Neal Stephenson on Science Fiction and Literature

Via BoingBoing, Neal Stephenson gives an insightful talk on Science Fiction as a genre that raises a lot of interesting questions — like why is lit-era-ture so damn full of itself?

… So rather than trying to salvage anything from the standard model [of genres], I believe that it makes more sense to speak of a bifurcated culture. Of course, the bifurcation isn’t absolute or perfectly clean, but it’s clear that there are two distinct audience groups and that they have different characteristics. One carries swords in elevators and the other doesn’t.