writermag.com • The Writer | 21A
ll fiction is speculative to some
extent, posing a “what-if ” question,
which serves as the premise and
drives the plot. But for fantasy author
Kij Johnson, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula
Award, the specific genre of speculative fiction
adds its own special writing challenges: “A brilliant
speculative story is harder to write than a brilliant
realistic story, because it must do all the same
things mainstream literature does – characteriza-
tion, language, theme, and all the rest – and also, it
needs to meet the requirements of the genre: accu-
rate science, plausible worldbuilding, and the
physiological triggers essential to a horror story.”
Before you set out to write any form of specula-
tive fiction – whether fantasy, sci-fi, or horror –
you must be aware of the meaning and application
of this term. What exactly is speculative fiction?
We’ve turned to several seasoned writers of
speculative fiction to answer this question plus
others: What is the difference between sci-fi and
fantasy, which are sometimes represented together
as “SF/F”? How does YA speculative fiction differ
from speculative fiction for adults? What makes
good speculative fiction as a whole?
Then we’ll focus on the industry, asking sev-
eral agents representing speculative fiction:
What makes the cut in the modern publishing
marketplace?
What is ‘speculative fiction?’
According to Lois McMaster Bujold, four-time
winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, this lit-
erary term, a few decades old now, was meant to
provide “an umbrella term to encompass both
science fiction and fantasy and reduce the time
wasted arguing over which category any given
tale fell into.”
Johnson sees it as “an umbrella term for stories
that operate outside reality in one way or another:
they cannot happen or did not happen or cannot
happen yet – at least, according to current under-
standing of the world.” It is often “consciously
extrapolative – what would happen if reality were
changed in X way? – but it doesn’t have to be.”
According to Johnson, the term has wide appli-
cation to a number of genres: “science fiction,
fantasy, supernatural horror, surrealism, irrealism, and some
experimental forms.” Daniel José Older, bestselling MG, YA,
and adult fantasy writer, adds magical realism and mythology
to this list.
For fantasy writer Janice Hardy, speculative fiction is
“about the fantastic, be it a magical world or a scientific
idea.” In either case, she adds, “it explores the ‘what if ?’ and
speculates on things that aren’t real or aren’t real yet (as in
the case of science fiction).”
Linda Nagata, author of both science fiction and fantasy
and winner of the Nebula and Locus awards, also stresses
the fantastic. “If a story reaches past the mundane world to
include a fantastical element critical to the plot, then it’s
speculative fiction,” she says. Like others, she sees the term
as inclusive of several genres.
But is this term merely definitional? Bujold doesn’t think
so. She believes its genesis was a “covert attempt to rebrand
science fiction and fantasy into something more literary-
sounding.” Rebranding or not, science fiction writer Robert
Silverberg, multiple winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards,
member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame,
and named Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of
America, sees the term as quite useful, in that “it’s a some-
what more accurate label for ‘science fiction,’ which often
has very little science visible in it but which deals with ‘what
if...’ speculations.” Even so, he says, “‘science fiction’ is the
more familiar term, and I still prefer to use it.”Science fiction versus fantasy
If you set out to write either science fiction or fantasy, you
might wonder where your story or novel project fits in
terms of these often-lumped-together genres. Is there a dis-
tinct line between sci-fi and fantasy?
Many readers might differentiate between the two with
a sentence like “science fiction deals with technology; fan-
tasy deals with the supernatural.”
But is the demarcation between these two that simple?
“There is a little bit of a gray area there,” says Older, “but
I think of science fiction as generally and mostly focused on
the technological aspect and fantasy focused on the magical
aspect.” Yet he notes that this separation is a “little too easy.”