The mismatched world of speculative fiction
Now and then I will get out of my comfort zone and network with other writers. Whether this is a monthly happy hour or the latest writing conference in the area, the conversation always turns to, “so, what do you write?”
I always feel awkward answering this question. Do I say I write Magical Realism? Does my work fall under Science Fiction? Or is it something different? Since it is hard to define the elements I like to work with, I just say that I write “a bit of everything”. After years of studying fiction writing, I found out there is an umbrella genre where my writing fits in.
What is Speculative Fiction?
Specular Fiction or Speculative Fiction is broadly defined as a literary genre that encompasses any fiction with supernatural, fantastical, or futuristic elements. At first glance, this genre of fiction can be mistaken as just an umbrella term to talk about stories that use any fantastical or extraordinary literary elements. However, I’ve found that there is so much more to this genre.
Spectacular elements: What makes a story speculative?
When it comes to speculative fiction, the lines often get blurry, and it gets hard to identify which stories are Spec-Fic and which ones are not. There are a few tricks I use to differentiate what falls under this umbrella.
1. Genre-bent worldbuilding
According to Annie Neugebauer, the real meaning of Specular Fiction has more to do with the universe where the story is developed than with its elements. Otherwise, every story that included science fiction, fantasy, or supernatural elements would be classified under this category. Fiction gets to be speculative when the universe built for a story is similar to our world but has different rules. Those rules need to fall under one or more genres.
For example, we could classify Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury under Spec-Fic because of its world-building elements. There are Sci-Fi rules that apply to the world because of its futuristic nature. There are other rules that apply to dystopian genres. The combination of these two makes it hard to categorize Bradbury’s work under just one genre or the other. Thus, speculative fiction comes into play.
But is that enough to make a story speculative? The short answer is, no.
Certain Dark Things: A Novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
2. Fantastical premise and influenced plot elements
Both straight-forward fiction and Spec-Fic stories set stories in worlds different from ours. But in order for a work to be classified as speculative, its plot also has to have elements from two or more fantastical or spectacular genres.
A fictional story’s plot is often guided by its premise or its “what if…?” question. To determine if the work is speculative, look at how the book’s plot answers this “what if…?” question and how it affects the world and the course of the plot. Let’s use Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Certain Dark Things as an example.
Genres bent for worldbuilding: Paranormal and True Crime
Premise: What if, in an alternative present, vampires were descendants from the Aztecs that plagued the public in a gang-war style conflict?
Influenced elements: Main plot, exposition, conflict, and character arcs.
Certain Dark Things mixes elements of two different genres to build its world. It also presents a fantastical premise that really launches the story and plot forward. Without these elements, the story would be a very different story. This brings us to our next point, Spec-Fic works will not work without their genre-bent world-building or fantastical premise.
3. Can it work?
The last trick that I use to spot and classify works into spec-lit is by trying to answer this question. If you were to remove the speculative element from the story, can it still work? If the answer is no, then the work falls under speculative fiction. Just like Moreno-Garcia’s book, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood belongs in the speculative literature realm because it checks all the boxes we’ve been covering.
Genres bent for worldbuilding: Dystopia, near-future, satire
Premise: What if the poor treatment of women, disease, infertility, and the corruption of religion led our society to a future where women are owned and used for breading?
Influenced elements: Main plot, exposition, conflict, and themes
Can it work without specular elements? No. The lack of dystopian, near-future, and satire elements would take away all the conflict and major parts of the main plot from Atwood’s book. The story would feel incomplete and left on its bare bones.
And there you have it! These are the main three tricks that I use to spot speculative fiction. I’ve used these tricks to play with my writing, attempt to break stereotypes and archetypes and to find the right audience for my work. I encourage you to do the same. Writing speculative fiction can give you space to play a lot with genre and it can add unique twists to your stories that you otherwise could not achieve.