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hard. Or hopeful confidence in a slim, but very real, possibility of decent human institutions.
    Then there is the upstart habit of compulsively questioning rules! Even rules of storytelling. Authors like John Brunner, Alice Sheldon, Cordwainer Smith, Greg Bear, Frederik Pohl and Philip K. Dick always looked on any prescriptive storytelling formula as a direct challenge-a dare. A reason to try something different, for a change.
    This explains why science fiction has never been much welcomed at either extreme of the literary spectrum-either in comic books or in the halls of "high literature."
    BOTH ENDS AGAINST THE MIDDLE
    You'd think that science fiction would be natural for comics. Some of our best living graphic artists have become adept, using this static, two-dimensional medium, at conveying startlingly vivid and evocative effects in sequential panels-the kind of imagery that caters naturally to futuristic or exotic locales. And there are other overlaps between SF and comics. For example, both genres are unafraid to posit the possibility of garish transformation and change.
    Nevertheless, for decades, people have wondered why illustrated graphic novels and comics focus so thoroughly on superheroes, hardly ever telling the kinds of vivid space or future-oriented adventures penned by Verne, Wells, Vinge, de Camp, Anderson, Pohl, Heinlein and so on.
    Returning to the ongoing theme of this essay, you can find a possible explanation in how the writers and publishers of these marvelous illustrated tales treat their superheroes-with reverent awe, as demigods were depicted in The Iliad. All of the complaints listed earlier about minimizing the importance of normal people-of civilization-apply as much to comics as they do to Star Wars. Comics appear to have their roots firmly planted in the old archetypes. Far too firmly ever to welcome the spirit of true sci-fi.
    Or, at least, that is how comics treated their heroes ... until recently. Changes do appear to be afoot at last, however. In one of the great ironies, while literary SF has been turning ever more toward the styles and sensibilities of fantasy, many of the best comic book and graphic novel writers have lately been writing almost as if they were ... well ... science fiction authors!

    What's the crucial distinction?
    Imagine, for a moment, how a true science fiction author might write about Superman. Picture earthling scientists asking the handsome Man of Steel for blood samples (even if it means scraping with a super fingernail) in order to study his puissant powers. And then ... maybe ... bottling the trick for everyone?
    As for the opposite end of the spectrum-the literary elite-it's easy to see that campus postmodernists despise science fiction in part because of the word "science." Another reason is that many scholars find anathema the underlying assumption behind most high-quality SF: a bold assertion that there are no "eternal human verities." Things change. Change can be fascinating. And science fiction is the literature of change.
    Moreover, our children might outgrow us! They may become better, or learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. And if they don't learn? That could be a riveting tragedy, far exceeding Aristotle's cramped, myopic definition.
    On the Beach, Soylent Green and 1984 plumbed frightening depths. Brave New World, "The Screwfly Solution" and Fahrenheit 451 posed worrying questions. In contrast, Oedipus Rex is about as interesting as watching a hooked fish thrash futilely at the end of a line. A modern person may weep at the right moments, as the playwright intended. Only then, you just want to put the poor doomed King of Thebes out of his misery-and find a way to punish his tormentors.
    This truly is a different point of view, in direct opposition to older, elitist creeds that preached passivity and awe in nearly every culture. Where asking too many questions was punishable hubris. Where a hero's job was to oppose one set-piece villain ... in