Speculative Fiction

Really, when we talk about Sci-Fi and Fantasy we're talking about Speculative Fiction. Speculative fiction is the broad category of fiction books that are not set in a realistic world. Unlike contemporary fiction, which is set in the factual present, or historical fiction that is set in the factual past, Speculative Fiction (or spec-fic) deals with book settings that are not realistic in some manner. To relate to this blog, it covers both sci-fi and fantasy books.

So if spec-fic covers both sci-fi and fantasy how do we tell them apart? The difference is in how the non-realistic things are dealt with. In sci-fi all of that is dealt with by science. Ships fly at the speed of light because there are light-speed engines, strange-looking beings are aliens who look different because they evolved on a different planet, or people have greater-than-natural abilities due to genetic manipulation. Fantasy, on the other hand, doesn't have a scientific explanation for things. Things fly because someone wills them to, strange-looking beings are magical incarnations such as faeries or goblins, and people have greater-than-natural abilities because they're under a spell or gifted by a god.


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So what are the types of sci-fi? Here's a list of the categories I'll be using in my tags, shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia:

Hard SF - this is what people usually think all of sci-fi is. It's books that have plots that concentrate on physics and other "hard sciences" and meticulous worldbuilding with plot twists that generally rely on scientific things or phenomenon.

Soft SF - books that concentrate on the "soft sciences" such as sociology and politics. Dystopians are Soft SF books that take sociology or psychology to the extremes.

Cyberpunk - plots that rotate around technological advances of cybernetics - where people and technology merge into one being.

Biopunk - focuses on sciences that manipulate the human body through genetic technology instead of technological implantation.

Steampunk - imagines that the past (usually Victorian Europe or US) had advanced technologies. Called "steam"punk because the technical innovations often run by steam power instead of batteries or the like. There are variations, like decopunk, arcanepunk, and enginepunk, but I'm not going to separate them out.

Time Travel - plots where people travel through time.

Alternate History - plots that imagine the past was different than it really was. Steampunk is a sub-set of Alt History.

Military Sci-Fi - concentrates on wars and soldiers in big battles with advanced technologies.

Superhuman - plots that have human characters that have unusual powers due to some scientific reason. Closely related (and often intertwined) to Cyberpunk and Biopunk.

Apocalyptic - deals with the end of the world, either right before and how humans deal with it or right after and how humanity tries to recover. Usually split into pre- (before the end of the world) and post- (after the end of the world). Differs from Dystopian in that nature caused the end of a society and a rise of a new (sometimes oppressive) one, not people or their actions.

Dystopian - deals with a society that exists based on the deprivation, oppression, or terror of the people in the society. The plot usually searches to overthrow this society.

Space Opera - tales that deal with life on other planets or space travel. Often has a heroic tale slant to the plot.

Space Western - A plot that takes the tropes of westerns (cowboys, shoot-em-ups, frontiers) and combines it with science-fiction tropes (space ships, interplanetary travel, space exploration).

Generation Ship - not often an entirely different sub-genre, but it's become a popular slice of space opera crossed with dystopian so I'm separating it out.


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There are even more types of Fantasy than there are Science Fiction, but I'm not going to use all the variations on this blog. I don't feel there's a lot of need to show people the varieties of fantasy since it's readily embraced by YA readers. Here are the few I'll be using:

Urban Fantasy - modern people in modern settings encounter magic or the fantastic. Contains the Paranormal Romances so popular right now.

Hard Fantasy - where magic exists, but everything emulates worlds we know and is as realistic as possible (magic obeys laws of physics, etc.). This is a very difficult thing to describe, so I'll apply it sparingly.

High Fantasy - Heroes, sorcerers, intrigue, and a quest to resolve it all just like Tolkien.

Historical Fantasy - a historical setting, only with magic.

Mythic - retelling of myths, fairytales and/or folklore.

Mythical Creatures - technically a section of mythic, but there are so many of these today that I'm separating them out.

Superhero - people have magic powers for some reason.



I'll be working in the next few weeks to backdate all my old posts with these tags.

Scored by Lauren McLaughlin

Set in the future when teenagers are monitored via camera and their recorded actions and confessions plugged into a computer program that determines their ability to succeed. All kids given a "score" that determines their future potential. This score has the ability to get kids into colleges, grant scholarships, or destroy all hope for the above. Scored's reluctant heroine is Imani, a girl whose high score is brought down when her best friend's score plummets. Where do you draw the line between doing what feels morally right and what can mean your future? Friendship, romance, loyalty, family, human connection and human value: all are questioned in this fresh and compelling dystopian novel set in the scarily forseeable future.

I really identified with this book. Or, more specifically, I really identified with Imani. Imani is a great character, and we have a lot in common: good students, considered “good kids” by the teachers and public, from a low-income family striving to give their kids a better life, and seeing nothing in the future but college and the promise of a better life that it holds. In Imani’s world, the better life is by working the “score” system that can get her a full ride into a good school. The problem is that although the company that runs the score publishes their parameters no one really understands how it ranks students or why some have high scores and some have low. Association, though, is apparently one of them because Imani falls from the low 90’s to the 60’s because her best friend, Cady (a 70) is dating an “unscored” (someone who has not submitted to the scoring system) , something completely unheard of for the scoring system and earning her a score in the 20’s. At the same time Imani is assigned a scholarship essay on how the score system is bad, and her research leads her to some unexpected places and associations. The plot is great, flowing from action to action with just enough rest that it feels well-paced and not breakneck-throttle. Imani is a great character, and like I said when I started, I saw a lot of my teenage self (and I imagine a lot of other high-school overachievers) in her. Her conflict between friendship and loyalty and the opportunity to better herself with the score system is so realistic it’s heartbreaking. I recommend this book to everyone who likes a good traditional 1984 and Brave New World –type dystopia.

Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

What if you were bound for a new world, about to pledge your life to someone you'd been promised to since birth, and one unexpected violent attack made survival—not love—the issue?

Out in the murky nebula lurks an unseen enemy: the New Horizon. On its way to populate a distant planet in the wake of Earth's collapse, the ship's crew has been unable to conceive a generation to continue its mission. They need young girls desperately, or their zealous leader's efforts will fail. Onboard their sister ship, the Empyrean, the unsuspecting families don't know an attack is being mounted that could claim the most important among them...

Fifteen-year-old Waverly is part of the first generation to be successfully conceived in deep space; she was born on the Empyrean, and the large farming vessel is all she knows. Her concerns are those of any teenager—until Kieran Alden proposes to her. The handsome captain-to-be has everything Waverly could ever want in a husband, and with the pressure to start having children, everyone is sure he's the best choice. Except for Waverly, who wants more from life than marriage—and is secretly intrigued by the shy, darkly brilliant Seth.

But when the Empyrean faces sudden attack by their assumed allies, they quickly find out that the enemies aren't all from the outside.

Glow is the most riveting series debut since The Hunger Games, and promises to thrill and challenge readers of all ages.

I was very torn about this book when I read it, and to be honest I’m still not sure where I stand. On some days I think it is one of the best science fiction YAs to come out this year. On others I can’t help but pick apart its flaws. I think the biggest one of these, in my mind, is that the plot is very grim. It’s a very personal thing, but I greatly dislike plots where I don’t feel that the protagonists have much hope to make their conditions better. It’s why I call Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer the wonderful, horrible book: it’s very well written, but I can’t help but hate it because I know everyone’s going to die either before the book ends or shortly after. I felt that way the entire way through Glow. Additionally Ryan’s view of humanity is very grim. She sets up two dichotomies for society, atheistic liberals and religious conservatives, and then makes them equally horrible places to live. The one oppresses women and encourages them to serve their husbands, and the other sets up gang rape as a way of life. Both of them see no problem with the mass rape of the young girls in the books, the liberal group literally and the religious group figuratively when they use them as breeders for new children. With the horrible turn the boys’ society takes in the absence of the girls it seems as if the book is saying you are either victim or oppressor, all humanity is horrible so it only matters if you are on top or on bottom. Even though Kieran tries to help the boys he cannot help but become the very thing that Waverly despises. There are also some strange physics problems with the science in the book. Ryan seems to be under the impression that a ship in space that is not accelerating is coasting to a halt, like a car or boat on Earth, and a ship that is not powering its engines is decelerating and will not lose gravity, but will have less gravity than an accelerating ship. Uniting the book over all these problems, however, are engrossing characters and a plot line that grabs you and forces you to keep going. I will pick up the next book in this series because of that indefinable “something” that’s making me curious about where Ryan is going.


I was provided with a free ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I’ve always believed them.

Until now.

Now everything has changed. Now, I’d rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.

From bestselling author Lauren Oliver comes the first book in a stunning new trilogy set in a dystopian world. Prepare to be captivated!

Although this book was technically spectacular, I really didn't like it. I think if I were a teenager, though, I would love it. This is really one of those rare books that wasn't able to cross the age gap in my head. It's sad, really, that I've got such a mental block against it because this book had a lot of things going for it. Lena is an amazing character. She is a mature teenager, with all the layered nuances that goes along with that. She's not an adult with a younger body but mature thought processes, and yet she's also not an adult's construction of a teenager's brain. From what we see of him Alex is well thought out as well. His actions and reactions are typical of a teenage boy discovering relationships. With a little imagination the dystopian world created is believable as well (that is, if you can buy into the unspoken inference that emotionless people are easier to bend to your will).

However, two things stuck out to me as odd in this book. The characters imply that the "cure" takes away all emotions. Now, granted that we haven't actually experienced the cure in a major character, just Lena's mixed views of it. However, it seems odd to me that the operation doesn't "cure" rage, suspicion, and terror. I guess I was expecting a society of vulcans, and the result is stranger because people have negative emotions without the balance of positive ones. Perhaps this is because Oliver is better versed in brain mapping and capabilities than I am, and it is in fact possible to separate the two in the brain. I'd really like them to explain, however, why they left the negative emotions alone instead of excising them all.

The other issue I had with this book, and the major one from my point of view, was the representations of love. Oliver presents a very one-sided, teenage view of love. There's not much separation of passion from love, there's no exploration of long-term devotion, and there's little more shown outside of love-at-first-sight sparks and fireworks. Even Lena's mom is presented as loving Lena's Dad too much to go on living without him, even with the 'love' she was capable of feeling towards her children (which is illustrated well in a story, but not explained). It's also not explored as a layered issue. Lena's mother killed herself because she missed Lena's father, not because she had endured two sessions of brain surgery and was facing a third, or that her government viewed her as "subversive" and a criminal, or that she had to hide her true self and live in a constant state of fear, or that . . . well, we'll just stop there, I think you get the picture. My only hope is that the book is planned as the first of a trilogy, so perhaps these are issues that the author will get to in time and I'm just too impatient. I will probably pick up the next book for the series-completionist in me, but I'm not sure I'd recommend this book to other people.