>>1
"Popular" writing amounts to being entertaining, as in, "it's a great story. "Literature" amounts to being meaningful, as in, "it's a great story, but it also is something more than just a great story." Generaly, a storybook that is more than the sum of it's parts is literature and true art. It there are aliens, they'll never be able to discern a human "popular" story from "true art," by definition.