The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer
and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown
suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged,
I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not
dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the
quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors,
and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural
for them to despise science fiction.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"