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.
Patrick Joseph McGoohan (/məˈɡuː.ən/; March 19, 1928 – January 13, 2009) was an Irish-American actor of film, television, and theatre. Born in New York City to Irish parents, he was raised in Ireland and England. He began his career in England during the 1950s and became well known for the titular role of secret agent John Drake in the ITC espionage programme Danger Man (1960–1968). He then created, produced, and starred as former British intelligence agent Number Six in the surrealisticITV series The Prisoner (1967–1968).
Doom is a first-person shooter game developed and published by id Software. Released on December 10, 1993, for DOS, it is the first installment in the Doom franchise. The player assumes the role of a space marine, later unofficially referred to as Doomguy, fighting through hordes of undead humans and invading demons. The game begins on the moons of Mars and finishes in hell, with the player traversing each level to find its exit or defeat its final boss. It is an early example of 3D graphics in video games, and has enemies and objects as 2D images, a technique sometimes referred to as 2.5D graphics.
Doom was the third major independent release by id Software, after Commander Keen (1990–1991) and Wolfenstein 3D (1992). In May 1992, id started developing a darker game focused on fighting demons with technology, using a new 3D game engine from the lead programmer, John Carmack. The designer Tom Hall initially wrote a science fiction plot, but he and most of the story were removed from the project, with the final game featuring an action-heavy design by John Romero and Sandy Petersen. Id published Doom as a set of three episodes under the shareware model, marketing the full game by releasing the first episode free. A retail version with an additional episode was published in 1995 by GT Interactive as The Ultimate Doom. (Full article...)
Science-fiction is the law-abiding citizen of imaginative literature, obeying the rules, be they physical, social, or psychological, keeping regular hours, eating punctual meals; predictable, certain, sure. Fantasy, on the other hand, is criminal. Each fantasy assaults and breaks a particular law; the crime being hidden by the author's felicitous thought and style which cover the body before blood is seen. Science-fiction works hand-in-glove with the universe. Fantasy cracks it down the middle, turns it wrong-side-out, dissolves it to invisibility, walks men through its walls, and fetches incredible circuses to town with sea-serpent, medusa, and chimera displacing zebra, ape, and armadillo. Science-fiction balances you on the cliff. Fantasy shoves you off.
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—Ray Bradbury (1920–2012), "Introduction" in The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories (1956).
An illustration by Édouard Manet for a French publication of Edgar Allan Poe's narrative poem"The Raven". In the poem, the raven flies into the narrator's home and perches on a bust of Pallas Athena (seen here). The narrator then asks the bird a series of questions, to which the bird only replies, "Nevermore". Eventually, the narrator falls into despair and ends with his final admission that his soul is trapped beneath the raven's shadow and shall be lifted "Nevermore". Originally published in 1845, the poem was widely popular and made Poe famous, though it did not bring him much financial success. "The Raven" has influenced many modern works and is referenced throughout popular culture in films, television, music and more. (POTD)
The Nebula Award for Best Short Story is a literary award assigned each year by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) for science fiction or fantasy short stories. A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a short story if it is less than 7,500 words; awards are also given out for longer works in the categories of novel, novella, and novelette. To be eligible for Nebula Award consideration a short story must be published in English in the United States. Works published in English elsewhere in the world are also eligible provided they are released on either a website or in an electronic edition. The Nebula Award for Best Short Story has been awarded annually since 1966. The award has been described as one of "the most important of the American science fiction awards" and "the science-fiction and fantasy equivalent" of the Emmy Awards.
Nebula Award nominees and winners are chosen by members of SFWA, though the authors of the nominees do not need to be a member. Works are nominated each year by members in a period around December 15 through January 31, and the six works that receive the most nominations then form the final ballot, with additional nominees possible in the case of ties. Soon after, members are given a month to vote on the ballot, and the final results are presented at the Nebula Awards ceremony in May. Authors are not permitted to nominate their own works, and ties in the final vote are broken, if possible, by the number of nominations the works received. Beginning with the 2009 awards, the rules were changed to the current format. Prior to then, the eligibility period for nominations was defined as one year after the publication date of the work, which allowed the possibility for works to be nominated in the calendar year after their publication and then reach the final ballot in the calendar year after that. Works were added to a preliminary ballot for the year if they had ten or more nominations, which were then voted on to create a final ballot, to which the SFWA organizing panel was also allowed to add an additional work. (Full article...)
Possible events in the future as suggested by science fiction:
The Terran Confederation, following five years of raids against their shipping by the Kilrathi, officially declare war against them on July 5, 2634.
The Star Kingdom of Manticore is established on August 1, 3573.
The EVE Gate, a natural wormhole leading to New Eden, collapses in 8061.
In 802,701, The Time Traveller encounters a garden world and sees Humanity has divided into the meek Eloi on the surface and the subdwelling, cannibalistic Morlocks.
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