If you're trying to pick a fight with a sci-fi book junkie, bringing up this genre could be a great place to start. People have been debating the exact definition of speculative fiction since at least the 1950s, and I suspect this debate will continue into the future with all the other genre wars.
This article offers the basic definitions of speculative fiction, where they came from, and how they've ruffled more than a few literary feathers over the years.
3 Definitions of Speculative Fiction
If you want to skip the drama, here are the three most widely known definitions of speculative fiction:
1) Speculative fiction is a subtype of science fiction that involves only scientifically possible events.
2) Speculative fiction imagines possible future worlds and only includes scientifically possible events, but it’s not science fiction.
3) Speculative fiction is a broad genre of imaginative fiction that encompasses science fiction, fantasy, and other sub-genres defined by non-real elements.
If you do enjoy a bit of drama, or you want to know where the above definitions came from, then read on.
Definition #1: Speculative fiction is a subtype of science fiction that involves only scientifically possible events
In the 1950s, the term "speculative fiction" was coined by science fiction godfather Robert Heinlein, best known for Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land.
Heinlein suggested that speculative fiction was an under-recognized subtype of science fiction:
There is another type of honest-to-goodness science fiction story that is not usually regarded as science fiction: the story of people dealing with contemporary science or technology. We do not ordinarily mean this sort of story when we say "science fiction"; what we do mean is the speculative story, the story embodying the notion "just suppose—" or "What would happen if—."
In other words, speculative fiction, to Heinlein, meant taking available technology and theory and extrapolating it into an imagined future, compared with, say, inventing an impossible world.
For example, it’s fun to imagine a kitchen appliance that can turn a loaf of bread into a ribeye steak, but there is no conceivable scientific basis for this, so it could not be included in a work of speculative fiction.
Heinlein also felt that speculative fiction should consider the implications of science on humankind:
In the speculative science fiction story, accepted science and established fiefs are extrapolated to produce a new situation, a new framework for human action. As a result of this new situation, new human problems are created — and our story is about how human beings cope with those new problems.
Despite his love of science, Heinlein was most interested in people. He believed that they were real special sauce in a good story, not creative tech or futuristic world-building.
Here’s where some controversy comes in. He suggested that some science fiction was subpar because was too focused on science.
Much so-called science fiction is not about human beings and their problems, consisting instead of a fictionalized framework, peopled by cardboard figures, on which is hung an essay about the Glorious Future of Technology.
For Heinlein, no amount of imaginative technological fanfare could overcome the lack of humanity in a story, and should never overshadow the human element.
Definition #2: Speculative fiction imagines possible future worlds and only includes scientifically possible events, but it’s not science fiction
Heinlein’s preference for legitimate, plausible science has been taken a step further by Margaret Atwood, most famous for Handmaid’s Tale, a novel set in the dystopian near future.
Atwood once claimed that realism forms a clear division between speculative fiction and other science fiction:
Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we're probably not going to see.
Oh, and she very much prefers that her books are classified as speculative fiction.
Why?
According to SFF legend Ursula Le Guin:
She doesn’t want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto.
This approach — separating SFF from literary fiction — tends to rile up the SFF fans, who seem to feel slighted by this attempt at disassociation. One such commenter on an online news article about Atwood said:
Atwood doesn't know anything about science, and doesn't know anything about science fiction. And obviously, therefore, she can't write science fiction. Oh, and she is a fool.
Consider those feathers ruffled!
Maybe Atwood has gotten the message. In her Masterclass, she takes a more humble approach to the conversation:
I write speculative fiction not because I don't like the other kind, but because I can't write it. It's not within my skill set.
Probably a wiser approach.
Definition #3: Speculative fiction is a broad genre of imaginative fiction that encompasses science fiction, fantasy, and other sub-genres defined by non-real elements
To me, this contemporary definition of speculative fiction is best, as it’s the simplest and most inclusive.
According to Cambridge Dictionary, speculative fiction refers to:
a type of story or literature that is set in a world that is different from the one we live in, or that deals with magical or imagined future events
This is the kind of (imaginary) world where I want to live.
Who cares about genre labels?
Lots of people, judging by the countless diagrams online attempting to classify speculative fiction and nail down all the potential sub-genres.
Check out this doozy:
Although I love a six-circle Venn diagram as much as the next guy, all this bending over backward does make me wonder about the value of the conversation itself.
What’s the purpose of genre?
Primarily it’s a way of helping people find books they might like.
I hope most of us can agree on that.
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