Science fiction vs speculative fiction

Hi guys! In this video I take a look at speculative fiction and ask, is it different to sci-fi?

#sciencefiction #speculativefiction #booktube

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MY STUFF
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MY SCI-FI NOVELS

DELPHINE DESCENDS
After her family is killed and her homeworld occupied, young Kathreen Martin is sent to the distant world of Furoris for re-education. She will live the rest of her life as a serf – to be bought and sold as a commodity of the Imperial Network.

When her only chance of escape is ruined, a chance mistaken identity offers her a new life as the orphaned daughter of a First-Citizen Senator and heiress to a vast fortune.

She vows to claw her way into power to sit among the worlds’ elite. Then, with her own hands, she will reap bloody vengeance on them all.

But to beat them, she must play their game. And she must play it better than them all.

BLACK MILK
Prometheus has the chance to bring his wife back from the dead, but doing so will mean the destruction of Earth.

Spanning time, planets and dimensions, Black Milk draws to a climactic point in a post-apocalyptic future, where humanity, stranded with no planet to call home, fights to survive against a post-human digital entity that pursues them through the depths of space.

Five lives separated by aeons are inextricably linked by Prometheus’s actions:

Ystil.3 is an AI unit sent back in time from the distant future to investigate Prometheus’s discovery...

The mysterious Lydia has devoted her life to finding a planet that the last remaining humans can call home…

Tom Jones (he’s a HUGE fan!) is an AI trapped inside a digital subspace, lost and desperate to find his way back to his beloved in real-time…
Dr Norma Stanwyck is a neuroscientist from 24th Century Earth whose personal choices ripple throughout time...

Prometheus must learn the necessity of death or the entire universe will be swallowed by his grief.
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GOODREADS
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IMAGE USE
The images in in my videos are mostly licensed stock photos. However, occasionally I will use images found online. I always seek to properly credit artists and offer a link back to their amazing work but sometimes it's hard to find the original source of the work. If I've used an image you own and I haven't credited you, please feel free to get in touch as I am always more than happy to do so.

[velocitor]

It's a good sign that we have so much difficulty categorizing so many works. It means writers' imaginations keep pushing boundaries beyond the established compartments readers have used to order them.

[victorhp]

Great video. I've found the distinction between sub-genres very interesting. And the visuals are really beautiful too. I love the work of Tithi Luadthong

[greyareaRK]

It's an interesting question whether Margaret Atwood is considered a serious literary artist because she writes excellent speculative fiction, or was she taken seriously as a literary artist because she eschewed the science fiction label? (The same thing happens with a certain strain of reader, who want to be taken seriously as appreciators of the literary arts.) It also assumes that the study of people isn't a science, which must come as a disappointment to the world's anthropologists, sociologists, and quite a few historians.

[raphaelbernard]

You're 100% right, the 70's when I started reading Sci Fi was an open field of everything which I tried. There wasn't many or any series just authors, also getting another book of the author you liked was dependent on if the library had them as bookshops were very limited especially in Sci Fi.

[thecryptile]

I'm so old that I remember when Margaret Atwood wrote science fiction haha

[gongo]

My brain hurts now. Its like tracking all the sub-genres of rock. everything seems to get more and more sub divided over time. some of my favourite authors that I used to find in the sci-fi section have been moved to the classics/literature section eg. ray bradbury and kurt vonnegut.

[keshavjindal]

The video started slow but you concluded it perfectly.

[babylegs]

Awesome breakdown, I didnt realize all the sub genres for sc-fi!

[vicdelta]

I think genre division is for the marketing division and no one else, because they do not understand the literary product at all so this genre division simply acts like a barcode reader in a checkout counter and makes it easy to package and sell books.

[j.r.mythical]

This was excellent! I've been taking notes all the way through the essay. May I offer an alternative definition for "Super-Hero Fiction"?

"Super-Hero fiction" Focuses on Characters with Heroic abilities or strengths and how they overcome conflict with said abilities".

You clearly put a lot of work into this essay. I'm a better writer for it! Cheers, mate!

[peaceturtleinfinity]

I am working on a setting that I define as a “Occult Political Space Opera” dashed with alternative history, theological and cosmic horror elements. It doesn’t go nuts with tech overall but there are some far out concepts. I dunno, I mostly just wanted to tell a story that takes place in space but didn’t really want to read a dozen physics and astronomy books. Not out of laziness per se but id rather focus on other beats and thought space would be a cool place to explore that. So I was calling mine speculative fiction just to avoid getting caught in the hard vs soft sci-fi debate…dunno.

[tedbrasso]

Station Eleven was amazing! The HBOMax miniseries is a masterpiece too!

[thekeywitness]

Atwood’s reductive description of sci-fi being limited to space travel and aliens is appallingly narrow-minded, but not all surprising given her generation.

[andreasxanthros]

Great video blog Darrel, thanks! I have always read anything by anyone in any genre. I just want to have my imagination engaged by a captivating story more than anything. What the genre is called is irrelevant to me. That said, I most often turn to science fiction and fantasy as those are the books that tend to have the types of stories that grab me the most. I want my imagination to be transported to another world even if it is a so-called "realist" novel.

[shlazzargh]

Lots of things to think about in there... thanks! I tend to think that it hard to disentangle elements of science fiction from speculative fiction because our lives are so intertwined with advanced technology. Things that would have been speculative fiction just 50 years ago are now part of our everyday lives and, thus, a larger part of the stories we all tell in multiple genres. So, authors who did not grow up with this technology have a hard time understanding that what they see as SF elements are, in many ways, every-day elements for those that did.

[drchalquist]

Thanks for this. I would say science fiction is part of spec fic (last definition rather than the second one). Speculative fiction helps us empathize with each other, explore the implications of our scientific and other advances, and develop imagination and even hope, as my free Assembling Terrania Cycle tries to do.

[joeomalley]

I know there are many lines that blur within each sub genre, but I just love a thinking science fiction, whatever that falls into. Great books that you make you think are great books that make you think.

[timflatus]

Genre definitions are always good for an argument. I think it's fine for an author to insist upon a particular genre definition for their work, so long as their audience understands it. Only publishers, critics and literature students really care about the details. Most readers just find the definitions bewildering - I want magic and airships, not spaceships with tentacles or sword-wielding heroes. I want it to be easier reading than Gravity's Rainbow but still be profound. I want to laugh and cry, be enchanted and surprised. All I need is a search term that encapsulates all of that to be spec-i-fic.

[JeranderAtHome]

Love the video! One question: Is your definition of "Urban Science Fiction" (7:50) correct? Sounds like "Urban Fantasy" to me. Or is there an overlap of some sort there?

[jtjr]

I do think there is a degree of literary snobbishness because some still look down on science fiction as being less than other genres of fiction. Some authors do not want their work associated with a term like science fiction. It is true to a degree that not speculative stories are science fiction but I think some people get way too wrapped up in labels about what they are reading. As long as you enjoy it who cares.