What is speculative fiction?

“Speculative fiction includes fantasy, science fiction, and horror, but also their derivatives, hybrids, and…genres like the gothic, dystopia, weird fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, ghost stories, superhero tales, alternate history, steampunk, slipstream, magic realism, fractured fairy tales, and more.” (source)

Why speculative fiction?

“Some of my earliest memories of falling in love with stories were speculative fiction. I have this very distinct memory of watching Star Wars with my dad in our on-fort housing at Ft. Leavenworth when I was in 2nd grade. The very first series of books I finished was The Chronicles of Narnia in 3rd grade. Animorphs gave me nightmares about alien worms crawling into my ears to control me for years (The Wrath of Khan would later bring those nightmares back).

Now, I love traditional fiction, and traditional theatre. But the reality is that there are certain types of stories we don’t see on stage very often. They exist, to be sure, but they are definitively the minority. Some types of speculative fiction see a bit more love, but the stalwart pillars of speculative fiction (especially science fiction and fantasy) are hard to find.

This means that not only do we lose the audiences who crave those stories (they turn to TV, Film, and even TTRPGs instead), but as a community we lose the power of a style of fiction that is always teaching us fundamental truths about what it means to be human through stories that seem to transcend our experience.”

— Andrew Roblyer, Lore Keeper