R.A.Lafferty

[Monte Davis]

> Anybody else out there feel that they kind of "outgrew" SF?

Or simply "became more selective." 

I think what you describe is a pretty common arc. SF is now old enough to
have generated many tedious arguments over "what was the Golden Age of SF?"
(40s? Campbell Asimov Heinlein... 60s? Cordwainer Smith Delany LeGuin
Disch? etc)  I believe the late Baird Searles first came up with the only
correct answer: "Oh, about fifteen." 

The endless rows of serial novels on the SF shelves, the miles of sword &
sorcery Tolkien wannabes, are ample proof that whatever the majority of SF
and fantasy fans may be, they're not very selective within the genre. I
burned through several thousand SF books and all the magazines from age ten
to twenty, gradually realizing as I tapered off that there's more (and less
predictable) "good stuff" in the mainstream, past and present, than I'll
ever get to. I enjoy Iain M. Banks and a few others, but the obsession is
gone.

Still, SF had a lot to do for me with a continuing interest in history,
technology, and how they go together. That, and a mildly subversive
attitude of "the world might easily be otherwise than it is," are not alien
to Pynchon.