New Speculative Literature page
We have this week added a new page to our website: ‘Speculative Literature‘.
What is Speculative Literature?
There are broadly two type of speculative literature: speculative fiction and speculative non-fiction.
What is Speculative Fiction?
What is Speculative Fiction? Speculative fiction is a broad genre of fiction that includes, but is not limited to, all the sub-genres that exhibit elements of non-realism. For example, Wikipedia lists under its entry for speculative fiction the following sub-genres: science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream, magical realism, superhero, alternate history, utopian and dystopian, fractured fairy tale, steampunk, cyberpunk, weird fiction, fairytale, and post-apocalyptic.
Speculative Fiction Also Includes
Speculative fiction can also include fiction which transcends reality in ways that are not easily categorized by any of the above sub-genres. Authors who seek a freer type of fiction than that prescribed by the above sub-genres, will describe their work as speculative.
What is Speculative Non-fiction?
Speculative non-fiction takes non-fiction and explores the what-if that is usually associated with speculative fiction. However the difference between speculative fiction and speculative non-fiction lies in the subject material and how it is handled. Speculative fiction is first and foremost fiction, but with an element of unreality, while speculative non-fiction is largely non-fiction which extrapolates into the existing reality. That is, the speculative non-fiction does not contain elements of unreality but rather elements of extended reality, much as an unrealized engineering design proposes a future engineering reality which is possible but not yet built, and may never be built.
Differing Opinions
There appears to be some divergence of opinion, or ambiguity of definition, for ‘speculative non-fiction’. Nevertheless, we at Seaswell Publishing stand by the above description for ‘speculative non-fiction’. Some of the alternative definitions of ‘speculative non-fiction’ that we have seen seem more like ‘speculative fiction’ to us.
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