Here at Adafruit on SciFiSunday, we love to talk about science fiction. But what about speculative fiction? Is it science fiction or fantasy or what? Foundational science fiction writer Robert Heinlein popularized the term with his 1947 article “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction.” Many decades later, Margaret Atwood used the term to describe her particularly literary take on science fiction. Here’s more about the history of the term from Celadon Books:
Hugo Award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin contradicted Atwood’s claim in a 2009 article for The Guardian, However, this sparked a certain literary excitement about what exactly “speculative fiction” means. If we follow Heinlein and Atwood’s example, speculative fiction encompasses fantastical tales that nevertheless have a certain degree of credibility, be it Jules Verne’s adventure classic Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, popular dystopian fiction such as Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury or more recent post-apocalyptic literature such as Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel or The street by Cormac McCarthy.
Needless to say, many critics, authors, and readers disagree with this definition of speculative fiction. They argue that it is too restrictive, misunderstands the genre’s limitless appeal, and is, for lack of a better word, snobbish. Almost in protest, some authors, notably writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Doris Lessing, began to use “speculative fiction” to refer to all Types of science fiction stories. Some publishers even use the term synonymously with “science fiction” to describe the works they publish.
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