Speculative fiction
exploring alternate realities reveals the interlocking contingencies of the status quo, speculative stories may prove useful not just to those imagining the future, but those who seek to invent it.
Eliot Peper • The Possibility Engine
Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story.
Ursula K. Le Guin • Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
Afrofuturism is typically defined as a Black cultural aesthetic that explores the intersections of the African diaspora and technology––or, in other words, a form of Black science fiction.
Black writer and performer Neema Githere writes about what she calls “ Afropresentism ,” which she defines as a “teaching genre” that “channels your ancestry
... See moremary retta • close but not quite
To me, it’s very important to think about speculative fiction and worldmaking as two approaches for better orienting ourselves to the present, rather than conjuring escapist utopian futures that will never arrive.
On Technology and Humanity: Alice Bucknell and Her Alternative Worlds
I love speculative fiction like Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin 's, which creates alternative versions of reality based on enormous documentary research and invents the foundations of another present, improbable and credible. I'm also constantly on the lookout for situations where reality is surreal, a kind of "magical realism". As a writer of... See more
Anthony Van Den Bossche • «Writing as pollinating», a conversation with Alice Bucknell
It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality. Science fiction properly conceived, like a ll serious fiction, however funny , is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actua ll y do and feel , how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this be ll y of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of... See more
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When I watch a Miyazaki film I can’t help but think about his attunement to the world, the presence it requires to transmute the real world into a fantastical one. That’s the interesting contradiction of writers and artists, I suppose: alienation is a necessity, but so is participation. The point of getting better is to be more in the world.
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