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troperville

"SF writers are technology freaks who blithely ignore that footnote in Einstein's theory of relativity which clearly states that when an object approaches the speed of light, its mass becomes infinite. (So much for warp-drive.) If old Buck Rogers hits the gas-pedal a little too hard, he'll suddenly become the universe. Fantasists are magic and shining armor freaks who posit equally absurd notions with incantations, 'the Will and the Word', or other mumbo-jumbo. They want to build a better screwdriver, and we want to come up with a better incantation. They want to go into the future, and we want to go into the past. We write better stories than they do, though. They get all bogged down in telling you how the watch works; we just tell you what time it is and go on with the story."

— David Eddings, The Rivan Codex

Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alternate History and everything in between.

The term 'Speculative Fiction' was originally a "backronym" for the initials SF; at the time, during the New Wave Science Fiction movement of the 1960s, some writers felt that science fiction, or 'sci-fi', now equated to flying saucers and rubber monsters, and wanted to distinguish themselves with a new genre label. The desire for a separate category became even greater when people began to apply the sci-fi label to horror films containing blatantly supernatural elements (such as various immortals) but few if any science-based elements whatsoever. Over time, however, the term 'Speculative Fiction' grew to become a Super Trope covering not only what self-described Speculative Fiction authors wrote, but also the Sci Fi and Horror B-movies they were trying to distinguish themselves from. Nevertheless, Speculative Fiction can be applied to a work � correctly or incorrectly � in order to help it avoid the Sci Fi Ghetto; it can allow the more pretentious to believe that their favourite work is a proper 'literary' work with no connection to and thus obvious superiority over that geeky science fiction or fantasy.

Today Speculative Fiction covers pretty much the entire fantastic end of the Sliding Scale Of Realistic Versus Fantastic, including fantasy, Science Fiction, horror, and other, less well known genres. However, there are many speculative fiction stories that fall on the border between genres, and others that may be completely unclassifiable. Furthermore, many of these genres can be either used to terrify or Played for Laughs, with the latter producing such genres as comic SF and comedy - horror.

See the Analysis page for why the boundary between Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror is fuzzy, and why a broad term like Speculative Fiction is necessary.

Naturally it has its own page devoted to Speculative Fiction Tropes. See the Speculative Fiction Creator Index for a list of pages for Speculative Fiction creators.