What is a Speculative Fiction Novel?

A speculative fiction novel is one that takes the reader to an unfamiliar world. It often explores themes that go against commonplace, materialist laws such as faster-than-light travel.

Some readers disdain speculative fiction as unreal. Ask them to justify their prejudice and you will usually find they never read the likes of Gormenghast or The Lord of the Rings.

Fantasy

It’s difficult to separate science fiction from fantasy, because both genres deal in the ’what if’. Science fiction is the more logical version of speculative fiction, while fantasy explores what is impossible.

Generally, fantasy worlds are populated by mythical creatures that can’t be found in the real world. Characters often possess supernatural powers that aren’t explained through scientific or mathematical means.

Some speculative fiction works straddle the line between fantasy and sci-fi, such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale or Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Another example is soft/sociological SF, where advanced technology plays only a minor role in the story and is used to examine social issues such as inequality or overpopulation. Animated movies such as Princess Mononoke and Laputa: Castle in the Sky are also examples of this type of speculative fiction.

Science Fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fictional literature and films that imagine possible future technological and scientific advancements and their societal consequences. Often utilizing futuristic settings or imagining worlds that exist parallel to our own, sci-fi stories explore how advanced technology could go wrong for individuals or societies.

The “what if?” approach to the genre allows authors to examine earthly themes of love, loss, family, and morality through an intriguing, fantastical lens. For example, in her novel Elsewhere, Alexis Schaitkin takes the reader to a cloud village where women are programmed to serve as wives and mothers, but face a host of challenges that society downplays — like self-doubt and loss of bodily autonomy.

A debate exists over when science fiction began; while some consider Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic Frankenstein to be one of its earliest progenitors, the term itself didn’t emerge until 1926, when Hugo Gernsback published Amazing Stories. Today, the genre can be seen in everything from space operas to dystopian novels such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Horror

As a subgenre of speculative fiction, horror is designed to scare, unsettle or horrify. It often involves gory, supernatural or otherwise scary content and has a dark, macabre focus.

The defining characteristics of this genre are that it is based on ideas rather than characters and that the story is designed to invoke an emotion in the reader or viewer. This is what separates horror from other speculative fiction genres, such as science fiction, which can be brilliantly written but if it fails to engage the reader or viewer emotionally then it fails.

Like its Great-Grandmother genre Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction can also use futuristic and supernatural situations as metaphors for discussion of real-world taboos. This is the approach taken by authors such as Octavia Butler, who wrote about a world in which mixed-race children are able to be born and live without prejudice; and more recently by N.K. Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders and Colson Whitehead who use speculative fiction to explore the experiences of historically marginalised communities.

Superheroes

Despite some crossover with science fiction and fantasy, superhero stories are often considered to be a genre of their own. They usually take place in a world that looks quite familiar to our own with carefully chosen fantastical alterations, but with protagonists who have superhuman powers that defy logical and scientific explanation. Death is rare in this genre, and characters who do die are often brought back to life via supernatural means or by retcons (changes to established continuity), which have the effect of retroactively wiping out previous deaths.

Like horror and fantasy, superhero fiction often explores themes that go against commonplace materialist assumptions about the natural world. Stories centered around superheroes who fight supervillains can be both serious and relentlessly silly, but they are also frequently seen as heroically uplifting, which may explain their popularity during World War II when paper rationing sparked a need for simple tales of good triumphing over evil. A superhero’s secret identity is another common trope in this genre.

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The Popularity of Science Fiction in Literature

The popularity of science fiction in literature has grown over the years. Books like The War of the Worlds, Brave New World, and 1984 have gained a literary reputation, as well as the Hugo and Nebula awards.

However, not all critics think that sci-fi is literary. This could be due to a belief that science fiction is merely a series of odd metaphors for the human condition.

Origins

The exact origins of science fiction remain contested, with scholars and devotees holding a wide variety of theories. Some argue that science fiction has roots in ancient fantastical works such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, while others trace its development to the 17th and 18th centuries, following the scientific revolution and major discoveries in astronomy, physics, and mathematics.

The first major science fiction work was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), a novel of the creation of man and its disastrous aftermath. Soon after, H.G. Wells published a story of air flight in 1895, nearly a century before the Wright brothers took off into the sky.

Wells’s novel is notable for its use of scientific imagining to explore the future of society. This genre-defining technique, also known as social extrapolation, is the basis for most science fiction writing to this day. It is the lynchpin of verisimilitude and, in many cases, opens up new trains and channels of thought in the reader.

Themes

While many science fiction stories do focus on inventive technologies and futurism, the genre can also explore a variety of other themes. A common one concerns the potential for a dystopian society, often based on some type of government control or technology that takes over human life. These dystopian societies can be benign, like the computer-controlled world in Star Trek or Brave New World, or a more sinister example like the one depicted in The Stand.

Likewise, sci-fi stories involving aliens and other creatures from outer space can explore our fear of the unknown and our desire to understand other cultures. Additionally, a large number of science fiction works examine the limits of the human mind. Some of these stories portray characters with abilities like telepathy, which can be used for good or bad. Themes like this have a long history in literature, spanning back to Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic Frankenstein and earlier. Other popular science-fiction themes include time travel, first encounters with alien species and alternative universes.

Techniques

As a literary genre, science fiction lays its cards on the table when it comes to social commentary. Its premise is that human beings are able to project what they see around them into the future and extrapolate into multiple scenarios.

This enables sci-fi writers to present their work as prophetic warnings, utopian aspirations or extravagant scenarios for entirely imaginary worlds. It also allows them to display every conceivable attitude toward the process of techno-social change from cynical despair to cosmic bliss.

Other techniques commonly employed by sci-fi writers include describing alien creatures and planets, incorporating futuristic technology, depicting space or time travel and imagining life on other planets. They often rely on a set of rules to establish the setting and to make it plausible for their characters to operate within it. These rules may vary, but many of them are grounded in real scientific principles and advancements. These include the laws of physics and biology.

Influences

Whether science fiction’s authors are intentionally prescient or are simply channeling the whispers of innovation that surround us in our daily lives, many of their ideas become reality. Edward Bellamy’s novel Looking Backward extrapolates a future society, for example, while Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land envisions an interstellar civilization.

Other works that have influenced science fiction include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which depicts a mad scientist’s attempt to create life; Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which describes underwater exploration; and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which features a voyage to the center of Earth.

Modernist literature developed techniques that are now a hallmark of science fiction, including alienation (settings and behaviors commonly seen as normal appear strange to the characters in the story). In addition, modern science fiction often tackles controversial social and political issues such as overpopulation, apocalypse, and environmental degradation.

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