3 - Speculative Fiction

Summary

Mark Bould’s chapter on “Speculative Fiction” begins with Jonathan Lethem’s literary critical counterfactual in which the genre border between science fiction and mainstream literature never existed and all novels about science were considered one group. As Bould points out, the very term slipstream itself was coined by Bruce Sterling to refer to the disconcerting works of science fiction that played across the edges of varied genre definitions. Heady mixtures of literary conventions have informed all regions of fiction since then, as speculative fiction draws on and critiques archaic and futurist literary movements representing empire, environmentalism, disability, illness, violence, as well as racial, gendered and sexual alterities.