The Giant Unread Table of Speculative Fiction

So recently, my husband and I completed what had damn well better be the last in a far-too-lengthy series of moves and relocations. In the process of unpacking for what had damn well better be the last time, I discovered a massive quantity of fantasy and science fiction novels that I'd either bought and never read, or read and forgotten. And when I say "massive," I mean that there's a coffee table in the corner of my office where these books sit, but I can really only speculate about said coffee table's continued existence, what with all the books covering and surrounding it. It might have turned into a very small triceratops. I have no way of knowing.

Anyway, surveying the pile of books perched atop my coffee table/triceratops, I realized that I had been hauling some of these books from house to house and apartment to apartment for years. I further realized that this was silly. Therefore, it became my mission to plow through them; if my reading list seems heavily skewed toward the speculative, that would be why. What I've discovered so far is that some of them are good, some of them are bad, and most of them are perfectly acceptable examples of whatever it is they're trying to be. At this point, I'm finally starting to make a dent, and so I feel like it's okay to occasionally throw in a non-triceratops-table book. Also, I'm really looking forward to reading a book where a nice lady meets a nice man and they fall in love and get a nice dog, and nobody turns into Cthulu.

Yeah. That'd be nice.
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Published on March 27, 2009 09:31
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message 1: by Vicki (new)

Vicki G I've heard the term 'speculative fiction,' but I've never really understood what it is-or how it differs from mainstream fiction. It could be one of those cases where the terms are relatively interchangeable, like Macintosh blade or Miller blade when setting up an endotracheal intubation for a patient who needs it. There are subtle differences in function of the two blades, so they're not entirely interchangeable, but that's the only thing related to my own profession where it's damn near close to being identical.
Doctors use all the different surgical instruments for different purposes. It's one of the rare times they do so. Ordinarily, they'll change a procedure, tweak parts of it around a bit, so their procedure doesn't look the same as another doctor's.
Returning to speculative fiction: Is there a difference between speculative and mainstream?


message 2: by Vicki (new)

Vicki G I just read this again and the part where you say it had 'damn well better be the last time' made me laugh.
I know a native New Yorker-he insists one can tell a native from whatever a non-native New Yorker is called, but I digress-and he always talks in direct terms, to use the least descriptive words to describe it, like that.
He makes me laugh, b/c all of his direct sentences have at least 2 curse words in them. Even when he says good morning: He says 'Hey there. How the hell are you this morning?'
The first time he did that, I couldn't stop myself from laughing.


message 3: by Kelly (new)

Kelly Hi, Vicki - speculative fiction is basically any fiction that -- well, hell, that couldn't happen according to the laws of physics and nature as we currently understand them. It's a pretty broad term, and avoids the whole "but is this science fiction or fantasy?" sticky wicket. So most fantasy and science fiction are considered speculative; a horror novel about a werewolf would be speculative fiction, but a horror novel about a serial killer probably wouldn't be. A mystery novel where a ghost leaves clues is speculative; a mystery novel where the owner of the amusement park pretends to be a ghost leaving clues (and would have totally gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids) isn't. I use it because so much of the fiction I love crosses genres in one way or another, and doesn't seem to fit into most people's idea of "fantasy" or "science fiction."


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