>Why are sci-fi, fantasy and other action oriented genres considered low class in the world of literature?

these genres are basically multi-generational fandoms where becoming an author is an extension of being an obsessive fan. so works are judged and understood in terms of how deftly they reference the nostalgic canon. this deus ex game you posted gains legitimacy from endlessly referencing the original game from 2000, which in turn was legitimized by nods to prior canon of cyberpunk and conspiracy fiction. you'll notice that the fans don't care about the meaning of the game itself, but rather authenticity and fidelity to tradition: is it a TRUE deus ex game? or a mere impostor? much like back in the day there were debates over whether the original deus ex was PROPER cyberpunk: "cyberpunk has to have X, Y, Z and deus ex only has X and Z! oh, maybe it's post-cyberpunk, maybe that would make it ok to not have Y."

once you realize science fiction is a fandom, a social phenomenon, you can see that this exclusion, real or perceived, from the world of "high art" is in itself necessary for the functioning of the fandom. back in the 70s stanislaw lem noted that the american sf scene loves stroking its ego, inventing new awards to give to themselves, accepting those awards with speeches full of hyperbole; but the second serious criticism is applied to sf, the writers and fans recoil: "it's just a fun story about rocket ships! silly crap for kids! did you expect shakespeare? leave us alone!". so there is this old tradition of the sf fandom embracing its exclusion from "high art" whenever it suits them. a defense mechanism, like a dog baring its throat: don't kill me, i'm worthless! when danger passes, the sf scene goes back to awarding each other the golden supernova of literary excellence or whatever.

more broadly, this exclusion is what gives the science fiction fandom its group cohesiveness. complaining about the imagined ivory tower keeping you from sitting at the big boy table, about the dumb old english teacher that doesn't get that sf is better than whatever he wants you to read, about the injustice of it all: those are the social rituals of the science fiction fan. the attitude shifts wildly depending on the moment: you're proud that kurt vonnegut "made it" in the literary world, you're bitter than your favorite author didn't, or maybe it's all bullshit and you never really wanted these grapes. so on one hand you have this desire for acceptance and a bitter disdain for a real or imagined authority that keeps it from you, but on the other hand strong pride in being this "oppressed minority" and a fear that mass acceptance is the death of "authenticity". in the tension between those feelings the identity of a science fiction fan is born, and there is nothing more to science fiction than being a science fiction fan.

tl;dr: a sense of exclusion is the lifeblood of science fiction, not an injustice visited upon it by an external foe

>all works are open to interpretation as being in conversation or relationship with other works
>you would find analogous ego stroking, defense mechanisms, and in-group biases

of course science fiction does not have a monopoly on basic social phenomena, but my point is that science fiction is a nerd fandom, and a nerd fandom is a specific ideology with specific features. for example, all works are in relationship with other works, but it is a specific feature of fandom to quantify those relationships to an absurd degree in an orgy of pedantic pattern recognition: tvtropes, lore wikis and the like. this is what i'm getting at with the deus ex/cyberpunk example: the most common conversation about cyberpunk that occurs over and over on the internet is to list random props and concepts from neuromancer and judge other works by how many of these elements they contain: does it have ais? hackers? mirrorshades? at least one corporation? implants? gangs? how else are we to know what is PROPER cyberpunk if not like this? the fandom approach to fiction is to treat it not like fiction but like a window into a virtual universe to be broken down in a detailed fashion, with plot continuity and genre "authenticity" as ultimate virtues. is the literary academia going to build vast pedantic databases of plotholes in proust or whatever, or are they busy with publishing papers featuring a less autistic form of literary criticism?

another specific feature of nerd fandom is the cultivation of desire, and the shared experience of the frustration of that desire. any star wars fan will tell you the prequels were terrible, and yet the star wars fandom did not dissolve in shame: it grew stronger. it grew stronger because the shared frustration over george lucas "stealing my childhood" or whatever became a powerful cornerstone of the identity of a star wars fan. people like han solo i guess but they FUCKING HATE jar jar binks. the expression of that shared hatred is a powerful social ritual that binds the community together. and george lucas is this chameleon figure a star wars fan will speculate about endlessly: he was a genius, then he went crazy. no, he was always crazy. no, he's actually still a genius and jj abrams is a hack, come back george, we're sorry...!

so the star wars fans have this powerful story they bond over: we deserve [the star wars of our childhood] but that villain [george lucas] stole it from us. and science fiction fans in general have a powerful story too: we deserve [respect and recognition] but that villain [literary academia] stole it from us. we need to stay strong and buy more [star wars merchandise/science fiction novels] and one day we will have [our childhood back/the respect we deserve].

the correct thing to do is to reject that fantasy. "english academics" have not stolen anything from you. they have nothing to give you that could make you happy. english academics have no power over you. you are free.

>How does your theory account for things like Margaret Atwood claiming Oryx & Crake isn't science fiction, or Ian Banks claiming theres no meaningful distinction between his "literary" novels and his scifi novels?

if the identity of the science fiction community is founded on a sense of exclusion then of course you're going to get authors who gain notoriety for placing themselves on the "wrong side" of the divide, or claiming to straddle it. when atwood tells people she writes literary speculative fiction or whatever, she becomes a traitor figure, a target for the fandom's shared frustration. nobody actually burned their sf paperbacks because atwood said they were silly shit for babies. it's like when shatner told star trek fans to get a life: they fandom didn't dissolve, it grew stronger from the shared feeling of resentment. "we were betrayed from the inside, we are persecuted even by those we adore!". this is a powerful story that brings people together, makes them even more proud of their community, even if just to spite shatner or atwood or whoever.

i already mentioned that there is a sour grapes contradiction at the heart of all this: the science fiction fan craves "literary recognition", but also believes "literary recognition" to be a lie, an intellectual conspiracy aimed against him. so where atwood draws ire for joining the conspiracy, ian banks is celebrated for undermining it: the divide between sf and literature is revealed as fake, a malicious invention. the science fiction fan is of course correct in that the divide is merely a shared fiction; he is however wrong about its origin and function. there is no conspiracy against him, the sense of exclusion he feels was not produced by an external enemy, it is in fact cultivated by the fandom itself, and the fandom is its real beneficiary. it could not exist without it: if the exclusion disappeared overnight, the literary academic would remain, but the science fiction fan would be destroyed. the fandom would lose all meaning, and what would the science fiction fan be if he wasn't a science fiction fan? he would be nothing.

it's crucial to establish that this enemy is imaginary and does not correspond to things like actual academic institutions, which, as a quick search shows, publish books like these:

>Classical Traditions in Science Fiction (Oxford University Press)
>The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction (Oxford University Press)
>Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (Oxford University Press)
>Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation (Harvard University Press)
>The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction (Cambridge University Press)
>Suicide and Contemporary Science Fiction (Cambridge University Press)

notice that i never defended any actual academic's actual ignorance: partly because nobody provided any concrete examples of it, but more importantly because my basic point is that actual english professors are irrelevant to the discussion. bemoaning the failings of hypothetical professors is an obfuscatory tactic of, you guessed it, the fandom.

first it was "the academia" persecuting you, then just some parts of it, now it's just "professors expressing negative opinions on science fiction books they haven't read". where does this shrinkage end?

it ends like this: somewhere out there, a professor is wrong. the science fiction fan does not know this, because the professor is being wrong in an academic publication the science fiction fan does not read. thus the life of a science fiction fan is not impacted, and yet he continues his litany of complaints: "the academics are disrespectful, they are ignorant, they exclude us". look past the imaginary scapegoat and what you are left with is: "i feel disrespected, i fell ignored, i feel excluded". why is the science fiction fan so profoundly sad?