More on Not Science Fiction.

URSULA K. LE GUIN reviews Jeanette Winterson's _The Stone Gods_: 'It's odd to find characters in a science-fiction novel repeatedly announcing that they hate science fiction. I can only suppose that JeanetteWinterson is trying to keep her credits as a "literary" writer even as she openly commits genre. Surely she's noticed that everybody is writingscience fiction now? Formerly deep-dyed realists are producing novels sofull of the tropes and fixtures and plotlines of science fiction thatonly the snarling tricephalic dogs who guard the Canon of Literature cantell the difference. I certainly can't. Why bother? I am bothered, though, by the curious ingratitude of authors who exploit a common fund of imagery while pretending to have nothing to do with the fellow-authors who created it and left it open to all who want to use it. A littlereturn generosity would hardly come amiss.'

Jeanette Winterson has skirted fantasy in the past. The Passion had Venician gondola men who could walk on water, in a world that drew on the conventions of fairy tales.

Her latest novel, Tanglewreck is about time travel, time storms, and a young girl with a quest. It sounds as if it could be wonderful and I'm looking forward to reading it. The American Library Association's summery reads in part: "Time has become unpredictable; "time tornadoes" are picking up school buses and depositing wooly mammoths on the banks of the Thames. Eleven-year-old Silver lives in a sprawling manse, Tanglewreck, with her greedy guardian. One day evil Abel Darkwater visits Tanglewreck in search of a timekeeper that he insists belonged to Silver's father, who, with his wife and other daughter, has disappeared. Silver has no idea what he's talking about, but Darkwater isn't convinced. He imprisons her in his clock-filled London home, where he plans to keep her until she tells him what he wants to know. She's rescued by Gabriel, a strange boy from a clan that has made its home beneath London for more than a century."

Winterson is adamant that it's not science fiction. Of course, she's right. It's fantasy. I'd love to hear Jeanette Winterson enter the debate on the difference between fantasy and sf. I'm sick to death of the debate, but I'd be willing to entertain it again in this case.