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Speculative fiction
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Speculative fiction is a style of fiction which explores the nature of unproven entities or occurrences. 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 fiction, 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.
HistoryThe 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 . A variation on this term is "speculative literature." "Speculative fiction" is sometimes abbreviated "spec-fic," "S-F," "SF," or "sf". The last three abbreviations are also used to refer to "science fiction", so they can lead to confusion.
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. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database contains a broad list of different subtypes. In the 2000s, the term has come into wider use a convenient collective term for a set of genres. Academic journals which publish essays on speculative fiction include Femspec, Extrapolation, and Foundation.
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. Some readers and writers of science fiction see the term as insulting towards science fiction, and therefore as having negative connotations.
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