Comment 20 by Robert Howard :

I've always hated the sword-and-sorcery stuff which seems to be the meat and potatoes of this type of fiction and dominates the fantasy section of most bookshops; and aside from a brief flirtation with the Riverworld books by Philip Jose Farmer when I was a kid, I've given this brand of literature a wide berth.

Fantasy fiction has always struck me as the slower kid brother to the more thoughtful and mature older brother of science fiction.

I don't agree with this. I don't think there is a division like that between sci-fi and fantasy. There is lots of sci-fi in which characterisation is rubbish for example. It's just one clever idea wrapped up with a lot of space ships with FTL drives. For example the Lensman series and Asimov's Foundation. Do any of those kinds of space opera's have any characters you'd want to remember ? I loved them as a kid but I'd never read them again.

On the other hand you have people like Le Guin who writes great sci-fi and great fantasy.

Michael