Evolving Sci-fi

Interesting commentary here about our future fantasies and how they move through time. It is very enjoyable, at least to me, to read or watch old sci-fi. As humankind and the technologies it musters evolves over time, pieces of old fiction become amusing reflections of how we thought we'd live.

Like a kaleidoscope showing us different colors through the same view, concurrent writers of speculative fiction each have their own hues to share. When we look back at these varying images of our past predictions, it's quite fascinating. Oh, I just switched a moment ago to "speculative fiction" -- oops!

Definitions of science fiction and speculative fiction are definitely commingled. Sci-fi fans do like their space ships and genetic mutations. But not all sci-fi leans heavily on the flashy technology frontiers. On this note, I really enjoyed the article's comments about applying enthusiasm to new areas of science. The technical gizmos are interesting but the changes in mankind (biology, sociology, psychology the sciences here) are just as captivating. So, in my view, one differentiator is that speculative fiction doesn't seem to lean on technology as much.

In Orwell's 1984 -- not wild from a technology standpoint -- it was the human activities that were astounding: hiding camera's everywhere, changing the news across all publications in the printed archive, spin-doctoring to the extreme. This aspect makes it more of a speculative fiction work. The technologies featured in the book weren't really much of a stretch from what existed at the time the book was written. Orwell mainly speculated on how far a propoganda machine could go. This is what really made it fascinating: the direction that evolution could take.

With all of this pondering, I'm curious: as far as genres go, do we need to clearly break apart science fiction from speculative fiction? Please weigh in on this question. It would be very helpful to get other views on this subject.

Hmm.