The first bookstore that I worked in was teeny. Teeny tiny. Because we were so small, we did not have any subsections of Fiction. Romance and science fiction and mystery were all filed together by author with the “regular fiction”. I don’t ever remember this being a problem. My next store was larger; Romance and Science Fiction got their own shelves but Mystery was still mixed in with Fiction. By the time I got the store #1 at Southdale, even Mystery had a neighborhood of its own.
I remember when Fantasy started being differentiated from SciFic (although it never had its own section when I was in stores). And I also remember when I first started hearing folks use Literary Fiction as a subgenre. (This one always bothers me because it sounds kind of snooty.) And although I’ve never seen it listed anywhere officially (although I’m sure it’s out there), I’ve used Dystopian Fiction myself for books like Station Eleven and Red Rising.
Last week when I was in Barnes & Noble I turned a corner and found two big tables of “Speculative Fiction”. This is a new one on me. The signs said “the perfect mash-up of your supernatural, fantastical, magical and futuristic dreams.” Doesn’t this encompass fantasy and science fiction and maybe even dystopian? Fellowship of the Ring was on the table – I would clearly call that Fantasy. Both of Andy Weir’s books (The Martian and The Hail Mary Project (both excellent by the way)) were piled up. I would absolutely call both of those Science Fiction. Station Eleven was on the other table. I would put that in Dystopian since it’s not supernatural, fantastical or magical. Wouldn’t Mystery fall into Speculative? I was thinking that just about every fiction title might qualify for Speculative. Except the romances – as they pretty much always end the way we think they will.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not actually against putting books together by fairly specific genres; it does help folks find books they might like. But Speculative seems to be a more expansive genre rather than a whittled down category. Not sure it will help, but it was a nice sign.
Do you have a title that you think qualifies for the Speculative Fiction section?
Trail Baboon 
I’d say that nothing in the notion of “speculative” connotes supernatural, science fiction or fantasy. Speculation begins with the question, “what if…”. That question describes all of fiction, which after all proposes a circumstance and then follows it through to a conclusion.
So, Speculative Fiction is just an artificial and prolix name for fiction, bringing us back to your original little bookstore and its undivided category. It’s an arbitrary and no doubt ephemeral excuse from corporate marketers for setting up a table in the store.
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You took the words right out of my mouth, Bill. When I give talks or presentations, or whenever someone asks me about my writing process, how I get story ideas for my thrillers, I tell them: “I start with “What ifs?” What if this? What if that? If “that” then what if “the other” happens because of “that”? Etc., etc.
When in doubt, always assume a new fancy term, category, genre, subset, or whatever is all about marketing. That’s the entire purpose of advertising. Finding creative and original ways to separate we the people from our money.
Chris in O-town
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A better, if less lofty, word for the kinds of fiction they are trying to group would be “Otherworldly”
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What you guys said..,,,,
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Husband totally agrees.
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And they do have an awful lot of tables to fill at Barnes & Noble
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This is as speculative as it gets:
If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss
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From Merriam Webster, a definition:
verb
spec·u·late | \ ˈspe-kyə-ˌlāt \
speculated; speculating
Definition
intransitive verb
1 a : to meditate on or ponder a subject : REFLECT
b : to review something idly or casually and often inconclusively
2 : to assume a business risk in hope of gain
especially : to make a relatively risky investment in something (such as stocks or real estate) in the hope of making a large short-term profit from market fluctuations
transitive verb
1 : to take to be true on the basis of insufficient evidence : THEORIZE
2 : to be curious or doubtful about : WONDER
//speculates whether it will rain all vacation
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My first thought was that speculative fiction is about mining. Now for a title….
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Got it!
To Be ORE Not To Be
That is what 40 minutes of walking on a treadmill will do for my mind.
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I don’t think mining speculators do any actual digging.
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This is making me think too hard.
Our Winona library still shelves Mystery in with Fiction, but it has a red, eye-catching symbol on the spine so they can be easily found…
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The Art Of The Deal
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Ha ha!
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“Spectacles and Eyeglasses” by Richard Jones Phillips
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Wikipedia says speculative fiction describes any work of fiction not based in realism and lists a dozen or so genres that are included in speculative fiction, including the expected science fiction and fantasy, but also including magical realism and alternative history.
The category is so broad that it’s unhelpful if you’re looking for a specific type of fiction. Maybe booksellers got tired of managing sub genres and decided to lump everything together for convenience (and to save money).
Titles? I could be here all day.
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The Wikipedia definition presumes we all agree on what is realism. What is realism to a MAGA?
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Good question.
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Using this definition, all of Isabelle Allende’s work would have to be included
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And Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon, etc. etc.
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Is 1984 speculative or is it becoming reality?
Clyde
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It has been a long time since I read 1984 or Animal Farm, but I do not remember much resistance. I must research this. Our reality right now seems to be the Resistance hitting the ICE agents. Or the ICE agents hitting the ice.
They are more like Barney Fife or the Keystone Cops than anything else.
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Barney Fife only had one bullet and he kept it in his shirt pocket
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Current Affairs
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Thinking of “speculating” as something done by persons planning for gold, hoping to find something in a California streambed that wasn’t “panned out” by the ’49ers, I wondered if “Speculative Fiction” might not be a category invented to enable purveyors of fiction to try to find some money in the book trade.
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One of my favorite students, an army military historian and analyst, co-edited and co-wrote along with several other analysts and theorists, a book analyzing leadership and strategy in sci-fi books, movies, and tv shows. He sent me a copy. He is a fine writer. Some of it is tongue-in-cheek and funny and some is more just an application of their many years of skills just for fun. All are true fans of the genre, mostly along the lines of Star Trek. I have watched very little of Star Trek but they give enough background to make the point clear. That is speculative on top of speculative.
Clyde
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Yes, I too dislike the term “Literary Fiction”. Isn’t all fiction literary? Why is one book more literary than another?
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Peabody’s Improbable History
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