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Defying Categorization with Speculative Fiction

November 14, 2019 by in On Writing

The most common response I get when people learn I write fiction is, “Cool, what kind?”

But when I respond “speculative fiction,” I usually get a blank stare.  I’m always surprised at how many people don’t know the term because I think a lot of readers already love speculative fiction without realizing it.                             

Speculative fiction includes science fiction and fantasy, as well stories that don’t quite fit into those genres, such as dystopias, alternate histories and post-apocalyptic tales. Examples range from literary classics like George Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to commercial hits like The Hunger Games. These are all stories that explore an outlandish or imaginative premise by asking “What if …?”

 But I can already hear you asking: Don’t all stories ask, “What if?”

Hmmm, yes, good point.

Some writers may use the term to distance themselves from genre tales of elves, dragons and Mars spaceships. Not me. I love  “all those books of yours with maps at the beginning,” as my mom says. (My husband knew he was dating the right girl in college when I just wanted to hang out at his apartment and watch Star Trek re-runs. Many years later, I realized, not for the first time, that I’d married the right guy when 12 full-sized maps of George R.R. Martin’s “Lands of Ice and Fire” arrived in our mail unprompted. The collection is sitting on our coffee table right now.)

Personally, I like the speculative fiction term because it is broad. It gives everyone fair notice that it includes stories that don’t quite fit anywhere else or don’t align neatly into a single category.

Take my novel-in-progress, Last of Kin. The premise is quite fantastical. Two women from different species become unlikely friends – and then dangerous enemies – in an alternate version of our world in which the ancient human species homo floresiensis still lives. But you wouldn’t call it traditional fantasy; there is no magic, no dragons.

It’s closer to science fiction, given that: 1) The ancient species actually existed (scientists discovered their remains in 2003);  2) I used my education/interest in anthropology and human evolution to inform the book; and 3) The religion I created for the ancient species is based on the Many Worlds theory of quantum mechanics.

Still, one literary agent has suggested to me that the novel is more alternate history, given that it not only imagines the ancient species never went extinct, but also twists a very real scientific expedition made to the New Guinea Foja Mountains in 2007. 

So which is it?

I’ll let the marketing experts decide if I’m so lucky to get a book deal. Until then, I’ll just call it speculation fiction. 

 

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