In space, nobody can hear you bang on about class warfare

Who does genre belong to, anyway?
 
There's a particular writer I generally respect, but has this irritating habit of making proclamations that sound impressive, even though they are, on closer examination, completely full of shit. (And no, there will be no naming of that writer here, because this is not about naming and shaming in any way.)

Usually it's easy enough to dismiss these proclamations and move onto the other meaty analysis that I went there for, but there was one that came out a few years ago that I've never been able to let go, and it was their flat, bland statement that science fiction was a "thoroughly middle class genre".

Which I can't get with at all. The realms of hardcore collectors might be largely middle class, because they have the kind of disposable income to buy high-end prop reproductions, slabbed pieces of fried comic gold, or nice statues to go on their shelves. And maybe it's true that something like Doctor Who has been almost exclusively produced by just the right sort of people, and maybe a lot of the creators are able to get their start through public school connections and the funds to finance it, but I truly believe genre belongs to everybody, and science fiction in particular.

After a lifetime of toil, I'm still working class to the core. Solidarity forever and all that. And I've been immersed in fabulist fiction my entire life, and so have many, many people I've shared smoko rooms with.

The dream of a better world, and the consequences of the failure to achieve it, that belongs to everybody. We can all look up at the stars and dream of something bigger and better out there, or go deep inside how heads to imagine the far future. It doesn't matter what level society thinks you belong, we can all go there.

If anything, it's the people in the gutter who long for the stars the most.

It's still a class of people thunderously under-represented in modern science fiction - movie critics are still banging on about how the crew of the Nostromo are so representative, and that movie is nearly 50 years old - but the audience is all of us, for all time and space.