About The Speculative Fiction Writer's Toolkit
The Speculative Fiction Writer's Tookit is a resource for all aspiring or established writers. At the Toolkit we aim to bring you top-quality, relevant information that will help you to improve yourself as a writer
You will find articles on many different Speculative Fiction topics, all with exercises and suggestions that will help you to apply what you have learned to your own work. We also run free online workshops that will give you an indepth look at specific aspects of the genre, such as world building. You can also check out our information about the publishing industry, and markets for you to submit your work to.
Every month we will be interviewing different Speculative Fiction authors, all with different experiences and opinions on the business. We are also proudly sponsoring a blog by an aspiring Speculative Fiction author who is chronicling her effort to get her first novel completed in the next year.
Above all, we aim to be a truly comprehensive resource for all of you writers out there. If you have any suggestions about how we can make our site even better, please drop us an email!
What is Speculative Fiction?
Speculative Fiction on the Screen - The Matrix
Speculative fiction is a term used as an inclusive descriptor covering a group of fiction genres that speculate about worlds that are unlike the real world in various important ways. In these contexts, it generally overlaps with one or more of the following: science fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, alternate history and magic realism
The term is used this way in academic and ideological criticism of these genres, as well as by some readers, writers, and editors of these genres
History
The term is often attributed to Robert A. Heinlein. In his first known use of the term, in his 1948 essay "On Writing of Speculative Fiction," Heinlein used it specifically as a synonym for "science fiction"; in a later piece, he explicitly stated that his use of the term did not include fantasy. Heinlein may have come up with the term himself, but there is one earlier citation: a piece in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1889, in reference to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 200 - 1887. A variation on this term is "speculative literature." "Speculative fiction" is sometimes abbreviated "spec-fic", "specfic", "S-F", "SF", or "sf". The last three abbreviations are also used to refer to "science fiction", so they can lead to confusion.
movement. It fell into disuse around the mid 1970s. The use of "speculative fiction" in the sense of expressing dissatisfaction with science fiction was popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s by Judith Merril and other writers and editors, in connection with the New WaveIn the 2000s, the term has come into wider use a convenient collective term for a set of genres. Academic journals which publish essays on speculative fiction include Femspec, Extrapolation, and Foundation.
The term has been used to express dissatisfaction with what some people consider the limitations of science fiction per se. For example, in Harlan Ellison's writing, the term may signal a wish not to be pigeonholed as a science fiction writer, and a desire to break out of science fiction's genre conventions in a literary and modernist direction; or to escape the prejudice with which science fiction is often met by mainstream critics. Some readers and writers of science fiction see the term as insulting towards science fiction, and therefore as having negative connotations.
Source: www.wikipedia.org
