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.
Stanley Grauman Weinbaum (April 4, 1902 – December 14, 1935) was an American science fiction writer. His first story, "A Martian Odyssey", was published to great acclaim in July 1934; the alien Tweel was arguably the first character to satisfy John W. Campbell's challenge: "Write me a creature who thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man." Weinbaum wrote more short stories and a few novels, but died from lung cancer less than a year and a half later. (Full article...)
Halo 3 is a 2007 first-person shootervideo game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise following Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) and Halo 2 (2004), the game's story centers on the interstellar war between 26th-century humanity, a collection of alien races known as the Covenant, and the alien parasite known as the Flood. The player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier, as he battles the Covenant and the Flood. In cooperative play, other human players assume the role of allied alien soldiers. The game features vehicles, weapons, and gameplay elements familiar and new to the series, as well as the addition of saved gameplay films, file sharing, and the Forge map editor—a utility which allows the player to perform modifications to multiplayer levels.
Halo 2 had originally been intended to wrap up the story begun with Combat Evolved, but development difficulties led to a cliffhanger ending. Bungie began developing Halo 3 shortly after Halo 2 shipped. The game was officially announced at E3 2006, and its release was preceded by a multiplayer beta open to select players who purchased the Xbox 360 game Crackdown. Microsoft spent $40million on marketing the game, in an effort to sell more game consoles and broaden the appeal of the game beyond the established Halo fanbase. Marketing included cross-promotions and an alternate reality game. (Full article...)
Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould.
”
—Brian Aldiss (b.1925), Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction (1973).
An engraving of action from Act I, Scene 1 from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, in which Prospero (right) has caused the ship carrying his brother Antonio and the King of Naples Alonso to run aground on the island to which he and his daughter Miranda had been exiled. The play is believed to have been written in 1610–11 and is now considered to be one of Shakespeare's greatest works. (POTD)
Fantastic was an American digest-sizefantasy and science fiction magazine, published from 1952 to 1980. It was founded by the publishing company Ziff Davis as a fantasy companion to Amazing Stories. Early sales were good, and the company quickly decided to switch Amazing from pulp format to digest, and to cease publication of their other science fiction pulp, Fantastic Adventures. Within a few years sales fell, and Howard Browne, the editor, was forced to switch the focus to science fiction rather than fantasy. Browne lost interest in the magazine as a result and the magazine generally ran poor-quality fiction in the mid-1950s, under Browne and his successor, Paul W. Fairman.
At the end of the 1950s, Cele Goldsmith took over as editor of both Fantastic and Amazing Stories, and quickly invigorated the magazines, bringing in many new writers and making them, in the words of one science fiction historian, the "best-looking and brightest" magazines in the field. Goldsmith helped to nurture the early careers of writers such as Roger Zelazny and Ursula K. Le Guin, but was unable to increase circulation, and in 1965 the magazines were sold to Sol Cohen, who hired Joseph Wrzos as editor and switched to a reprint-only policy. This was financially successful, but brought Cohen into conflict with the newly formed Science Fiction Writers of America. After a turbulent period at the end of the 1960s, Ted White became editor and the reprints were phased out. (Full article...)
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.
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.
