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Writers who strike it rich/get literary acclaim by writing what's essentially a genre fiction book and then promptly try to deny that no-no-no-no *their* work was *never* meant to be part of said genre and they're shocked, *shocked!* that you could even *think* that make me laugh (and lose respect, but mostly laugh).
I don't know if Susanna Clarke ever made it to the bestseller lists in Canada, but she does get mostly filed in Fantasy in the libraries around here (those large enough to have separate genre sections for the hardcovers, that is).
I do think that fantasy is becoming more mainstreamed overall, what with all the popular movies based upon fantasy classics (Lord of the Rings) and the books becoming movies and TV (HP, Twilight, Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood, and apparently a series based on Terry Goodkind's books) and thus perhaps becoming perceived as more socially admittable for public reading outside the teen years, one hopes.
The public perception of SF, on the other hand, seems to still be stuck in a kind of Star Wars-y space ship battles and laser blasters and aliens with funny prosthetics mode. And I don't think the rename of the "SyFy" Channel helps make it look like anything other than for illiterates, sad to say.
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