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Speculative fiction
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Speculative fiction is a term which has been used in multiple related but distinct ways. Speculative fiction is a type of fiction that asks the classic "What if?" question and attempts to answer it.
In some contexts, it has been used as an inclusive term covering a group of fiction genres that speculate about worlds that are unlike the real world in various important ways. In these contexts, it generally includes science fiction, fantasy, horror fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, alternate history, and magic realism. The term is used this way in academic and ideological criticism of these genres, as well as by some readers, writers, and editors of these genres. In these contexts, the term does not imply an opinion about the relative merits of any of the genres it includes. For example, this is the sense in which the term is used in the name of the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
In other contexts, the term has been used to express dissatisfaction with what some people consider the limitations of science fiction per se. For example, in Harlan Ellison's writing, the term may signal a wish not to be pigeonholed as a science fiction writer, and a desire to break out of science fiction's genre conventions in a literary and modernist direction; or to escape the prejudice with which science fiction is often met by mainstream critics[1]. Some readers and writers of science fiction see the term as insulting towards science fiction, and therefore as having negative connotations.
The term is often attributed to Robert A. Heinlein. In his first known use of the term, in his 1948 essay "On Writing of Speculative Fiction," Heinlein used it specifically as a synonym for "science fiction"; in a later piece, he explicitly stated that his use of the term did not include fantasy. Heinlein may have come up with the term himself, but there is one earlier citation: a piece in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1889, in reference to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000–1887.
The use of "speculative fiction" in the sense of expressing dissatisfaction with science fiction was popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s by Judith Merril and other writers and editors, in connection with the New Wave movement. It fell into disuse around the mid 1970s.
In more recent times, the term has come into wider use again, and gained the neutral inclusive sense as a convenient collective term for a set of genres. Its modern meaning depends on the speaker and the context.
A variation on this term is "speculative literature." "Speculative fiction" is sometimes abbreviated "spec-fic," "S-F," "SF," or "sf." Care with context is needed in the use of such shorthand, as those last three abbreviations are more commonly used to mean just "science fiction."
Academic journals which publish essays on speculative fiction include Femspec, Extrapolation, and Foundation.