It has been around since humans began to speak. The earliest forms of speculative fiction were likely mythological tales told around the campfire. Speculative fiction deals with the "What if?" scenarios imagined by dreamers and thinkers worldwide. Journeys to other worlds through the vast reaches of distant space; magical quests to free worlds enslaved by terrible beings; malevolent supernatural powers seeking to increase their spheres of influence across multiple dimensions and times; all of these fall into the realm of speculative fiction.
Speculative fiction as a category ranges from ancient works to cutting edge, paradigm-changing, and neotraditional works of the 21st century. It can be recognized in works whose authors' intentions or the social contexts of the versions of stories they portrayed is now known. For example, Ancient Greekdramatists such as Euripides, whose play Medea (play) seemed to have offended Athenian audiences when he fictionally speculated that shamaness Medea killed her own children instead of their being killed by other Corinthians after her departure. The play Hippolytus, narratively introduced by Aphrodite, is suspected to have displeased contemporary audiences of the day because it portrayed Phaedra as too lusty.
Nuts & Bolts entered production following the completion of Grabbed by the Ghoulies (2003) and was developed by the same team behind the Nintendo 64Banjo games, led by designer Gregg Mayles. It began as a remake of Banjo-Kazooie (1998) but was repurposed as an original game. Rare sought a broad audience and, wanting to evolve the platform genre, introduced vehicular gameplay to take advantage of the Havokphysics engine. The customisation elements originated from the Rare co-founder Tim Stamper's suggestion for a game similar to connecting Lego bricks. The soundtrack was composed by Robin Beanland, Dave Clynick, and Grant Kirkhope in his final work for Rare. (Full article...)
It is easy to argue persuasively the truism that the lessons of history are best derived from what actually happened, rather than from what nearly happened. It should be added, however, that what happened becomes more fully comprehensible in the light of the contending forces that existed at moments of decision. Understanding of the total historical setting is bound to contribute to a clearer view of the actual course of affairs.
”
—Harold C. Deutsch (1904-1995), Introduction, What If? Strategic Alternatives of WWII (December 1997).
Sir Arthur Conan DoyleKStJ, DL (1859–1930) was a Scottish writer and physician. In addition to the series of stories chronicling the activities of Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr John Watson for which he is well known, Doyle wrote on a wide range of topics, both fictional and non-fictional. In 1876 Doyle entered the University of Edinburgh Medical School, where he became a pupil of Joseph Bell, whose deductive processes impressed his pupil so much that the teacher became the chief model for Holmes. Doyle began writing while still a student, and in October 1879 he had his first work—"The Mystery of the Sasassa Valley"—published in Chambers's Journal. He continued writing short works—both fictional and non-fictional—throughout his career, and had over 200 stories and articles published.
In July 1891 Doyle published the short story "A Scandal in Bohemia" in The Strand Magazine—a "story which would change his life", according to his biographer, Andrew Lycett, as it introduced Holmes and Watson to a wide audience; the duo had provided the subject of Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet, which was published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887. The story in The Strand was one in a series of six, published in successive months. They were well received by the public, and the editors of the magazine commissioned a further six stories, and then another series of twelve. Doyle, fearful of having his other work overshadowed by his fictional detective, killed his creation off in December 1893 in "The Adventure of the Final Problem". He also wrote four full-length Holmes works, as well as adventure novels and nine historical works of fiction. In 1912 he began the adventure series featuring Professor Challenger, who first appeared in The Lost World—both in short stories and novels. (Full article...)
Expand and update a new speculative fiction article from the following list:
Note: If no articles are shown below, please work on those found in the Archive.
This list was generated from these rules. Questions and feedback are always welcome! The search is being run daily with the most recent ~14 days of results. Note: Some articles may not be relevant to this project.
Featured articles are considered to be the best on Wikipedia, as determined by Wikipedia's editors, and Good articles are those which are considered to be of good quality but which are not yet featured article quality. If you see one that should be listed here, please add it or post on the talk page and let us know so we can add it for you.
