Mainstream And SF

We (editorially speaking) are conducting a minor literary experiment. A regular blog commentator explained once or twice why he preferred sf to mainstream fiction. I requested an example of the mainstream fiction being referred to so that I could make the same comparison. Of course I have read some mainstream novels but that is a broad category... The title suggested was Flowers In The Attic by Virginia Andrews which I am now reading. It turns out to be the first of a series. I am interested enough to read at least to the end of this volume.

I am reminded that, in such a novel, the narrative focuses entirely on the characters and their interactions. The setting is contemporary, equally familiar to author and readers, therefore not needing elucidation. The author need not create a future society or an extra-terrestrial environment. 

In this novel, the children isolated and concealed in the attic of a large house for an indefinite period have something in common with characters in an sf novel cut off from the rest of mankind by their enclosure in an interstellar spaceship. The way the children are treated borders on horror. People living or working on lower floors of the house might hear voices or other sounds and imagine ghosts. Indeed, the children's imaginations might run riot in the enormous, cluttered, cobwebbed attic. 

Poul Anderson could easily have handled a novel on such a theme. Indeed, his contemporary novel, The Devil's Game, has just one fantastic - or maybe psychological? - premise and thereafter presents the interactions of a diverse group of characters.

So far, I think just that sf and mainstream are different, not that either is better.