Slumming

Kazuo Ishiguro wrote a novel called Never Let Me Go, which seems rather typical of Mainstream-Writer-Drops-in-on-sf. The prose and characterization are significantly above the average for works from within the field, there is no sugar coating or happy ending, and the science-fictional horror that the book threatens us with is self-evidently unworkable. Now he is dropping on fantasy, or perhaps he is afraid that people will notice that he is slumming in fantasy. Ursula K. Le Guin notes that his approach does not produce good fantasy.