At a sold-out Guardian event on Friday night, James said publishers too often sought fiction that "panders to that archetype of the white woman, that long-suffering, astringent prose set in suburbia.
Laurie Cearley, the festival's curator, wasn't seeking science fiction, but she was looking for rarity and inventiveness.
They have sought out fiction for a reason: quite often they simply wish the puppeteer would shut up, back away and get on with the storytelling.
If we truly seek diversity in fiction, we have to let the needs of others come before our need to define ourselves as social justice allies.
While the Illinois complaint puts it in rather simple language, most readers I suspect do prefer "to receive an inspiring true tale of non-fiction" than to seek similar inspiration from fiction.
"When you seek to make a fiction out of someone, you often discover that he's already made a fiction out of himself," Mr Doctorow observed, citing Henry Kissinger's memoirs as an example (cue audience chuckles).
A.N. Wilson, a prolific British writer of fiction and non-fiction, seeks to overcome the inherent defects of the genre by turning his company history into a novel, and getting in some sex and romance too.
For non-fiction, always seek to provide a conclusion of some sort, to end the work neatly.
Searching for a suitable collaborator in the science fiction community, Kubrick was advised by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staffer Roger Caras, to seek out the noted science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.
I have always sought solace in fiction.
