Ao's week 7

What is the difference in emphasis between the terms science fiction and speculative fiction? Which is The Man in the High Castle?

Starting with the definition, speculative fiction is a genre of fiction which includes fantasy, science fiction and horror. The most distinguishing feature between speculative fiction and others is that speculative fiction “deals with imagined worlds and their inhabitants or imagined characters set in the real world.” Leaving with the fact that science fiction is a part of speculative fiction, there are some other differences. Science fiction is in a background of science or pseudoscience. Most of them are writing about future such as robots, space travel, and invasion from outer space.

The Man in the High Castle is belong to science fiction but the difference is that the novel is based on the history and changing it to the history which is never happened. So there is a subgenre of science fiction to describe novels like this, alternate history. To be honest, what I believe is The Man in the High Castle is belong to speculative fiction because the background is history not science theory or some sort of science guess.

speculative fiction. (2005). In The Macquarie Dictionary. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/login?qurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.credoreference.com/entry/macqdict/speculative_fiction

science fiction. (2008). In The Columbia Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/login?qurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.credoreference.com/entry/columency/science_fiction