One of the consistent problems with mainstream authors 'doing an SF' is that they are putting their toe in a pool where suddenly all their Bookers and highbrow column coverage count for nothing. To succeed, they need to pull their mainstream readers along with them and scare off the genre fans, who will generally find their attempts at SF to be either laughable or unremarkable (see the absolute roasting that Winterson's quasi SF novels have gotten from genre reviewers), coming as they invariably do from an ignorance of the genre.

Harkaway and Chabon were exceptions as they are literary writers who are also massive genre fans, and whilst happy to tow the publisher line not to big up their books as genre, don't deny they are either. Amis, however, came a cropper with TIME'S ARROW as various reviewers, such as Langford, pointed out a number of SF novels (and an episode of RED DWARF) that did a reverse-chronology tale in a much more interesting manner, whilst Winterson's pseudo-SF books have been torn apart with glee by genre reviewers since she hasn't a clue what she's doing.

'Literary' writers doing SF occasionally produce something of interest - CHILDREN OF MEN and THE HANDMAID'S TALE are not without merit - but they do have a problem in that their 'literary SF' is going to be contrasted in-genre against the likes of Wolfe and LeGuin, and unless some kind of miracle takes place they are not going to withstand that level of comparison.