Science Fiction Shame

I have something that i have to admit. It's not easy, but I feel it's important. I... I like to read Star Trek Novels.  But that isn't really what I want to talk about today, what I want to talk about is the shame. Reading Star Trek novels hurts nothing, effects no one else and yet i do feel a need to hide the cover of the books.

The same thing happened on Monday. I want to the library and was reading some graphic novels of the Marvel Civil War and I felt very uncomfortible with other people seeing what I was reading.

It's easy to say that no one cares but I'm almost certain that one of the women was thinking exactly what I expected people to think. She knew that there must be something wrong with an adult who wanted to read comic books and while I don't really care what she thinks(I came to terms with being a nerd a long time ago) It still makes me uncomfortable to have someone looking down their nose at me.

This brings me to my question. Why do people look down their nose at others for their hobbies, or the types of books they read, or even reading comics? Is it really worse reading a good Star Trek novel than reading another science Fiction novel?

This may seem like a minor thing, after all I do most of my reading at home where there isn't anyone to look down on me, but I think it is far more important than that. I suspect that one of the major reasons that so many kids stop reading is because they are given the idea by adults that reading books purely for pleasure is somehow wrong. That if you're not reading literature rather than scifi you're rotting your brain, and so instead of reading a good book that would stretch their imagination and show them new ways of thinking about things they watch more TV.

So, about those Star Trek Novels, the best i've found are written by Peter David, he does a fantastic job of....