What Is Speculative Fiction?
During the 2020 part of the COVID pandemic, I spent a lot of time what-ifing. What if this is the end of the human race? What if the world is completely different when all is said and done? What if we have a complete societal collapse? It didn’t’ help that I had just finished reading a dystopian novel that takes place in current day and speculates what would happen if the world went into a pandemic through an invisible, air-born plague. (I’m not kidding, literally days before mass shutdowns, this was what I was reading at night.)
It’s a personality trait of mine that also reflects some of my favorite reading, and that’s speculative fiction.
What Is Speculative Fiction?
Speculative fiction is exactly what it sounds like, but more—a type of storytelling that contemplates and explores what could be, what is possible, but also what is impossible. Speculative fiction is not beholden to a particular genre; it’s a storytelling vehicle through which any genre can travel. Like magical realism in that way, speculative fiction is something of an unreality, but explored in realistic ways. By that I mean it’s realistic within the confines of the story itself. Fantasy and science fiction may not be realistic, but it is to the characters and the story, for example.
When you consider some classic literature, speculatively speaking many elements of those stories could be considered cautionary tales. Fahrenheit 451, The Road, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale … these are all novels that, while they’re genres are not all the same, thematically they each speculate on different versions of a possible future.
This is part of what makes speculative fiction so exciting to me as a reader. Any given book can utilize this style and with varying imaginative results. I’ve read speculative fiction where the world-building requires that every question is answered; I’ve also read speculative fiction where part of the mystery and curiosity is in not having all the answers, and so the reader speculates as part of the reading experience.
I want to share a few titles here to show just how diverse speculative fiction is as a genre, and how you can incorporate elements of this type of storytelling into your own writing.
Severance by Ling Ma
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Synopsis: Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
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Synopsis: Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.
Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.
The Power by Naomi Alderman
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Synopsis: In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there’s a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family.
But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets. From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
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Synopsis: Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters…Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Synopsis: As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
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Synopsis: With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.
Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.
What’s your favorite speculative fiction novel? Do you hope to incorporate speculative fiction into your own writing?
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