š„ Spec Fic 101: What Is Speculative Fiction?
Share
What if borders didnāt need maps to change lives?
What if stories could bend time, rewild the planet, or bring ancestral voices into the future?
These are the kinds of questions speculative fiction dares to ask. As both a literary tradition and a cultural force, speculative fiction opens portals to worlds that donāt yet exist ā and might never ā but that nonetheless reflect our deepest hopes, fears, and possibilities.
At Flame Arrow Publishing, we believe speculative fiction isnāt just a genre. Itās a storytelling compass that points to resilience, resistance, and rebirth.
š So What Is Speculative Fiction?
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term for fictional stories that explore possibilities beyond our current reality, venturing into fantastical, supernatural, futuristic, or otherwise imaginative realms. It includes a range of subgenres, including:
- Science fiction
- Fantasy
- Horror
- Dystopian fiction
- Magical realism
- Time travel
- Climate fiction
- Afrofuturism, and more.
These stories ask the fundamental question: āWhat if?ā inviting readers into alternate realities shaped by magic, advanced technologies, altered histories, or speculative futures.
The genre provides a creative space where writers can stretch the boundaries of known experience and pose critical questions about the direction of our world.
Thanks for reading The Arrow Dispatch! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.
š A Brief History of the Term
The term "speculative fiction" was popularized by Robert A. Heinlein in 1947, who used it to describe science fiction grounded in real scientific or social possibilities rather than fantasy. To Heinlein, speculative fiction was about logically extrapolating from existing trends to explore plausible futures.
Decades later, author Margaret Atwood refined this definition by distinguishing between science fiction and speculative fiction.
- Speculative fiction, she argues, encompasses scenarios that could actually happen, rooted in real-world science or history
- Science fiction, by contrast, ventures into the improbable or fantastical. It often involves technologies or beings (aliens, warp drives) that go beyond real-world feasibility.
Atwood saw her own work ā such as The Handmaidās Tale ā as speculative fiction, descended from authors like Jules Verne, who imagined submarines and balloon travel before they became reality.
š Speculative Fiction and the Environment
Speculative fiction is not just about the future ā itās about the choices we make now.
By projecting how current ecological crises into imagined futures, the genre offers a lens to explore the consequences of environmental collapse ā or the hope of environmental renewal. Many stories critique institutional control over land, water and resources, challenging readers to think critically about extraction, consumption and sustainability.
However, mainstream speculative fiction often centers Western perspectives. Indigenous worldviews, which offer deep relational understandings of land and ecology, have long been marginalized.
Thatās why, in 2003, scholar Grace Dillon introduced the term Indigenous Futurismā a movement of speculative narratives rooted in Indigenous cultures and epistemologies. These works reimagine the future through relationality with the land, animals, and non-human entities, while confronting the enduring legacies of colonization.
Through Indigenous Futurism and other decolonial lenses, speculative fiction becomes more than entertainment: it becomes a genre of resistance, remembrance, and radical imagination.
š± Why We Publish Speculative Fiction
At Flame Arrow Publishing, we are drawn to stories that reimagine the world with courage and care.
We specialize in hopepunk, oceanpunk, and other subgenres that highlight collective struggle, chosen family, and sustainable futures. Our catalogue uplifts underrepresented voices and asks bold questions about identity, ecology, and possibility.
We believe speculative fiction helps us:
- Reflect on whatās broken
- Dream of what could be
- Tell the stories that move us toward change
š¬ Join the Conversation
Speculative fiction has been asking āWhat if?ā for generations ā and now we want to know:
Whatās a speculative story that changed how you see the world?
Which subgenre (sci-fi, fantasy, hopepunk, Indigenous Futurism, etc.) speaks to you most and why?
Feel free to share your thoughts on social media, tag us @flamearrowpublishing, or reflect on your own reading journey. This is just the beginning of the conversation.
Next in this series:
āWhat is Hopepunk, and Why Does It Matter?ā
(A deep dive into the subgenre that defines our core.)
Until then, stay curious and keep imagining boldly.
ā
š¦š„Flame Arrow Publishing
Stories of Resilience, Resistance, and Rebirth