Rambling on what makes speculative fiction

So, I'll be talking about a creative story idea I have had for many years now. It's a fantasy idea I really need to sit down and get started writing on, but I've seen some authors and dungeonmasters write out how they create the worlds they use to tell their stories.

"Sure, let's put the cart before the horse and I'll break down how a universe for speculative fiction gets created," I thought.

But first, let's talk about speculative fiction.

Creative writing professors and dictionaries can all regurgitate a definition for speculative fiction, but if you wanted that you'd go get a dictionary or a professor. In my opinion, speculative fiction is divided from other fiction by one simple thing: It creates an alternate universe and uses that alternate universe to toy with our preconceived notions and help the reader discover something about the human condition.

I hope that doesn't sound like nonsense, so I'll break that down. The alternate universe bit should be fairly clear, so I'll talk about the playing around and human condition bits.

We orient our worldview around certain ideas and conceptions we get through life, starting with the first time you stick a fork in the socket and you get the conception, 'Sticking a fork in a socket will hurt me' Simple things like that and more complex things like justice and the purpose of life. We run around with these ideas all our life and rarely question them. I know I'm not gonna stick another fork into a socket anytime soon.

The point of speculative fiction, again in my opinion, is to break us out of our comfort zone. What if, when we open up our wardrobe, we don't find clothes, but a portal to another world? What if, magic really did exist and there's a giant conspiracy covering it up? What if, centuries in the future, people flew around in ships and explore space much the same way the oceans were explored? What if?

It's escapism in its purist form. The schoolkid looking out the window on a stuffy day stuck in a boring classroom and imagining himself on the swing set outside. What differs speculative fiction from a writing down a daydream is that the fiction should tell us about ourselves and what drives us.

So it takes that daydream and makes it sensible. There are rules. Ok, so you can be a wizard or a witch but you'll need a wand and you still have to go to school. There'll still be prejudice and the nervous butterflies in your stomach right before you ask a girl out.

It reintroduces us to the things we've already learned in our own life but from a different angle. A fresh perspective can mean more than any number of statistics, photographs or lectures.

Well, I was going relate this to the new Disney movie Frozen but I guess I'll leave that for the next post: what separates good speculative fiction from the bad.