prince campbell iii

A science fiction novel just won The Booker Prize. On the surface, this seems like a win—one might conclude that the literary establishment has finally stopped being pretentious about the arbitrary genre lines it's imposed on contemporary fiction. From the sample available online, however, it becomes clear that this book features the same sort of plotless, pretentious ramblings popular in contemporary literary fiction. While the writing itself is superb, the novel could not be more dull. Granted, I've only read the first 20 pages, so I'll reserve my final judgment until I've finished the book, but before we celebrate this year's Booker Prize as a victory for science fiction, it's worth noting that this one is really just another highbrow literary novel dressed up as science fiction.