William S. Burroughs

[Lew Gramer]

>elements of SF do exist prominently in their work.

I would agree with your statement, JDL: but both writers also make prominent use 
of naturalistic and imagist techniques, or linguistic theory, etc., and yet 
neither's work could be termed Naturalist, or Imagist, or "semiotic fiction". :)

I guess in the end, genres are a fairly arbitrary (even imaginary) thing...

One last point on this question, though: while there are certainly SF writers 
who make effective use of symbolism AND technology (Bradbury whom I hate, 
DeCamp, Heinlein, LeGuin, even Asimov), there are none I can think of who use 
technological and scientific *metaphor* in the way TRP does... If I had to 
assign him to a genre, it would more likely be "techno-poetic fiction" than SF.

Of course, I guess that still leaves WSB dangling in that terrifying twilight 
zone between Jack Kerouac and Arthur C. Clark... x^*

						Lew Gramer