Distinguishing Speculative Fiction From Science Fiction
"Speculative fiction" is sometimes abbreviated "spec-fic", "specfic", "S-F", "SF", or "sf" but these last three abbreviations are ambiguous as they have long been used to refer to science fiction, which lies within this general range of literature, and in several other abbreviations.
The term has been used to express dissatisfaction with what some people consider the limitations of science fiction, or otherwise to designate fiction that falls under readily stereotypical genres so that it can be pigeonholed within such categorical limits as "fantasy" or "mystery". 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.
Read more about this topic: Speculative Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words science fiction, fiction and/or science:
“Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.”
—Philip K. Dick (1928–1982)
“The society would permit no books of fiction in its collection because the town fathers believed that fiction ‘worketh abomination and maketh a lie.’”
—For the State of Rhode Island, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)