehow "Girl in Gold Boots" got past—would have to agree. It started on the Comedy Channel, not the [=SciFi Channel=], for a reason (that reason probably being that [=SciFi=] didn't exist yet, but where they started is still symbolic).

Australian high schools (well, mine at least) have an unwritten rule about sci-fi: if you want to use it and it's younger than the person setting the curriculum, it has to be subtle as a sledgehammer in delivering the immortal message ScienceIsBad. As in, the two sci-fis used are ''GATTACA'' (message: genetic engineering leads to fascism, delivered with loud thudding noises) and ''BraveNewWorld'', which at least acknowledged that science wasn't necessarily populated entirely by amoral meddlers. By killing most of them off in the name of social stability, admittedly by the bad guys. This troper spent more time in class defending genetic engineering research than he did actually analysing ''GATTACA''; almost certainly ''not'' what the director intended.

I always thought the message of ''[=Gattaca=]'' was twofold. One: Sufficient will overcomes obstacles; and Two: Genentech should spread far and wide, otherwise shit like ''this'' will happen.

It's actually "as long as you're following your dreams, it doesn't matter how criminally irresponsible you're being". But seriously, folks, it has the line "We now have discrimination down to a fine science", and the fact that the hero wasn't genetically engineered makes your suggestion, at best, a Badly BrokenAesop.

The message of Gattaca is, "transhumanism in an unequal society will just exacerbate already-existing social inequalities." Is anyone going to pretend that's not true?

Averted in this troper's GCSE English exam, in which for my creative peace I wrote a story about two teenage necromancers falling in love while living in their necromancer's enclave in the desert. Got an A.

This Troper just dropped a class over various creative differences with the teacher--not the least of which was best expressed in an incident on the first day. She chided us all against the dangers of writing "genre fiction," then read us a story about a woman raising her own spare-parts clone. She called it--what else?--MagicRealism.

This troper thankfully subverted the Sci Fi Ghetto in a high school English class... when told to write a paper on a prominent American literary author, he chose H.P. Lovecraft, put in numerous quotes of his wonderfully loquacious descriptions and story synopses, and got an A.

Lovecraft wrote both fantasy and sci-fi. He's considered a fantasy author.

Isn't he considered a horror writer, first and foremost? His stories can fit fantasy and science fiction, but primarily they are intended to scare.

This Troper had the pleasure of having an entire University class on "Speculative Fiction" but had to put up with a professor that ''demanded'' that any examples be treated as HIGH ART. For example, to utter the abreviation "Sci-Fi" was to invite outright death because SciFi is boorish, hack writing made for titillating the unwashed masses, while "Speculative Fiction" is highbrow literature that explores the implications of society and the multi-faceted nature of how human beings perceive the universe. Apparently SciFi (sorry, ''Speculative Fiction'') is fine, as long as you're not planning to write for ''entertainment''.

This troper is currently writing a two-part novel that lurches between fantasy and science fiction. She has a good friend, a better writer than she, who basically thinks all sci-fi and fantasy (outside of a very narrow pool) is garbage, because it's not "literary" or "realistic," once advising her that "you should avoid genre fiction, because it's shallow." So this troper listens to her go on about her "literary" stories ''every day'' but can't talk about her pet project. Also, the same friend dismissed this troper's favorite show after seeing roughly an hour of it. It frustrates her.

This troper used to date a woman with a similar attitude. This attitude is one of many reasons they broke up. Have you considered getting a better friend? Good friends don't put down their friends' writing just because they're not "literary".

Inverted with this troper's high-school English teacher. Being a feminist with a minor in philosophy makes Shakespeare a lot less respectable and Sci-Fi a lot more so.

This troper was unable to do Watchmen for a paper about the influence contemporary history had on a work from the time period. We could do pretty much any art form as long as the teacher approved, the most often done ones are Film and Literature, but some people do paintings and music. What makes it worse is that other teachers did allow it.

Averted by this troper's ''Mother''. After teaching High School English for decades, she found that her students often hated reading ''more'' after taking her class, or any other English class, really. The curriculum was generally filled with such "classics" as ''The Great Gatsby'', ''Robinson Crusoe'', ''The Scarlet Letter'', etc. She eventually asked this troper for advice. "What about ''Ender's Game''?" I asked. After reading it herself, she assigned it to her students. For the first time in history, a significant portion of the class (at least half) read the chapters before they were due and finished the book at least a week early. Since then she has assigned ''Ender's Game'' every year and even has students who take her class just to read that book.

Thankfully averted in this troper's case - he just got an A on a paper discussing how Stephen King's ''The Tommyknockers'' was affected by his drug addiction (he also managed to work a subtle reference to Half-Life 2 into the essay, which went right over the teacher's head).

Averted by This Troper - for a Mesoamerican Art History Paper, the teacher had assigned us to daunting task of pointing out the historical errors of Mel Gibson's ''Apocalypto''. I did so, but also pointed out the reason all those errors were occurring. It wasn't bad research! It wasn't because TheyJustDidntCare! It was because there was a space-time anomaly that was mashing past, present and future together into one endless, simultaneous moment, thus making ''Apocalypto'' a sci-fi movie. My theory explained every continuity error, every bizarre break from history, how the Spanish got to South America four hundred years too early, everything! ''And'' I got an A!

This troper is writing a semi-fanfic about an invented former member of the X-Men working for NASA for which she has done tons of research. But she looses all the adults she knows at "It's about a superhero."

This troper is working on a series of Superhero (my own creations) novel series. He can see a glaze in even some of his '''superhero geek pals''' when they learn that it's not being made in a comic book medium (its an actual book about super heroes with no pictures, IE literature.).

What's his/her ability? Super-intellect? Survive vacuum? Manipulate gravity?

Subverted with this troper. Despite her English teacher being very, very old and rather conservative, said English teacher actively urges her students to read authors such as Orson Scott Card and Ray Bradbury, and many times the "classic stories of literary merit" we read in class end up being compared to things such as ''StarWars''.

Subverted by this troper from the teacher side of the equation. I had a class discussion about the societal implications of human cybernetic enhancement, using ''GhostInTheShell'', ''MegaManBattleNetwork'' (specifically Hub/Megaman) and ''{{Crackdown}}'' among my examples. Not to mention the evolution of the fictional society from ''Mega Man'' to ''MegaManZero''. Also had an English class where I compared the storytelling root structure of ''The Canturbury Tales'' to ''DragonQuest IV''.

Subverted in this troper's college class on literary theory. Our assignment was to write an essay applying a school of analysis to something that ''wasn't'' technically "literature". This troper chose ''FullMetalAlchemist'' and Derrida's deconstruction theory. The anime version, because it fit perfectly into what she wanted to write about. Her teacher loved it. He was also a self-proclaimed fan of HarryPotter, and once did a reading of an essay about the significance of the Mirror of Erised at this troper's college.

Hard aversion: a long time ago, in a classroom far, far away, this troper had to start a story with "The engine died, and I looked up in despair..." Not one to waste such an opportunity, 40000}} he decided the engine belonged to a Leman Russ battle tank attached to a regiment of Imperial Guard fighting Tyranids. The teacher loved it so much it was read out to the rest of the class, to his considerable embarrassment.

This Troper once had a school task where we had to bring a book that changed us through reading it. Thinking I had never been changed significantly by a book, I ended up bringing a High-School Mathematics Learning Supplement I read while in primary school, talking about how it had developed already existing interests in me, but that no book had ever changed me. After some questions from a teacher, I said that the only work that had ever changed me was a Graphic Novel, so I couldn't have chosen it for a book task, whereupn my teacher corrected me and said that comics are just as much as wholy written works, and I could have brough it. I later discovered that not only one, but ''two'' teachers (of whioch the aforementioned teacher is one) in my school use ''Maus'' in their lessons. I'm still glad I went with the math book though, for two reasons: A) I would have looked very out of the ordinary, and B) '''I am not''' bringing my ''uncencored'' copy of ''GhostInTheShell'' to school unless a task specifically calls for something like that.

Somewhat of a subversion. The Literary Club at this troper's school has been reading mostly historical fiction or absurdist social commentaries(about Rhinos). The last assignment for this year however is a free choice assignment, as in we can pick any book we want. The only stipulation being that it HAS to come from either the Horror, Fantasy, or Science Fiction genres.

This troper recent overheard another member of his study abroad program act surprised that The Lord of the Rings was going to be added to the AP Literature list of books that can be taught for the AP Lit test, and question its merit. This troper didn';t say anything, but did do a sort of mental facepalm.

This troper had a GCSE English coursework essay set on comparisons between Kingdom Hospital and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. He didn't have to do the essay, having already scored full marks on an essay that could be submitted for the same part of the course, but he loved watching the shows (Darkplace in particular). A couple of years before that, he had an English teacher who set the class the task of writing a horror story in the style of either Shirley Jackson or HP Lovecraft, while teaching us research techniques asked us to use them to produce a report on Cthulhu, gave us a story generator table that required use of a D4, ran a Call of Cthulhu roleplaying group, and loved the works of Alan Moore and Iain (M) Banks. A truly great teacher!

Ah, and I forgot the time when he put us into groups and had each group devise the major civilisations and general ecosystem inside a Dyson Sphere, to be explained for as an oral exam.

Interestingly played in this troper's high school English classes - books such as ''TheDayOfTheTriffids'', ''AClockworkOrange'', ''NineteenEightyFour'' and ''Master of the Grove'' were all required reading, but this troper's practice QCS essay was not looked upon favourably. Mainly because he wrote a TimeTravel story with an orthography mangled to all hell and back. Also, ''ChildhoodsEnd'' was on a list of books suggested for review in the class he took when living in America.

This troper recalls a critic who said that fantasy wasnt real literature because, since the fantasy world "had no real rules," the author could "make up" whatever he needed to get past any obstacles in the story.... this troper's retort is that this was akin to saying riding a unicycle was easier than riding a bicycle because it had one less wheel.

Subversion: My GCSE English teacher chastised the class for being unable to identify ''sarcasm'' of all things and suggested the read TheHitchhikersGuidetotheGalaxy and Discworld. Praising my interest in such books and in SF at the same time

In sci-fi circles themselves, this troper is getting bored of the attitude that HumongousMecha are somehow the worst element any work can include.

Seconded.

This troper tried to invoke this during AP English his senior year. We were tasked with an impromptu essay on "the greatest challenge facing the world, citing literary examples." Most people wrote about war and natural disaster and social injustice; I wrote about the coming Dalek invasion. I also got the only A given by the teacher, who ''did not even own a TV because it was a distraction from his books.''

Probably reads the novels.

Glorious subversion: ''{{Watchmen}}'' and ''TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' are both ''assigned texts'' in this troper's philosophy class. Moreover, all of the required films for the course are either science fiction or fantasy. My professor is a wonderful guy.

Subverted and played straight for this troper. TheMatrix is part of Stage 1 English Communications for my school, but my past english teacher did not like scifi at all. This tropers mother tends to give her looks of disdain whenever anything related to popular culture is mentioned in relation to my English class (last year we did a unit on soap operas. Which is now why I never ever say anything about my English class for fear of a repeat of this incident.).

Subverted in my freshman year English 101 course, where the teacher was forced to assign a textbook and two novels. The textbook? "Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America" by Bradford W. Wright. The novels? "Comic Chix" (an unfortunately named collection of comics with female artists) and "The Dark Knight Returns".

In a weird inversion, I took a class entitled "Feminism and Science Fiction." I was disappointed to find out the assigned reading material was all lightly speculative fiction with almost no real sci-fi to be seen. When I asked the two professors teaching the course why theere was no real science fiction, they both made vague arguments that amounted to "Oh science fiction is all garbage, we just called the class that because it's popular, but we would never lower ourselves to read ''genre'' fiction." This troper was greatly disappointed.

This Troper has always been a sci-fi fan and during my school career he was tasked with at writing at least one short story. Although science-fiction or other "literature with little broad public appeal" were discouraged, he came up with a science fiction plot. Set in a future where the British government has become obsessed with providing ever-"better" education for its people, it sees a group of teenagers being flown to an island in the North Sea where they are entered into a harshly-regulated society, where they are brainwashed and "converted" into the perfect citizens due to revolutionary social engineering and other measures. It's later revealed that it's set in a future where, after decades of educational reforms and by effectively forcing all students to pursue extended education, most education certificates and degrees have become meaningless, with mass unemployment and crime as generations are raised by a system that values academic ability over human potential and preparedness for life, and everyone is therefore brainwashed into being "the same". An epilogue shows the British Prime Minister speaking with scientists who are working on creating "synthetic humans" - fully organic organisms based on nature's design, but with improvements including increased learning capability. While my story was the only sci-fi work submitted, and while it was very critical of the British education system, my teacher was amazed by the implied depth of the fictional world and the message that could be conveyed in a hypothetical session - she gave the story full marks and even gave copies of it to all of her other classes, and later admitted to me that she'd been wary of sci-fi but that I'd helped open her eyes up to the literary merit that it held.

Averted amazingly by this troper's Freshman english teacher, he used an episode of the twilight zone to teach.

This troper's Sophomore english teacher used an episode as well.

I was in a book shop earlier today, and heard a woman ask an employee about ''TheTimeTravellersWife'' #QUOTE#'''Woman:'''''(warily)'' So, is this science fiction?\\ '''Employee:''' Well, only in the sense that he ''does'' travel back in time, but it's set in the present day and everything...\\ '''Woman:''' Oh no, I don't like that.

This troper would like to point out the real issue that many college professors in creative writing or literature have with Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Specifically, they at some point tried to be a writer rather than a teacher. They did not sell well. They saw other people selling well, and now have unspeakable rage. It's the same reason why writing to 'entertain' is bad. Making money is obviously evil if the teacher cant manage it.

I am a Swedish SF entusiast. When I went to secondary school (i.e. age 17-19) in 1977, we had to do a really thick essay in the final year with a free choice of subject. I chose to wrote a science fiction novella. My Swedish teacher accepted the subject without discomfort; she was quite happy that anyone wanted to do a piece of fiction under her aegis instead of writing on history or science. Also, that year in English class we were supposed to read and review a thick serious novel; I chose The Silmarillion, which was fresh from the presses and had to be bought by mail order from London. My teacher was delighted. (In those days, most Swedes associated SF with UFOs, Flash Gordon or Jules Verne and considered it wo be a weird fringe interest.)

This troper had to argue for the right to use scifi/fantasy artists as the subject of a paper for an Art History class. Teacher was dubious that anyone painting chicks in chainmail for paperback covers could actually be considered an artist. She gave in eventually though.

This troper just doesn't like the label "Sci Fi", not for any quality judgement but just because ''Flash Gordon''-esque {{Fantasy}} [[AC:InSpace]] and scientific/political SpeculativeFiction are, while both perfectly legitimate genres, ''not remotely the same thing''.

This troper likes the label Sci Fi for its pleasing rhyming, and points out that most space opera is actually harder science fiction than New Wave-style "SpeculativeFiction", which is only science fiction in the sense sociology is a science (i.e. very softly). ''Scrupulously'' accurate hard sf is still Sci Fi, not speculative fiction ''because the story is driven by concepts from science''. But, of course, if you like it or think it's intelligent, it must be speculative fiction and not scifi. Because that's not the kind of thinking responsible for the Ghetto in the first place, right?

In high school, this troper had to write a book report on the themes of any novel we chose with the only requirement being it had to be over a certain number of pages and had to be within our reading level range. I chose to do mine on A Game of Throne from A Song of Ice and Fire series. When the teacher found out it was fantasy, he said I couldn't do it since fantasy isn't true literature and could not possibly to have complex, mature themes. And yet he let other students do their reports on ''Literature/{{Twilight}}''.

What...WHAT!? WHAAAAAT!?!? That piece of ffff...how can you justify...are you fucking kidding...you're honestly saying...FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!!

That is sooooo wrong....

I think you just broke my brain.

Averted by this troper's AP Language and Composition teacher. She wanted us to read a book from a list of college board choices over the winter break, but if we really wanted to, we could ask to read something else. She actually MADE a girl this troper knows read a book by T.A. Barron. (Admittedly, the teacher only assigned it after I recommended his work to her because she had never read anything by him, but still.) She's also letting me read GoodOmens for the project.

DrRockopolis once did a group report on {{Dune}} for high school English; not only was it accepted, but the group received an A, though I'm not sure if it was for the report, for reenacting the Gom Jabbar, or for the {{Dune}} version of the Banana Boat song.

Another delicious subversion: I had a freshman English course about the perception of science in popular culture. When my professor let me write my final paper on the role of doctor/scientist characters in ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' and ''Dead Beat'', I gloated for a week.

Zadia personally hates her English teachers for this. I love sci-fi and fantasy and have done so for years. However, my English teachers all turn up their noses at sci-fi and fantasy- none of them approve of my writing fantasy short stories, unless the topic is something to do with fantasy or sci-fi. Although one teacher is sort of OK with sci-fi (well, she liked Ender's Game) she took the stance that sci-fi is OK in itself, but isn't nearly as good as other genres. Really pisses me off.

This troper once got into an extended forum debate over whether the Korean film ''Film/TheHost'' was a monster movie. All efforts to point out that the plot revolves around a ''giant monster'' were in vain.

Just the other day {{Kaywinnet}}'s grandmother and her friend were discussing how they couldn't stand sci-fi and fantasy. Although it's probably not snobbery - they don't seem open to the concept that fiction can be art and not just entertainment, because they also discussed how all fiction should be bright and cheerful, since there's enough sadness in the world. Honestly, from their discussion, it seems likely that they simply have limited imaginations and were unable to comprehend anything that isn't set in the "real world."

This troper has had several averted this trope on several situations . Create a culture that doesn't exist, no martians: Space explorer marooned on an alien planet, encounters nomadic, wolf riding, mammoth hunting giants (who were the evolutionary result of an abandoned human terraform experiment). Write a plausible, modern story, no magic: Man goes insane after gaining telepathy and telekinesis (Which are a result of an abnormally powerful subconscious telepathy organ which the man discovered). Write a story with a virtuous moral, no magic: Agnostic who lives in a theocracy gets executed, beats Death at a game of cards using the virtue of patience (They spent the equivalent of 20,000 years playing one game). Every time the teachers loved them and each time this troper sniggered that he wormed his way around the restrictions.

This troper isn't about to deny that the story about werewolves and the story about genies are fantasy, but doesn't want to develop renown as a "fantasy author"--because none of his other in-progress ideas qualify as speculative fiction, and he doesn't want to disappoint people.

My high school english teacher brought in an episode of ''{{Firefly}}'' to help analyze storytelling devices. At that point I liked sci-fi but hadn't really come cross it. Now I really wish there was more.

I'm envious of all of you who actually got to do anything other than depressing, angsty pieces of "realist" fiction in your literature classes. I've loved Speculative Fiction (used because I like not having to divide fantasy and sci-fi) as long as I've been reading, and the closest I came to getting to study any of it was the one paper I got to do on a book of my choice (as a senior) and wrote it on Douglas Adams. I'm still annoyed that they wouldn't let us study anything that I found either particularly interesting or even fun to read.

This troper finds the kerfluffle about Atwood somewhat disheartening, considering what a vicious, hate-filled screed TheHandmaidsTale ''is''. But, apparently, nobody minds. Paint Evangelicals as misogynist closet rapists just itching for a chance to enslave women as breeding stock? Yawn. But deny that the book is science fiction? How DARE she?!

CompletelyMissingThePoint

This teenaged troper was recently delighted to discover that the other half of his first serious relationship is as into books as he is. She was probably pleased to meet a guy who reads as well... until I admitted that some of my favourite books were sci-fi. This is not assisted by my fanatical reverence of ''Firefly'' and my repeated insistence that ''Aliens'' is the best action movie ever made. She doesn't realise the hypocrisy when I point out how much she enjoyed Stephenie Meyer's ''The Host''. Hm.

This troper had a high school teacher who was very proud of having been an extra in CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind, but couldn't get out of the "actually entertaining stuff sucks" part of the Ghetto. He said Encounters got overshadowed by StarWars, which came out the same year, and, quote, "Star Wars had a plot a five-year-old could follow." To which this troper replied, "So did the Iliad."

Same troper had another one, an English teacher, who let me do a literary analysis of ''Pride of Chanur'' by C. J. Cherry, but apparently got held up reading it because of the names (Pyanfar, Khym, Akukkakk—which last is hard, I'll give you). To which this troper asked, "Do you have trouble reading things with characters named Meleager or Agamemnon? You so often meet people named that, right?" (Yes, Homer is my go-to for countering this) Then again, she also insisted we couldn't say quotes, but had to say "quotations". This troper ''wanted'', but through saintly effort ''forbore'', to say, "Do you also make people say 'taximeter cab' and 'omnibus station'!?"

This Troper was surprised when he encountered this attitude from his older sister (who I look up to, and who is other wise very level headed and sensible). My sister was talking about a philosophy book she had just read (can't remember the title) and was gushing about the ideas it held about how life is ultimately meaningless and how humanity could never comprehend the true nature of things. I suggested that she should look at the works of H. P. Lovecraft, sense most of his story's are all about that stuff, and commented that I found his story's vary entertaining. She then rolled her eye's and told me that the sci fi I read wasn't "literature," that it's "only enjoyed by pre pubescent boys," and that I "should have grown out of that stuff years ago." To compare her "classics" to the junk I read was simply unthinkable. Then again I got the last laugh sense a year later she got hooked on Twilight, which I have yet to stop teasing her about.

"''Gushing''" that life is meaningless? That's...a little unsettling, actually.

Kudos to your sister for informing me that I am in actuality a pre-pubescent boy, when all this time I thought I was in my mid-twenties...and a girl.

This troper wrote a tale about a man getting caught up in a futuristic art scene where displaying mutilated corpses was in vogue and edgy, so long as the artist didn't kill them. Of course, everyone did, so the cops were trying madly to hunt down the artist/murderers. It was quite sci-fi, with nifty gadgets and futureslang. However, her teacher insisted on calling it CyberPunk or SpeculativeFiction, even after told it was ScienceFiction.

It ''sounds'' squarely within cyberpunk, actually, but cyberpunk ''is'' sci-fi. It just gets grandfathered into "serious literature" on the grounds that it's often "artistic" (by which is meant, "it involves dystopias"). This troper personally prefers to go the other way—''no'' dystopia is ''less'' scifi than cyberpunk, even if the sky's color in no way resembles that of television tuned to a dead channel and there's not a street samurai or cyborg dolphin in sight.

This Troper had an argument with his friend about whether a ZombieApocalypse was either Sci-Fi or Fantasy. I argued the former.

ThisTroper is considering becoming an English teacher specifically so I can avert this. My tastes are quite varied but mostly fiction. The sad part is I suspect I would be forced to stick to a rigid curriculum.

I faced this some in high school, most notably senior year, where I had an extremely set-in-her-views English teacher. One conversation went something like this: #QUOTE#'''Me:''' So, how about Lord of the Rings? Is that literature?\\ '''Her:''' No, that's an epic. Another went something like this: #QUOTE#'''Me:''' Ooh, 1984. That's literature, right?\\ '''Her:''' Indeed. One of the best twentieth century works.\\ '''Me:''' Okay, good. But it's science fiction too, pretty clearly.\\ '''Her:''' No, it's not. It's literature.\\ '''Me:''' No, but it's explicitly set in the future, and has lots of pieces of technology that didn't actually exist at the time. That's science fiction!\\ '''Her:''' It's not science fiction because George Orwell was a great writer.

On the bright side, with a different teacher, I referred to this very site on our final exam, and specifically the PlanetOfHats trope by name, and was one of just a handful of people to get an A.

Inverted by this troper's high school English teacher. Senior year (AP), she assigned T.H. White's ''The Once and Future King'' as summer reading. Sophomore year, during the study of epics, she required the class to read ''LordOfTheRings'', '''and''' watch the movies, '''and''' watch ''StarWars'' (IV, V, and VI). It was amazing.

Subverted by either this troper's high school or this troper's high school English teachers so far (this troper doesn't know which assigns the book for the Novel Study unit). For 9th grade our English teacher assigned us "The Door into Summer" by Heinlein, which got a bit squicky when the man fell in love with his twelve year-old niece but helped to define my definition of time travel for the foreseeable future. Then for the 10th grade we got "The Chrysalids" by John Wyndham which (although it was pretty short) explored the themes of racism, evolution and how religion would change when faced with the apparent apocalypse. Needless to say, this troper hopes the 11th year of English will assign just as a good a book as the other two.

While this troper was away from home, my uncle spent the night in my house, and when we have guests they usually sleep in my bed because it's the nicest bed in the house besides the one that belongs to my parents. The next day, my uncle saw me, and told me a story about how he couldn't get to sleep, and was sitting in my bed looking for something to do, and what happens to be sitting on my dresser is a book. This book, in fact. My uncle, a politically conservative Vietnam vet and a country boy from Mississipi, not really a reader nor a fan of scifi, although not a stupid man by any means, picked up this book and started reading from a random point in the middle. He told me he could not put the book down. His words were that it was so well-written and interesting that it held his attention completely, despite the fact that it was about "aliens that can see through the pores of their skin" and it completely changed his view of science fiction. Needless to say, this was not the response I was expecting, but a pleasant surprise. I love that man.

This troper brought up her liking of Douglas Adams and ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' novels in a conversation. Since none of the listeners had heard of either of them, I gave a brief description of the series ('it's basically science fiction satire, funny stuff, pretty popular too'), which brought on smirks and funny looks from everyone. Their reasoning behind this being that, not only is this a work of dreaded science fiction, it's '''humour based''', because god forbid a novel of any merit whatsoever be funny. I received a similar response regarding ''Discworld'' as well (at least they had heard of Terry Prachett). This lead to them explaining to me that they don't bother with either science fiction or fantasy because they are unrealistic and stupid. This is, while narrow-minded, an understandable reason under normal circumstances. However my entire group of friends are also proud and vocal ''Harry Potter'' fans. After bringing up this contradiction in their reasoning, they explain that ''Harry Potter'' is the only fantasy series with any literary merit because 'it doesn't follow fantasy stereotypes and actually deals with mature themes unlike most fantasy'. Just, where do I even start?

A rather bizarre variant. This Troper had a college assignment to pick a "control system" and analyze it's function (potential failure modes, probability of failure etc.). He wrote it on the shooting mechanics in Warhammer 40000.

This troper is in third year of a university writing course. He was banned from submitting fantasy works at the end of second year, because they were 'always subject to cliche.' This year he has the same tutor, with the same ban on fantasy. Submitting a Science-Fiction novel he had it torn to shreds again, denounced as cliche. We submit in 500 word extracts. Apparently my tutor was able to tell from a 500 word extract featuring two characters talking with very little mention or description of the setting that my 100,000 word novel was going to be cliched.

JackMackerel: I've never been subject to this, honestly. Most people who reject SciFi are specifically poetry magazines or something genre-specific in my experience, and a lot of writing courses around here aren't very snobby.

I refused to take Creative Writing courses if the listing said "No Fantasy or Science Fiction Allowed." When I finally did take one, with a professor who did not say this, I mentioned this, explaining that such a restriction was a good indicator that the instructor was a pretentious snob. She agreed, and so does the professor I'm taking Fiction Writing from next semester. This one doesn't care for it herself, but doesn't think it's a lesser genre; it's just one she isn't into.

I once started telling my younger cousin a little about ''Series/DoctorWho'', mostly because he'd just made a banana joke. My mother then told me to stop because "it's science fiction" and he wouldn't get it. I told her that he loves ''StarWars'', and she said, "But ''StarWars'' isn't science fiction, is it?" No, Mom, it isn't, if you ignore all the spaceships and aliens that pervade the series. I think she assumed it was too "mainstream" to be sci-fi.

This Troper once took a creative writing course which experienced a major split between the population in the under 50 age bracket, one half could best be described as writing like Stephanie Meyer after surgical application of a chair to the cranium, who spent most of the time looking to become housewives and bullying the others for a lack of maturity, the other half had a non-stop LOTR/Star Wars/Star Ship Troopers/Star Trek marathon to celebrate the mid-term holiday, punctuated by a fistfight over Heinlein and Asimov. The worst part, is that I mean the lecturers and students were split into these two groups, little is as awkward than seeing the people who mark your assignments trying to throttle each other over the issue of who portrayed advanced human societies more believably.

This troper had the misfortune to be specifically forbidden from doing anything sci-fi for his GCSE coursework. did that stop me? heck no! the first piece I had to hand in was a short story (although we were told to write it as though it were the first chapter of a novel). My entry? 'stealth' sci-fi, as it didn't appear to be sci-fi at all until plot twists showed up. It was my highest grade in the course (a pretty high A). looking back, it wasn't that great (I've had, and am working on, much better ideas). (for the record: my favourite was something described as 'an essay on a controversial topic'. most people chose bans on fox hunting, etc. I chose to write about freedom of speech. specifically, AGAINST it, with references to 1984 and the protomen. in fact, my entire bibliography for it consisted of sci-fi books and films, plus both protomen albums).

Heroically averted by my local library, which stocks all of the fiction together, regardless of genre.

This troper was recently excited to find a few ArthurCClarke books for sale at his library. Then I noticed that they were books I had checked out before - ''2061'', ''3001'', ''ChildhoodsEnd'', all from the rather pitiful SciFi collection my library has. I asked about this as I bought the books - they said it based what books were sold according to how often they were checked out. Ouch.

This troper found a rather interesting teacher - he admitted he disliked the fantasy and science-fiction genres, but said that there was nothing wrong with writing them. In fact, he said that "Even if Tolkien isn't a good writer of a plot; he's still good at establishing a world - that's what I notice some people love about Science Fiction and Fantasy; to see a lot of detail placed into the world itself."

This troper, Edgy, once wrote a 30 plus page revenge piece featuring superheroes with powers ranging from rage makes you stronger, acid blood, healing factor, making weapons of blood, and hypnotism. The class professor didn't even read it and his self-appointed TA couldn't get passed page two. This is a FICTION writing class. The damn professor could only get his lame ass mystery series and Sherlock Holmes fanfiction published so I guess sci-fi is too low brow for him.

I (that is to say, the 3rdpoliceman) have an english teacher who doesn't consider sci-fi to be 'proper literature' (We all had to read a novel in class. I was surprised the others could read). The way she said it implied she thought SF and fantasy to be the same thing (They are not! They are both completely different! Science Fiction has SCIENCE! The clue's in the name! Fantasy can be anything you imagine! Huge difference!)and she just said it so dismissively. What's really annoying is that she knew someone was reading 1984 or Brave New World or something and didn't even realise how ludicrous that made her sound. I've read loads of bizarre and surreal works of fantasy (and a few sci-fi) and I'd say most of them are deeper than Pride and Prejudice- her idea of a great novel.

Although this teacher does sound pretty clueless, scifi and fantasy are often ''not'' "completely different"... a fair amount of SF & F works have similar thematic elements. Not to mention, some fantasy takes a ''far'' more rigorous approach to its magic than some scifi does to its technology.

This Troper has an interesting aversion to this: In an English class, he was told to examine archetypes in a work of fiction of his choice. He managed to get Portal approved as his work of ficition, and wrote an essay on GLaDOS. Can you say that you've written 'The Cake is a Lie' in a serious paper? This Troper can! :D

Averted by This Troper's Junior year American Literature teacher. At the end of the year everyone had to do a research paper and a presentation on an American author, as part of this, he handed out a HUGE list of authors to everyone in the class (it went upwards of 900). When verbally called out a bunch of the more popular names on the list, he included Isaac Asimov. When I said i wanted to do Heinlein, he ''immediately'' recognized the name. Then after that hour i suggested that he include Orson Scott Card, Terry Brooks, and Jim Butcher on the list. His immediate response was to tell me that Card was already on it, and then said he'd put Brooks and Butcher on the list next year. He even said i could use Jim Butcher then if i wanted, but i stayed with Heinlein.

Annoyingly, a certain local bookstore, while having a regular YA section, also had a section for adult speculative fiction, but the section was labelled simply as "Young Adult" anyway, as if no adults would ever be interested in fantasy/science fiction, even though there were plenty of novels with obviously mature themes in there.