When it comes to obsessively policing the “correctness” of works within their chosen genre, nobody beats horror fans.

Sure, sci-fi readers may have us matched when it comes self-defensive knee-jerk reactions to what we perceive as anti-genre bias in the mainstream. But nobody can get as hot when proposing what should and should not be considered as a valid addition to our pet genre. You couldn’t find a mystery fan who, even if their tastes ran towards the hardest of hardboiled crime fic, would not recognize the elegant classics of Elizabeth Daly, the juvenile Nancy Drew series, and the aw-shucks slapstick of Kinky Friedman as all belonging legitimately to the genre. Sci-fi guys regularly lay down definitions RE the scientific rigor of the romances they read, but they know it’s bullshit: Not a one of them wouldn’t count Philip K. Dick among their number and his works are about as scientifically rigorous as The Great Space Coaster. I can’t imagine you hear many romance novel readers say, “I don’t consider romances between nurses and doctors to be real romance. It’s either lusty pirates with good hearts and the clever, but sheltered – don’t forget sheltered, sheltered is the whole thing! – daughters of wealth shipping magnates or nothing!”

—CRwM, And Now the Screaming Starts

OH MY JESUS YES

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